GDC's Jamil Moledina

In the run-up to last year's Game Developers Conference, we published a wide-ranging three-part exchange with GDC executive director Jamil Moledina, covering everything from our concerns about the approach of console manufacturers to the GDC keynotes to the controversy swirling around the Slamdance Film Festival over the game Super Columbine Massacre RPG! Moledina graciously agreed to return to the Level Up hot seat ahead of this year's show--which kicks off today in San Francisco--for a Q&A that we'll be publishing in two parts. In today's Part I, we discuss the amount of time and planning that goes into GDC; whether product casualization or audience stratification best describes a recent trend in videogames; and the commercial prospects for short session game developers. Read on.

After a conference is finished, how soon do you start planning the next one? Do you get a little break, or do you roll right into sketching out the next conference the following Monday?

I roll right into it six months before. The GDC has about an 18-month product cycle. So at this point in time, we are deep into GDC '09. even though we're just three weeks away from GDC '08. And although I do take a few days off after GDC there's so much preparation that needs to go into this show. I mean, it's a multi-million dollar, 16,000 person live, five-day show. And there's a sense of responsibility that we all have to deliver the largest professional-only industry show that there is. So there's a lot riding on it--there's so many moving pieces involved that we need to have a lot of work done way, way, way in advance.

What are the key components to making something like GDC work?

There are several key disciplines involved. The core of it is the conference itself. So we put a lot of energy into developing an experience that fits the core values of the show: learning, inspiration, and networking. That's the central foundation, and everything that we put into the GDC has to reflect one or more of those components, so we build the show from there.

Now, there's a lot of nuts and bolts involved as well, given the scale of it. We have 400 sessions, 25 concurrent tracks--meaning 25 rooms running at the same time with different content all the way through the three days of the main GDC. The Monday and Tuesday content is very specialized, drilled down summits and tutorials.

The first thing we need to do is make sure that all of our content is locked in, accurate and feels right. That's a combination of having an open call for submissions from the industry; having an advisory board composed of industry veterans, as well as those with their sleeves rolled up digging through--and making--the best games of our time so that we have a sense of judgment that is accurate. Because internally we have an editorial perspective, but essentially the GDC is built as something by developers for developers, and has to be reflective of those interests and concerns and values.

As best as you can tell, what two or three things characterize the major concerns--the collective concerns--of developers in 2008?

Well, there's one thing that just seems to be consistent year on year, and I'll start with that one, which is the interest in breakthrough creativity in the environment that we have right now. We have the new generation of games which we were previously calling the next generation, as well as the existing platforms that have the high penetration of installed base. There are the issues in terms of trying to create a standout creative product that captures the public imagination, but in a way that is also practical and effective and efficient.So that's one thing.

Another thing that's been evolving over time and is really coming to a head is the design and business of casualization. We've had a casual games summit as part of the GDC for some time, and it was an emerging trend for last year as well. But we're seeing more and more user interfaces and developers dedicating internal resources to this segment. It's not so much this interesting niche thing that we do for a discrete group of the public, it's something that's bringing lessons across the development landscape.

We're seeing very successful peripheral driven products. The success of the Wii is a great example of this, as is Guitar Hero and the successor product, Rock Band. There are examples across the board. Like with Puzzle Quest. It's not a peripheral driven thing but it's certainly a way to bring what was previously a hardcore genre, which is the RPG, into the hands of people that would previously have been less likely to play that genre but now consider it; namely, the puzzle and casual crowd. Again, I stepped in it right there by making a distinction between casual and hardcore. And I kind of don't see that. I think the game industry is trying to get out of that situation, and I'm simply referring to the effect of casualization across the entire landscape.

Do you really think that the line has been obliterated between the core gamer and the casual gamer?

I wouldn't say obliterated, because there's still companies like PopCap and and PlayFirst that are trying to continue to provide a similar kind of product to an existing audience. But I think that lesson is definitely being heard. The reorganization of EA is interesting; their casual department or the division is one that features Pogo as well as Harry Potter. So they definitely see an interest in bringing those lessons across the board and not having so much of a silo-ized way of thinking as many in our industry have had.

But one thing I want to touch on, as you mentioned, is what is new for '08. One of the things that we're seeing that's very interesting is the rise of social media and player-created activity. The situation that game developers and publishers find themselves in is that they are in a way in competition with Facebook, with YouTube, with all of these different ways that people have to express themselves in an interactive form. The competition is for time and eyeballs. So a lot of people in the game industry have been looking at this and going, "Wait a minute. We're supposed to have user interface down. We're supposed to be the ones that understand how to keep an audience--or audience member or a user or a gamer or however we want to call this person--keep them interested and excited about doing this activity, whatever it may be. So how come we're not out in front here?" That's one of the things that we're going to be seeing a lot more of at GDC this year, which I'm very excited about.

Well, that goes back to something that we talked about last year. We were talking about the iPod, the iPhone and user interfaces. I was sort of suggesting that the industry really had a long way to go in terms of interface design. Last year, I was focusing primarily on the hardware. But I think that's true even in terms of the games themselves terminology. I've Call of Duty up here in the background, and--I've got it on pause, obviously, since I'm talking to you--

Oh, I appreciate that.

--and it's not a bad interface. Visually, it's actually a little more interesting than it's been in the past, but I'm still looking at Resume Game, Options, Restart, Level, Save and Quit, and I'm just sort of like, "Is that the interface that Steve Jobs would come up with? Is that the interface that Mark Zuckerberg would come up with?"

Hmm.

It goes back to what I was saying about whether or not the line has been obliterated between core and casual. I look at this stuff and I say, like, "Well, how appealing would this be to someone who is not a gamer?" And I question it. I do feel like the industry is behind on the interface front.

Well, complexity I think is the main thing that you're bringing up. I can't help but bring a counter argument up which is the interface of Assassin's Creed, where all of the selections, all of the inputs are directly tied into the science fiction story of the game. If you have a game that involves a reduced degree of complexity, you do have an opportunity to streamline the interface to a much greater degree. However, I think it's kind of a Solomon's baby situation: if you're trying to have a deep, complex, emotional, multi-hour experience, you do want to enable a lot of different options for the players so that they can act in a more natural fashion. Now, the way to bring the complexity of the experience to life through intuitive and simpler interfaces is definitely a huge area that is under discussion in the game industry right now. A human computer interface is core to what we're trying to achieve.

Ray Kurzweil's keynote will touch on this, and we have a couple of other sessions dedicated to it as well. The thing that is just the biggest challenge here is trying to figure out how to take what we take for granted in terms of the way we interface with our natural environment. If you think about it, there's a lot of complexity to catching a ball in space. There's a lot of math that goes into that. There's several ways that we interface with each other; right now, you and I both have a screen on pause. We're talking into a device which has at least 12 buttons on it, but there's a certain facility; there's a certain muscle memory; there's a certain standardization to the tools that we're using. Part of the challenge here as well is that we have three platforms that have varying input systems. We have different development teams working on different types of solutions to get to that simple level. But even so, I think that you do have consistent first person shooter controls. There is a move to have standardization of controls.

But that's perhaps one of the areas that Nintendo has really shown the way with the Wii, by adapting some of the simple--well, I hesitate to even say simple--but the intuitive and familiar controls that we have with our environment they've adapted to the Wiimote. So I think that there's a logic there that a lot of people in the industry are looking at.

Now, going back to whether or not there's a distinction between the core and the casual.There was a bit of back and forth discussion between myself and Simon Carless about whether or not reviewers were doing casual games, particularly Wii games a disservice by bringing the same criteria to bear on those games that they have been doing to core games.I have a panel that I'm moderating for GDC where developers will be able to ask questions of journalists. If there's a gap between the intent of the developers and reaction of journalists--whether it's the enthusiast press or the mainstream press-is that something that there needs to be an open dialogue about?

Oh, absolutely. There should be more discussion, especially to the point of casualization as more and more games lower the--let's take one single metric, which is the number of hours it takes to complete a game. I am perfectly satisfied with a game that takes six to eight hours to play. That's somewhat heretical to say, but I think a lot of reviewers out there will grade a game based on its shortness. And they say, "Well, I wish it were longer," or "I wish it had a better multiplayer," or "I wish it had a single-player campaign mode." But a lot of developers are going for some specific with what they're creating. So it's definitely worthwhile to have kind of a bridging dialogue and figuring out, "Well, what are we trying to achieve here and who is the game really meant for?"

Now, having said that I don't want to go too far in that direction because I do believe that it's important to have games reviewed by those who have an editorial expertise and almost academic degree of knowledge and facility with games. For that I will have to trot out the very tired and worn film analogy in that we do have people that know film reviewing film. So I think it's just something that will take a little bit of time, to get used to the idea that there are more casual ideas making their way into hardcore games. It will just take a little bit of time and a little bit of dialogue. We have enough well meaning individuals that care passionately about games as an art form that I think it will work.

Is what's happening a blurring between casual and core? Or is it more likely that we're seeing a stratification in games; where the tastes of what was presumed to be a certain 12-24 or 12-35-year-old male game are no longer dominant? I put up a guest post about the plight of the "hardcasual" gamer, and basically it was someone who was saying, "Look, I'm married; I have children and I don't have the time I once had to play games, but that doesn't mean that I want to play Wii Sports."

Yeah.

"I want to play, the Halos and the Call of Dutys, but it has to fit my lifestyle. Like I mean it has to have checkpoint saves or, even better, save anywhere. It shouldn't be 30 hours long. Six to eight hours is fine. It shouldn't be that the focus of the game is multiplayer because I don't have time to join a clan. I don't have time to perfect my skills. I want to be entertained."

Yes.

The reason that I coined the term hardcasual is that this is someone who, by the number of games they buy and even complete would be considered a core gamer, but their play patterns are increasingly casual because they can't say, "I'm going to get Halo and I'm going to play it ten hours straight and then jump online to perfect my skills."

Well [pause], I think there's a lot of truth to that. The idea of providing bite-sized elements of game experiences is something that I think a lot of people are trying to move toward. There's a lot of concern about having a game that has its first checkpoint or first save point appear one hour into play. I remember playing a game that had a cinematic run for 23 minutes before it allowed me to click through. You know the game I'm talking about. So I timed it, and I'm going, "What. I don't have time for this."

More and more I mean we're dealing with people who grew up playing games, who grew up having a bite-sized kind of experience, and had this moment when they were in high school and college where they could kind of splurge a little bit in terms of the amount of time they put into a game. But now that we all have responsibilities, we have day jobs and we have families, it's becoming even more important for us to still hold onto the types of experiences we enjoy. I think that's a really good point, that I may not necessarily want to have Wii Sports as the flavor of my bite-sized experience, but it's something that speaks to a growing interest.

I'm noticing a lot of the Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network games--there's still such a trend towards more of a retro style of play. There are a few games out there that are in development--maybe a couple of them have been released--that really do try to up the ante in terms of the complexity that the hardcore gamer is looking for, and yet still have the kind of bite-sized saving and total completion time elements to them. So I'm really glad to see that. It's one thing to revive Robotron-style controls and have one or two games like it, but I think we're having just a little too much follow the leader on that point right now.

But, yeah, people are being very creative out there and it's definitely worth following this a little bit. And that's a great platform for it as well, when you look at the independent landscape and the complete--well, not complete, but relative freedom that digital distribution affords from the creative standpoint. You do have an opportunity to follow your creative muse to a greater extent than you did before. Because the threshold for creation is so tiered now. Before, to create a AAA title you needed to have, you know, $10, $20, $30 million in order to get up there. And then once you're dealing with those kinds of sums, you have a responsibility to be cautious in terms of how you invest that money to get to that return. It's one of those kind of inflection points, or intersection points I should say, between the art and business of games that makes it fairly difficult to just go completely off the wall. But these new channels certainly provide developers with that opportunity, and individually they certainly speak to that a lot. David Jaffe is going to be on site the same day as your session. I think that would be fun for you to kind of check in with him on that front.

There are a number of people both on development side and the publishing side, like David and others who are basically saying "Hey, I'm going to give shorter session games a shot." But there's also an aspect of it that sort of feels like kind of like a land rush, and you sort of wonder how much money is really being made; how viable is this as a main venture for a company? There's part of me that sort of wonders, with both the short session game phenomenon on consoles and the rise of interest in indie games--is this a fad? Or is it something that's actually sustainable. And what does it take to sustain it?

Well, I think the answer lies in kind of following some of these stories and seeing where they ultimately end up. What I mean by that is that I don't think it's explicitly, "Leave this group to join that group," and that's the end of the story. There's so much that's going on to connect the groups and create new kinds of groups and the ability to travel back and forth with some degree of ease.

If you look at it in terms of an overall migration pattern that continues to go in kind of an ongoing cycle, you have people that maybe start out in the traditional core game industry and work their way up and create a great title. Then they decide that there's too much specialization in terms of roles; and they can't do all the things I used to do that they enjoyed doing, so they break out and do their own game in an indie fashion and have it as a downloadable on some system. So they go off and create their own company and they do that. But then that game gets picked up and someone from Playstation Network, for example, says, "Well, that's a pretty amazing game. We would like to fund continued development of that and create something that's a downloadable for our system as well." And the developer goes, "Oh, okay, that's a great idea," and then cycles back into the main system again to have more opportunities.

We see a lot of this in the Independent Games Festival where a lot of developers start out either as indies or as breakaways from the main industry. They enter their game in the show--excuse me, in the contest--and the games get some degree of publicity. They get seen by the judges; get seen by a lot of different people in the industry before the show; and then by the time GDC rolls around, one or two of them already have a publishing deal. So there's a great deal of re-circulating the pot and bringing in more people.

While I understand that there is an inherent interest in going for the next best thing--it's just like in general economic terms everyone goes, "Oh, look, it's time to invest in China, China's the future." You know, there's always like this other thing that everybody wants to get into. Like, "The web is really cool again. Let's all invest in the web." So I understand that that's definitely something that's happening, but in terms of what we're seeing on the ground, in terms of people submitting talks, in terms of some of the games that we're seeing behind the scenes, there's a lot of new choices that are open. It's a much more--there are many more places to live. It's not just A or B, which is really a wonderful thing for developers. And I'd like to track this a little bit more before I get pessimistic about it.

Next: Moledina offers his thoughts on the state of the PC gaming market; the philosophy behind this year's keynote addresses; and the Mass Effect controversy. Click here to read.