Great conference. Was pretty nice to sit in a small room and hear the likes of Raph Koster, Richard Bartle, Brian “Psychochild” Green, Randy Farmer and Ian Bogost. Lots of interesting talks from the practical to the, “Woah you people are OUT there!” My own short bit about spontaneous collaborative play in shooter games was I think a bit different than some - far more about a game-game as opposed to Second Life.
One really great presentation was the “Pioneers” panel - Richard Bartle (co-inventor of the MUD), Pavel Curtis (creator of LambdaMOO), Brian Green (Meridian 59), and Randy Farmer (Lucasfilm’s Habitat). All of these guys had great little comments and insights into what it was like in the early days. One question they got that amused me was, “What was your business model?” For Bartle and Curtis, the answers were both, “We didn’t have one, we were just doing something cool!”
Randy Farmer also mentioned a whitepaper that he and Chip Morningstar wrote, titled The Lessons of Lucasfilm’s Habitat He specifically said that even though it is about an old C64 game played over dialup, it still has good information and is worth the read.
Raph Koster also did a great talk about the need for more smaller and approachable games. He used the analogy of opera versus banjoes - where opera is big, expensive, rare, and outside the realm of the average person to create. Banjoes on the otherhand are easy to get, and it’s not that hard to at least plunk out a tune that others will recognize. So… more banjoes!