It's the first day of the AGC, and it's a fun ride so far. I'm here in basically multiple capacities: Voice Actor looking for new gigs; Visa employee looking at where the business oportunities are; and as a potential co-producer of an upcoming video game related TV pilot. Oh, and I'm here as a gamer. (What serious gamer doesn't want to be in the presence of gaming greatness like Garriot, Long, and Walters?)
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Highlights
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* Voice Acting:
> It was a decent day on the voice acting front. Special thanks to Julene & Eric (High Voltage Software; though your business cards make me feel dirty), Tom (Midway Games), and Josh, Mike, & Adam (The Animation Farm) for taking the time to chat and saying they'll get my voice demos to the right people.
I'll hold off saying thanks to the unnamed 3 Activision employees who wouldn't take my demo, didn't give me there cards, but took mine and said they'd "try to find the right people to get it to." Riiight. We'll see, Activision ... We'll see ...
* Best Moment:
> Walking up to High Voltage Software and having Eric Nofsinger look at me and say, "Hey, you emailed us. And said you were coming. And you came." (Pictorial Emails rock.)
* Funniest Moment:
> During the amazing Korea-based WeMade CGI video demo, one conference attendee told one of the WeMade crew, "That video totally kicks ass!" to which the response was, "No! It's good! It's good!"
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Keynote & Session Highlights
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Here's a blow-by-blow of the sessions (with commentary :-) .
1) Keynote: "Massively Multiplayer Console Is Coming"
* Presenters: Scott Henson (Director, Platform Strategy, Microsoft Xbox) & Glen Van Datta (Director of Online Technology, Sony Computer Entertainment).
* This keynote was a mixed bag. Henson's presentation was polished, focused, and high-energy. Van Datta's was more folksy, a bit rambly, mostly reiterated slide text, and his valiant attempts at Microsoft/Sony rivalry-related humor fell flat with the audience.
* Some interesting comparative figures came out of the keynote:
> 4 million Sony network adapters & 350,000 hard drives sold vs. 15.5 million broadband-ready XBoxes with built-in hard drives. Microsoft's gamble 5 years ago to go broadband-only looks like it's ready to explode (in a good way).
> Sony is choosing to eschew the casual gamers to drive revenue from there hard-core gamers (what Sony calls the "Ultracore"). Microsoft, on the other hand, is going after both markets. There first foray into the casual market was arguably the creation of the Family Platinum Hits line. There next volley will be the fall launch of XBox Live Arcade.
2) "Monetizing the Masses: What are online players willing to pay for?"
* Presenter: Adeo Ressi (CEO Game Trust)
* This was an interesting session, largely because Ressi was willing to share a bunch of his company's hard-won research data -- from purchasing trends to demographics.
* GameTrust has an interesting model. Companies sign up with GameTrust, and revenues and expenses are distributed across all signed companies. Though it's currently hot in the casual gamer market, GameTrust is pretty much content/genre/platform agnostic.
* The presentation was engaging in no small part to Ressi's animated self-confidence -- you get the impression pretty quickly that he's one sharp guy ...
3) "Purchasing Products From Within Console Games"
* Presenter: Steven Wagner (Principal Engineer Sony Computer Entertainment America)
* This topic was around abstract implementations of money vs. token implementations, largely in the Sony view of the console world. Basically, SCEA is providing the infrastructure to do content management, billing, catalog management, etc.
* The talk was semi-engaging, but was probably hampered by Wagner wanting to steer well clear of exposing trade secrets.
4) Evolution of Business Models
* Speakers: Joe Keene (Perpetualent), David Bowman (Artifact Entertainment), Eugene Evans (Infinite Ventures, Inc.), Alexander Macris (CEO, Themis Group, Inc.), Joshua Hong (K2 Network).
* This session was geared toward summarizing how distribution and revenue models have changed drastically in the last 24 months, and where they're going in the next 24.
* Hong made analogies to the shrinking retail culture in Japan, and the migration of the music industry to download vs shelf space. Getting away from the retail model gets away from the retail piece of the pie, and retailers' demand for a set turnover per linear foot of shelf space, per current life of the product in question.
* The panel leaned toward the possibility that initial released games will drop in SKU MSRP, and revenue will come from expansions, downloadable additions, etc.
* Audience Q&A flagged a recurring theme in Day 1: Making any changes to almost any part of MMOs could be damaging to the overall genre.
* Hong said micropayments are critical to success of AP MMOs -- accounting in some instances to 70% of revenue in Korea. These transactions are largely made over mobile handsets.
5) After Party at The Copper Tank
* I forgot how much I hate going to these things alone. Ah well, I still go to touch base briefly with Critical Mass Interactive, The Animation Farm, a cool rocker, a nice kid from Jersey, and did the guy-head-bob-"hey" thing more times than I care to admit.
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