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Technology Events BLOG Archive
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December
7th, 2003- First IGDA Meeting It's great to see the enthusiasm that people have for games. I don't usually see much excitement at McDATA for providing the last .0001% of reliability into our Fibre Channel products. People get into games and it's a great way to enjoy your time. The local IGDA chapter was a mixture of a wide variety of gamers. Some people were showing up to try and find game developer's jobs. Others ran PC gaming centers (www.gamescape.us), threw LAN parties (http://blown-apart.latest-info.com/), and developed games. The longest talks I had were with entrepreneurs who were building their own MORGs. These small start-ups were trying to cash in on the 2.5 million users who pay about $13/month to play with others online. These entrepreneurs had some great ideas, but if their games wouldn't be out for 3 years, who knows what the gamescape would be like by that time. They pointed out the problems that the incumbents like EverQuest, Ultima Online, and Sims Online. One participant showed me his requirements document that defined the character classes of players. I thought I was back in high school reading a D&D book. He had all of the character classes from assassin to bards. These guys were avid gamers and could discuss the most minute aspect of gameplay in great detail. The interesting aspect to me is that they are facing the same requirements management problems that McDATA faces. How many character classes? What are the advantages of each class? How do you incorporate those skills into the game? When you have so much power and control, it takes a long time to manage complex productions. One character there was named Jet. Jet flew into the room and started dominating the conversation immediately. Jet organizes many of the LAN parties in the Front Range from this website. I'll do a follow-on weblog after visiting his LAN party next weekend. I showed Jet my book and he was all into home theater PC (HTPCs). HTPC is another name for entertainment server. Of course Jet is big into gaming and has a large projection system in his living room. He said he projects it on to his wall that is about 30' across. He used a special paing to get good reflection. The most interesting thing he discussed was that he had some off-the-shelf products that projected 4 video streams onto his wall so that 4 people could play their games simultaneously without squishing the screen. If you've played multiplayer games on one screen, you know that your peripheral vision is diminished tremendously when two-player versions of a game are played from one console. I'm anxious to see his system in action. I'm going to try and visit his home and feature it as a home entertainment example soon.
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