{"id":548344,"date":"2006-03-24T13:52:38","date_gmt":"2006-03-24T13:52:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/548344-industry-brain-dead-computer-game-designer.html"},"modified":"2006-03-24T13:52:38","modified_gmt":"2006-03-24T13:52:38","slug":"industry-brain-dead-computer-game-designer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/548344-industry-brain-dead-computer-game-designer.html","title":{"rendered":"Industry ‘brain dead’: computer game designer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Crawford, whose experience creating electronic games dated back to when he went to work for Atari in 1979, sounded a death knell for the industry during a gripe session at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose. <\/font><\/p>\n

"Nothing better can be done about the game industry, because it is dead," Crawford groused. "It is a body that has a beating heart, but is essentially brain dead." Interactive story telling was the future, Crawford said. <\/font><\/p>\n

"Games are about things, while story telling is about people," the game designer and author told an audience of 500 people during a session titled "Burn baby burn – Game developers rant." <\/font><\/p>\n

Many in the audience of game designers and enthusiasts challenged Crawford, while others agreed and suggested ways the industry might be resurrected. <\/font><\/p>\n

"People are things," someone shouted <\/font><\/p>\n

Crawford was backed by rants from five other game developers who, in a panel discussion, pointed out why the game industry seemed lifeless. <\/font><\/p>\n

Seamus Blackley, a game developer with Creative Artist Agency, contended a lack of business sense by game developers was killing creativity because it left them relying on corporate publishers to market their ideas. <\/font><\/p>\n

"We have great ideas," Blackley said. "Whats happening is that we don’t make a good business around the ideas. Think about money and consider how the audience is going t purchase independent games." The game industry should be more like the movie industry where daring independent films such as "Brokeback Mountain" have a chance of being made, Blackley said. <\/font><\/p>\n

Other panellists blamed a lack of innovation for the dying game industry. Jonathan Blow, an independent game designer, argued that most new games are just old games but with different graphics. <\/font><\/p>\n

Games also need to capture people emotionally, Blow said <\/font><\/p>\n

"We need to make games that people care about so much that they cant not play them," Blow said. "We need to put feelings in games." The ranting session, a tradition at the annual conference, was intended as a chance for game developers to address problems of the industry. <\/font><\/p>\n

"No more ranting," chimed Robin Hunicke, who helped design the popular Sims series of games for Electronic Arts. "Lets go out there and do stuff." <\/font><\/p>\n

Inet-Bridge<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The electronic game industry is dead, veteran computer software designers lamented in the heart of Silicon Valley yesterday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-548344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548344"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}