GDC! Idle Thumbs Conf Grenade 4: [transmission lost]

[Jake]

Microphone failure?

GDC! Idle Thumbs Conf Grenade 4:

"[Transmission Lost]"

The final Conf Grenade pops and fizzles its way into your ear, offering our closing thoughts on the Game Developers Conference. Join us for some last words before the GDC book slams closed for another 51 weeks.

Things Discussed: OnLive, Games for Windows Live, Alex Hutchinson, Army of Two: The 40th Day, Left 4 Dead, World of Warcraft, Jeff Kaplan, xc9(**##c_3

[Alex P]

You did it wrong.

[Jake]

fuck you fixed, you

[Alex P]

Still not quite.

[elmuerte]

I think the red color compression issue has to do with eyes being more receptive to red, therefore artifacts in red are more noticeable.

Also, I don't think OnLive will fix the network issue considering laggyness. The bandwidth issue can be fixed in the future, but latency can not be improved much.

[soupface]

I'm not sure whether this is the same video one of your listeners was asking about (the "shit no" one), but, yeah,

. (The YouTube embed didn't work.)

I wish that she had spoken more about making the player a part of things. She said "player-centred" but didn't really talk much about what the player does, only about making the player feel like they're part of the story, as if the story came first.

I think that, well-written or not, the story in Mirror's Edge just didn't work: the world wasn't well established and the plot felt separate from the game. The cutscenes (which looked totally different from the game in which I could do things, took place in locations and starred characters that I would never go to or interact with in the game) encouraged me to "just sit back watch" the story happen. (The bits that happened in-game, from my perspective, worked well enough, and those worked well enough to set up boss battles or extended chase sequences—things that I got to do—but there weren't many of those.)

Edited April 2, 2009 by soupface

[DanJW]

Chris, in the Wrath of the Lich King WoW expansion, a lot of the story is now shown by in-engine cut scenes, with characters showing up and interacting right in front of you, complete with voice acting. The 'phasing' technology means that this doesn't interfere with other people's game, as only you and you group can see it for the most part.

There's even some really nice quests/cutscenes where you get transformed into a major plot character and have to re-enact scenes from their past (mostly famous battles, but still).

Blizzard are definitely mixing it up and thinking about new things to do in an MMO - it's just that most non-players' perceptions are stuck on the 4-year-old 'vanilla' WoW experience.