GDC – Where Goes Gaming
The Game Developer Conference (GDC) is game geek heaven. Thousands of game programmers, designers, artists, and the suits who like to hang around them, mingle in a laid back atmosphere. It’s a little like the first day of college with some people actually going to class, while others are meeting and greeting old and new friends. The one thing that I love about it: you can rely on game developers to share. Unlike most technology events where paranoia seems to pervade, GDC is the one place where you can guarantee people are interested in talking about technology, their likes and dislikes, what’s cool, what’s not, and what could be better for someone bent on reporting on the event.
GDC is also a cyclical event. While it never fails to attract a large crowd of developers to its tutorials and conference agendas, in the last two or three years it has also had an exhibit hall packed with brand name hardware companies. This year, the show floor wasn’t as packed, perhaps reflecting, a little, the general mood of the tech industry, and perhaps, an indication that the game industry is in transition.
It’s a transition that began with the incredibly overblown PS2 and is nicely dovetailing into the incredibly overblown Xbox. More on the consoles later, but first, I have to proselytize about what caught my eye – them damn online gamelets. I am not going to call them games, to distinguish them from packaged titles with online multiplayer capability. I am talking about the kind of stuff that you can play on Shockwave.com, or Java games that all seem to just meld with your browsing. These games may be less interesting to you if you are on dial-up access, and the vast majority of you are so, I don’t discount you by any means, but frankly, if you look at some of the game demo downloads that are coming out these days, I think I saw one at about 120 MB, you have to have some patience, even on broadband.
So, let’s assume that download time is not an issue then, we have the horsepower in our computers, we have the graphics power, and we have enough RAM to play a decent Galaxian clone in Java, and relive a happier time when arcades still mattered, and you thought in terms of minutes per quarter play instead of CPU clock cycles. Okay, so my gaming fantasies are a bit retro, but you have to know that playing the Shockwave version of Centipede saved me the $800 it would have cost to get an arcade set-up on eBay.
GDC – Where Goes Gaming, Continued
I am going to look into Java games in some depth in the coming weeks. If for no other reason than the fact that I believe it’s not too far off in time for a lot of us to be bundling Java components and coming up with our own little Web games. I think it can happen. My own personal experiences with Javascrpts on a Web page lends me to believe that most of you reading this won’t have too many issues bundling Java code for some personal gratification.
So, that’s a revolution in gaming that’s waiting to happen. I don’t think a lot of hard-core game developers are going to be wild about it, but there’s some cool stuff out there already. And, the PC is going to be the best way to get at it. I mean, would any console vendor in their right mind, even Microsoft, want you to hook one of their boxes up to the Internet, and play free games on some site?
Which segues nicely to another interesting observation that came out of my trip to GDC – the PC still is the best gaming platform. Now, I say that having been a champion of the consoles in the past, and knowing that more than two thirds of the game business is console based, more in places like Japan. However, there is something undeniable about what is going in the console business, it’s like a 3D racer on PS1, where the buildings in the distance suddenly materialize as you get closer, who knows what the heck is going to happen?
PS1 was a cultural phenomenon, but even with 80 million units sold, owners weren’t exactly stocking up on game titles, if you average total titles sold against number of machines out there, I think PS1 had a ratio of somewhere between 3 and 4 titles per box, which means, think about it, that a lot of households with PS1 were not buying titles, but probably sticking with the first thing they got with the box. I guess there is enough people out there to swap titles with, and maybe that will hold true with PS2, but somehow I doubt that lightening will strike twice for Sony.
GDC – Where Goes Gaming, Continued
That doesn’t mean, I repeat, it doesn’t mean that Sony won’t have a hit in PS2. It just means that it won’t meet the excess expectations of its own hype. Does that mean that Xbox will rule? Well, in the next session I have some arguments for why Xbox’s oft touted Nvidia graphics may not be as good for Nvidia as like to think and that the result may be an embarrassing face-off between PC and Xbox graphics very shortly after the box launches. More in the next section. Xbox has problems of its own to contend with – Bill Gates is going to announce that Xbox will launch simultaneously in Japan and America, or as close as possible, at next week’s Tokyo Game Show, but Japanese game developers ain’t taking the bait. It appears that Microsoft is in the unenviable position of buying respect for its platform in Japan. The US is a different situation. Microsoft’s marketing muscle and homegrown product will probably help to give Microsoft a strong US position, but I think that Xbox is one more example of hype over reality.
Here’s the key point – PS2 versus Xbox. No contest. Even. Draw. From a quality point of view. On a global platform Sony is going to kick Microsoft around. In the US, Microsoft will be able to hold its own. Some game developers are going to like the attention they’ll get, and the money. At the end of the day, the coolest stuff is still going to be on the PC because, it is a moving target that is always going up. Nvidia or no Nvidia, Xbox is going to be standing still from a technology point of view, and who wants that for their hard-core audience? And, if you think the graphics market is dead take it from me, fourteen months ago I was getting hate mail from 3dfx enthusiasts, and today, well, you know the story.
Finally, one other thing about console gaming – don’t discount Nintendo. If you don’t discount Nintendo then, be prepared for ATI to have a resurgence. I was interested to see that ATI bought the FGL group from SonicBLUE, the group doing the high-end Fire GL boards, and that shows that ATI is making some moves into the high-end, or at least plans to. That’s good news because, ATI needs to start getting ahead on the technology battlefield. I think the company is way underrated, but I also think it suffers from a little too much insecurity, and parochialism. If the Game Cube is as good as I heard some developers say, it will hold more than its own with Xbox. At a price of about $150 it is also going to be a much more appealing buy in a tight economy. So, guess what some parents are going to prefer to buy their kids.
On top of that, I love the Game Boy Advance. It brings out the kid in anyone, and any Game Boy is better than booting up a laptop on long flights, child or adult. Let’s be honest, I bought an N64 just to play Super Mario 64, an indulgence I admit, but I was not alone. I don’t think that the console situation is going to dramatically alter as a result of Microsoft’s entry; you’ll buy a platform for the titles. You won’t let go of PC gaming. Developers are not going to let go of PC gaming. Online games, things like Java games, are going to create some new impetus on the PC. Even if Microsoft doesn’t have the same strict rules for its Xbox developers as Sony and Nintendo impose, the PC, for all its frustrations, is going to remain the top of the game.
Does Nvidia Really Need Microsoft’s Xbox?
Now, let me put forward a hypothesis, which in strictest terms it won’t be, and furthermore, let me refuse to take any arguments. Nvidia would be better off if Microsoft’s Xbox wasn’t a hit? Bear in mind, Microsoft gave Nvidia $200 million, a down payment of sorts, which kind of eased the blow of putting together the Xbox components for Nvidia. In other words, Nvidia’s mainstay, the PC business, didn’t have to take any hits.
Where do I come up with this crap? Okay, bear with the bullet points:
- The average cost of a console has gone down from $250 in 1996 to about $170 today. Consoles go down in prices, but there is no upgrade, or aftermarket for graphics. There is no three year cycle at work here; it’s five years, maybe six or seven.
- $170 is a historical average. If you look at PS1 now, been around since 1994, the cost is $99. In addition, costs drop very rapidly when console vendors have to move boxes because, people ain’t buying, there are other consoles coming out, and so on.
- Let’s assume a retail price of $170 for a console. Let’s give the retailer $40-50 of that, which is fair. That leaves us with, for the worst case, $120 for the cost of the console. So, now we have the cost of the controller, the drive, the hard disk, the Ethernet link, audio, and graphics, and of course, memory.
The best case scenario is that Nvidia gets $25 a graphics chip which is about what you’d expect them to get for mid-life 3D chips in the add-in board space. Okay, it might be easy money. They have, in effect, a Tier One OEM design win, and it’s going to be non-negotiable for five or six years. Sort of like having Compaq or Dell beholden to you. Maybe they’ll make some money on the audio as well.
But, what are we missing here? Is an Nvidia chipset on Xbox going to make a gamer happier than the next generation stuff they put into PCs? I don’t think so. If I was a gamer, and I was into Nvidia, I’d be a little bit annoyed if the Xbox graphics was as good as it got for another couple of years, knowing that it was just a stall.
No. The Nvidia chip on the PC is still going to be the hot ticket item. It better be. Nvidia is going to make a lot more money there, and with a new product every six months, can do an Intel and keep it graphics chip values high. You know the kind of stuff, the Intel of graphics, or some marketing speak like that.
Does Nvidia Really Need Microsoft’s Xbox? Continued
The reason I bring this up is because, everything that is supposed to be great about Xbox revolves around arguments that indirectly pretty much say, “Hey, this is like the PC, and it has that really cool PC graphics technology from Nvidia.”
That’s a lot of frontlines for one company to go into battle on. PCs, consoles, workstations, embedded, and even audio. Think back to how Nvidia started, and Diamond Multimedia’s Edge 3D. The NV1 was a multimedia chip. Nvidia has licensed Sensaura‘s technology for PC audio, and we know they are going to get into the sound card business at some point (it hasn’t done Creative Labs any harm, and no one has managed to knock them off the perch, no matter how hard they try).
Has Nvidia peaked? I don’t know for sure, but they are reaching, horrid term, an inflection point in their business. If they get through it with no resistance from the competition, what’s left, I don’t like what that means for the graphics industry. 3D graphics isn’t done. Far from it. No one should make that mistake, and the future of 3D isn’t served if only one company holds the reins. Okay, so I’m a contrarian. Like my opinion is going to stop any of you from buying a GeForce 3. Why the heck should it? We’re still a year away from seeing any real challenge to Nvidia in the PC arena, although I suspect that the console business is going to anti-climax before the year is out.
Audio – There Is A Game Budget For It Now
One area that I’ve just started to get into is the field of audio. From what I could gather, and this is anecdotal at best, sound budgets in games are going up. To put that into perspective, sound has never been a big expense item in the game industry, and in some cases, it’s almost an afterthought. Now, we have digital audio, digital music, and a public, heavily peppered with gamers, who like what they hear. Game publishers see audio as a possible revenue stream – sell the game, offer downloads of music files from said game, sell the soundtrack. All so Hollywood.
Nothing new, there. Game companies are always trying to experiment with merchandising from their games. The result of all this is that everyone is now very much into “realistic” audio. Positional audio, 3D sound, that kind of stuff. Of course, realistic audio is not much fun. Just shut up for a second and listen to your own environment. Stand in the middle of a busy street, if you must. There’s realistic audio for you.
Not Much Fun, eh?
What “realistic” audio means in games is cinematic audio. You know, that whole experience you get in the movie theater when the seats shake, and you realize that your ears are bleeding. At the end of the day, if you have two speakers positional audio, 3D sound, whatever you want to call it, is pretty useless. Now, switch to multichannel output and a Dolby Surround Sound system, which isn’t as cheap as you’d like but it isn’t that expensive either, well, you are in for a treat.
I guess if you have a pair of headphones, good quality headphones, 3D sound on a stereo system might just work for you. Sounds coming from the back of your head, in front of your head. I believe that sounds coming from above your head are very difficult to emulate. And emulation may be the wrong word here. 3D audio is very much dependent on recreating the sensation of having a sound reaching both your ears from a certain distance and angle. So, let’s say, you have someone coming at you from your right side. They are about three feet away. Well, there is the distance to your right ear, and then the distance of the sound to your left ear to consider, as well as the miniscule delay that occurs inside your head as these two sounds mix. Some clever piece of software, and hardware tries to trick your ears into thinking that they are receiving this sound from a certain distance, and the output is adjusted for each speaker appropriately.
I know, I know, I have to get more depth on this, and I will do later, but I just want to a couple of quick points here.
Now, what the clever piece of software and hardware does is make a call based on some average metric of the size of your head, and your ears. Even when the software allows you to adjust the audio for your particular physiognomy, it is still sort of looking for a best fit match. It’s not precise, and frankly, unless you have extremely well-trained ears, I can’t see how you can tell the difference. I guess that’s what I have to find out.
Switch to a Surround Sounds system, Dolby 5.1, and you pretty much idiot proof the process because you have speakers back and front of you.
Not Much Fun, eh? Continued
So, I am not sold on 3D sound yet, and not because I don’t think it is a good thing, but because we have a little ways to go before the game industry gets it right, and before we figure out how to make it work in the worst case scenario. I can’t see it being a big issue on first person shooters. You may think otherwise, but I certainly think that audio needs to be done properly, or not at all. It really doesn’t make sense in the digital world to have crappy speakers, or a system that promises 3D sound, but you can’t tell either way.
Then again, it’s not that easy to just hook up a bunch of speakers, ideally positioned around your desk, or wherever you have your computer. Which leads me to believe that we, here at Tom’s, have to spend some time looking at the high-end, power audio components, and more robust, permanent solutions for anyone who really wants great audio. The days of just sticking a sound card in your system, and a cheap pair of speakers, need to be banished. And I am sure that it can be done without breaking into your retirement account, or mugging the neighbors.
I am just fascinated by the amount of effort that is going into audio and yet, it seems to me that the output is kind of taken for granted. The other thing is that the position of sound in a game is really not as important to me as the emotional impact. So, cinematic themes, and crescendos are great, but hearing a Doppler effect on a fast track is just okay. Heck, I need some decent input controllers. A joystick with a tight feel, and force feedback that doesn’t make you feel dirty for holding on.
Xbox is using Sensaura’s 3D positional audio, which is good stuff, and in light of Sensaura having licensed its stuff to Nvidia it kind of makes sense with Nvidia providing the Xbox’s audio component. On the Sensaura site you can find some nice technical backgrounders on positional audio technology. Some of it gets a little geeky, but it’s a nice start. We’ll have more coming.
RealArcade – Game Site On Wheels
Real Networks announced RealArcade, and was demonstrating it to the developer community at GDC. It’s a nice little package. You download a 5 MB application, which basically organizes and delivers demos, and full-blown titles to you. At the back end it uses Gamespy to match you with other players in a multiplayer time, and it has links to reviews, chat rooms, forums, and other information for a title.
Real hopes to mine its 170 million users. Now, I don’t know if Real actually has 170 million users, or it has that many downloads. Frankly, if I can avoid it, I avoid the Real Player for video on the Web. If there is a QuickTime file, I’m in, otherwise, there is nothing on this Web television. Lousy quality, and erratic delivery, and I am on cable.
Nevertheless, Real does have the ability to deliver content across a variety of bandwidths, and it wants developers to take advantage of a few things that RealArcade gives them:
- Big distribution. We have all had to download a Real Player at some point, and an email with our name is out there. Real has reach.
- Compression technology. Real can deliver downloads, and do it even if the connection breaks, the connection slows down, and all the other problems that you get with everything from dial up to the corporate LAN. That’s compelling, and Real claims that they offer better compression of files so, those big game demos don’t have to take so much time to download.
- Real has a back-end commerce engine that can take an order for a title and deliver it online to the credit card happy masses. Saves developers having to worry about billing and all that other messy stuff.
Just the little look that I got at the interface, and the run through, on first impressions, it looks like a no-brainer. It’s Real, and they do have a big installed base, whatever it really is. They can deliver this stuff, and charge for it, and they’ve put together an easier navigation package then a host of game sites and download sites. For the casual gamer, it’s better than a trek through the typical game site with the innuendo, the gossip, the sycophancy on Alphas and Betas, and the backlash on release titles, and the mess of information that hits you.
RealArcade – Game Site On Wheels, Continued
RealArcade is:
- Here are all the games we have on file
- Download the demo
- Check out reviews. Or chat with other users
- Sign up and purchase the title
- Get connected to others
It’s like Amazon in a Window, but with games. I can see the logic behind it. I can also see that it ain’t going to make a lot of hard-core gamers happy, and casual gamers, like me, aren’t worth the marketing effort, please. If I am going to buy something, I’d rather I got the information from one the cool, messy game sites, and not Real. Also, if I can avoid buying a title, and not having someone push it down my throat, I am more than happy. As for hard-core gamers, they are not that desperate.
RealArcade would make a great tool for sales of any digital media content. I am not convinced about games, but with limited distribution channels, Real may just pull it off because, there are so few alternatives.
Okay so let me put down some full disclosure here. I like watching movie previews on the Web. It’s about the closest I come to a movie theater these days. There are quite a few places to find trailers, and most of them, happily, are in QuickTime format. Which means I get pretty good quality. Whenever I have had to use Real or, heaven forbid, Windows Media Player, I get stuck with whole streaming thing and it just looks awful, and it rarely works smoothly, and so on. So, I am a little down on Real. I have no idea how they make money, but thank goodness for MPEG4. I think most of you are going to do a better job at getting video on the Web than the stuff that I see. So, there is hope for streaming video, and QuickTime is still the quality leader, and I shouldn’t be down on Real, but there you have it.
Anyhow, you can catch more of RealArcade at this link, for yourselves.
