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On Friday March 12 legendary game designer Sid Meier will give his first-ever keynote presentation at the 2010 Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Fransisco. The talk is provocatively titled "The Psychology of Game Design (Everything You Know Is Wrong)." A synopsis of the topic:
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When designing a game, particularly one based on real-world or historical topics, it might seem that hard facts, physical principles, painstaking research, and mathematical formulas would provide the foundation for a successful game. Wrong. These and many other seemingly useful tools will have to take a back seat to the real driving force in game design: the psychology of the player. Gameplay is a psychological experience: it’s all in your head. The vagaries of human psychology define your game more than the laws of physics or algebra. Egomania, Paranoia, Delusion - these are tools to be wielded with precision and care. For the player, perception is reality and the center of the universe is right here. As we follow this reasoning to its logical conclusion we discover a number of amazing things, among them: everyone is above average, 2/1 is not equal to 20/10, and the player is his/her own worst enemy. Using actual examples from Civilization Revolution, Pirates!, and other games we’ll look at how including player psychology as a fundamental part of game design can lead us to some strangely counterintuitive places and save us millions of dollars in time and resources. Along the way we’ll learn why AI’s should not be too smart, how nuclear weapons are like knocking over a chess board, and why gamers can’t be trusted.
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GDC is the premiere event of the year for video game developers, where everyone who is anyone in the games industry gathers to share their knowledge and experiences. GDC attendees awarded Meier a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. If anyone wants to attend the conference (and has money to burn), GDC 2010 is held March 9-13 at the Moscone Center in San Fransisco, pass options can be found here (early bird registration ends February 4th).
Soren Johnson's reaction to the news:
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It's about time Sid gave a GDC keynote. I'll be in the front row.
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Two other Firaxis developers have also been confirmed to participate in sessions at this year's DGC: the company's Art Director Seth Spaulding will take part in a roundtable discussion on the challenges of art direction in games, with topics including pre-production resources, scheduling demons, tools, reviews, production pipelines and studio development. Additionally, Greg Foertsch will take part in a panel discussion during the IDGA Education Summit, on the relationship between the games industry and academia. Foertsch, lead Artist on Sid Meier's Railroads! and an as-yet unannounced Firaxis title, is the driving force behind Firaxis's internship program.
You can find an overview of all announced sessions to date on the official GDC website. We will of course try to report as much info as we can on all Civ-related talks come March. If anyone has any eye-witness reports to share, please contact WPC staff through PM in the forums or email info [at] weplayciv [dot] com.
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That said, I'm obviously not a fan of the policy either. I learned so much about game design from the various recordings that used to be available for free, but at $8 a session they're putting up a pretty steep barrier of entry even for an amateur designer like myself (I'd be more than willing to pay a few bucks for some of that content, but at $8/session I'd have to be really sure I'd be getting my money's worth). But GDC has in recent years become too much of a mainstream event, so I understand it's necessary.
Don't worry though, high-profile speakers like Sid still get plenty of media coverage, so we'll almost certainly get very detailed summaries of his keynote -- just not in multi-media form.