|
|
|
Here is what happened on Wednesday the 16th. The first day of this years E3.
Click here to read today's wonderful writeup.
To see a different day select it here:
Or select a different section to move to.
Today was a workshop only day. They were still setting up the expo, but the e-mail stations and the merchandise site were up and running. It's kind of cool to watch some of the setup, even though all I could see was the stuff right up front. Some of the videos being tested showed some cool games. Interplay was showing off videos of the PS2 games Run Like Hell and Baldur's Gate. mmmm nice looking videos.. And it looked like Sony was showing off the new version of SSX, but I could be wrong about that one. Oh yea, it looks like THQ is making a Scooby Doo. Scooby-doobie-doooooo. :) I'll see tomorrow what's up with that.
So what did I do today? I went to 2 workshops, got a bunch of freebies and had a free lunch. Let me mention the lunch first. Those of us who bought a Superpass had the chance to take part in a round-table lunch. They selected about 90 of us to have lunch with some of the speakers from the Workshops and Conferences. Each of the select speakers would have lunch with 5 of us. I was selected, woohoo, and I was going to have lunch with Rob Fermier, Lead Programmer at Ensemble Studios. But he never showed up. :( BUT.. Warren Spector (you do know who he is don't you?) showed up for lunch and we talked him into joining our group. So instead of having lunch with Rob Fermier I had lunch with Warren Spector. Not bad, huh?
OK, now for the Workshops. The first one ran from 9am till Noon. This one covered Design Docs. I was interested in this partly because I was interested in the differences between what they do and what I do, and the other reason is because I was interested in the speakers. The speakers were Warren Spector, James Ohlen (BioWare), Peter Molyneux, Kent Quirk (CogniToy) and Demis Hassabis (Elixer Studios).
So what interesting tidbits did I learn. Well, James Ohlen is the lead designer of the StarWars RPG BioWare is working on. Warren Spector showed us the design docs for DeusEx 2 and Thief 3. WOOHOOO :) Peter Molyneux really, really hates documentation. Oh yea, he will be putting up the design docs for Black & White on the www.bwgame.com when he gets back to the UK in a week or two.
The second Workshop ran from 2 till 5pm. This workshop was about the Future of Games and Gamers. The speakers were Paul Provenzano, Marten Davies, Stacy Spiegel, Kirsty Doig, Michelle Wojtyna and Glenn Baptiste. The reason I choose this one is because I was interested in learning what the industry thinks about what gamers will want.
Any interesting tidbits from this one? Oh yea.. They covered a bunch of "numbers" and some were rather interesting. The average age of a gamer is 28. 43% of gamers are women. 23% of all games sold are strategy and RPGs, 17% are action games and 15% are Sports. How about this one.. the top 5 selling console games in 2000 were (in order) Pokemon Silver, Pokemon Gold, Pokemon Stadium, Pokemon Yellow and Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. hmm.. go figure. Also, industry "numbers" people don't think BB will be big for a few years. They are saying that 1/3 of households will be online using BB by 2004 and not many will be gamers. Personally I disagree with the second part of that since I think it will be the gamers who make the big push of BB over the next few years. One thing I did agree with was that the current Internet infrastructure can't handle "everyone" using the bandwidth of BB.
Well, that's it for today. I'll be back tomorrow with what I thought of the keynotes and some of the expo. Also, I will be attending a conference tomorrow. A special interview with Sid Meier. Now that should be interesting. Bye for now.