Game pros jack into future worlds

AUSTIN, Texas--The Austin Game Conference (AGC) closed out its two-day run in that city's convention center last Friday evening, sending a record 1,400-plus satisfied attendees and more than 120 bleary-eyed speakers scurrying back to Europe, Asia, and all points in between. The conference was a chance for those in the game industry whose work focuses on massively multiplayer games to spend a concentrated 48 hours presenting, questioning, arguing, plotting, and reminiscing about the space that has spawned a diverse opus of work that includes Meridian 59, Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates. The diversity of those games was reflected in a richly spun lineup of speakers and topics spread over the event's two days.

The Setup
Unlike at E3 and GDC, the show floor at the AGC was anemic and only mildly compelling. There were few exhibitors, and even the coffee options did little to excite the senses (however, there was beer available in the centrally located lounge…something you won't find at the other game shows). But you don’t come to Austin for a chance to have your photo taken with the Tecmo girls. Overall, there isn't much in the way of style, per se, at AGC--Gordon Walton's shorts, Chris Sherman's tailored business suit, and Jack Emmert's cape aside. On the other hand, the substance of AGC was authentic, running deep in the veins of the world builders that were present. This was a serious crowd: involved, committed, and completely entranced by the options' computer-generated space.

An A-list of talent--including Richard Garriott, Marc Jacobs, Warren Spector, Raph Koster, Jon Van Canegham, Gordon Walton, and Rich Vogel (to skim only the top of a long list of actors in the MMOG space)--either attended or presented at the conference. A supporting cast of other significant doers and critics were also present: Brad King, Edward Castronova, Jessica Mulligan, Greg Costikyan, and Tom Hall are just a few of the many accomplished people from the industry who attended.

Complementing the speakers and top-tier talent were the attendees. The conference experienced a surge of growth this year, attracting almost double the number of attendees as last year's inaugural event. AGC director Chris Sherman often refers to his show as one that harks back to earlier GDCs, before attendee counts climbed from hundreds to thousands. The attendees, however, were too focused on their craft, and each other, to dwell on comparisons.

And there was plenty to distract. The more than 60 sessions (including the sponsored track and Women's Game Conference held in adjacent rooms) offered little time for lazing.

As a journalist/outsider, what was most apparent about this show--in spite of the crowded session schedule--was the ability to connect and reconnect with one's attendee-peers. Sure, some circles were drawn close, but they weren't drawn tight--attendees were just as likely to sit next to a Joe Schmo as they were a Warren Spector or a Carly Staehlin.

The Keynotes
The opening keynote, on reflection, was a rather poor introduction to the event. Microsoft's Glen Henson, director of platform strategy with the Xbox Group, started off the conference with a polished presentation that impressed as many as it turned off.

Picking up the "XNA to the rescue" theme that the company's GDC presentation was built around, Henson painted a picture of Microsoft as a savior of the development community and the Xbox itself as mana from heaven. "Think of Xbox as a honkin' motor you put on the back of your sailboat," Henson implored keynote attendees. Honkin' motors and promises of cross-platform play ("Absolutely we believe in it. We are open to it. But we want you to think about it in a different way," Henson said, prompting one audience member to utter the word "borg" under his breath.) entertained, inspired, and disgusted in almost equal proportions.

Still, Henson's message was rife with undeniable fact, and was a likely picture of what lies ahead for the multiplatform developer of mass multiplayer code. Noteworthy was Henson's statement that there would be at least 150 Xbox titles on retail shelves by the holidays, and maybe as many as 200. In addition, he looked deep into gaming's crystal ball and saw "tens of millions" of connected gamers. If it weren't Microsoft making those predictions, it would be easier to shrug them off as mere absurdity, but Henson doesn’t come to the space from left field. His predictions deserve scrutiny.

The day's other keynote presenter, Sony Computer Entertainment-RT director of online technology Glen Van Datta, gave a watered-down picture of where Sony stood in its support of MMO development and support. (SCE-RT is the internal group at Sony, born out of the 2000 Sony acquisition of RTime, and it is responsible for the network engine used in the PlayStation 2 platform.) His presentation profiled the current and future consumer of online games using demographic statistics, and he tried to engage attendees through more subtle advocacy that ended timidly with the admonition, "Don't miss your chance to evolve."

The following day's keynote was an about-face. Fashionably attired in black (slacks, T-shirt, jacket, and shoes), professor Edward Castronova of Indiana University laid out his academic agenda, which focused on the economies of synthetic and secondary worlds, the roots of his personal commitment to the sector, and his view of what will come from current and future development of secondary worlds.

He opened his presentation by saying that he intended to "go beyond the numbers" to "stoke things up." His attempts to light a fire under developers, gamers, and the general public--both informed and ignorant--were successful. But he lead with some boilerplate: "My contribution, if any, is to chase down the dollar value of virtual markets." He said he isn’t surprised by the value and the amount of money markets like eBay are responsible for generating via sales of virtual property, but "what's weird is that people outside this room didn’t grasp that.

Saying that eBay represents only a "fraction of the in-game market," Castronova then spun the discussion wider, focusing not just on the numbers, but also on the implications of those numbers.

Basically, Castronova presented a defense of virtual worlds, looking at the prose and philosophy of J.R.R. Tolkien as an entry point and instigator of virtual-world legitimacy. Castronova proposed that virtual worlds are precisely those "secondary worlds" that Tolkien envisioned. "It's more than a market," he said, commenting on the limitations of his own academic research.

He then went on to look at the most common uses of technology as a roundabout way of legitimizing using much of the same technology for creating games of fantasy and play. Looking at how technology can be abused in the wrong hands--modern terrorists, for example--and the probability of technology-infused terror "getting more ugly before it gets better," Castronova made his pleas that fantasy-world building is a far better use of technology.

Castronova's view is theoretical, but it was greeted with applause that just barely escaped a standing ovation (a couple of attendees did give it their all). And while he was no doubt preaching to the choir, he still left the morning's 400 or so people in attendance feeling pretty good about their chosen craft.

The Takeaway
Reducing the notes taken over the event's 48 hours into a session-by-session recap will hardly do the conference justice--the overlapping sessions and busy networking in between bells added the spice of frenzy to the event. But among the many truths and facts that were obvious in Austin was the clarity of purpose and experimentation that the current crop of world builders maintains--to say nothing of the utter confusion when it comes time to forecast what the upcoming generations of networked games will look like.

Castronova's mid-keynote comment, "I am a user" (identifying himself as more than a mere critic), clearly framed the event and its value to attendees. The Austin Game Conference is a breeding ground for those currently writing modern MMO manifestos that will inspire and guide designers to do more with the tools they have. Whether the "more" will be for better or worse is pretty much unknown. But the enthusiastic participants are being egged on, encouraged, and supported by both first- and current-generation minds.

When you see diverse minds like Meridian 59 designer Mike Sellers, Turbine's first CEO Dan Scherlis, and Square-Enix pres and COO Ichiro Otobe in conspiratorial conversation, you know something interesting is bound to spring from the dialogue. Add to that mix the corporate agendas of Nokia, Sony, Nextel, and Microsoft, as well as the traditionalist perspective of Electronic Arts, Mythic, NCsoft, and Turbine (and throw in some of those academics dressed in black), and the future of MMO gaming looks as complicated as it does bright.