Blog Archive

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

GDC 2008 Diary Afternoon Day4 (Thursday)

On my way to lunch I ran in to Olivier Lejade who agreed with me on the lameness of the Future of MMO panel, but who said that Chris Hecker's speech on Structure vs Style had been fantastic. I missed out on that - Michael Mateas had also recommended Hecker's speech. That will be the first one I check out when all the slides are put online next week.

For lunch i was in for a historic moment. Michael Mateas and Mike Sellers are on my top-two list of the most intelligent persons in the world who not only in thought focus on the most interesting topics in there world but also hands on build things that will be crucial for the future of mediated experiences. There you have it, and I'm not exaggerating.
Mike Sellers and Michael Mateas

As i was about to scoot off to the next session on my list i gave Elina Ollila a call to see how she was doing with her flue. Not too well, so i went to buy some thai food for her. She had been too sick to deliver her keynote for the mobile track on Tuesday and had missed out on the whole conference. That should not be allowed to happen!
Elina with flue
Here Elina is showing the video parts of her presentations that wouldn't port over to my computer. Everything i know about user testing i have learned from her in some way or another, and i continue to learn from her work. She my guru!

Next I went to the AI roundtable
Artificial Intelligence in Computer Games (Day2)
Neil Kirby and Steve Rabin
which was so popular it had flowed over to a second room.
Topics that were thouched upon:
  • gesture recognition
  • NPL
  • reasoning under uncertainty
  • reputation systems
  • middleware (if any uses them)
  • LOD
  • Emotion
  • Multiagent coop such as squad behavior (Fear was mentioned)
  • game theory economics
  • storytelling <---> simulation

ai roundtable

Dinner gave me the chance to catch up properly with Sam Lewis who I haven't met since ACE06 in Hollywood.
sam lewis
Sam was kind enough to accompany me to the speaker's party - i hate entering parties alone - those few first minutes of disorientation you know.
Turned out to be another night of great conversations and good laughs. And we got balloons!
me and bob has balloons