GDC Vault with free content

I just want to mention that a lot of talks on GDC Vault are now free to access. Most of my slides are available and some videos too, simply check out

GDC Vault talks by Teut Weidemann

GDC 2014

I am off to GDC 2014 in San Francisco tomorrow. Besides being the largest developer conference of the world with over 20.000 attendees the 2014 will be important simply because we are in transition years (see previous post).

A lot of talks will focus on the new generation of consoles, others on the other cool stuff happening like indie, f2p, digital etc.

I also expect a major announcement from Amazon, you read it here first.

(Edit::told you so: http://gizmodo.com/amazon-fire-tv-hands-on-the-fastest-smart-tv-youve-ev-1556986083/@jschreier)

I might blog the major findings during my stay - that depends on my internet, jet lag and hang overs.

Preview of my GDC Next talk

by Gameindustry.biz:

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-11-01-mobile-evolution-will-make-todays-market-irrelevant

Have fun reading!

Gamasutra Interview

For your reading pleasure my interview about my upcoming talk at GDC Next:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/200393/Whats_Next_Move_to_mobile_or_fall_behind.php

The gaming industry and you

I am kinda famous in Germany, but not because I shipped top 10 hits, simply because I do this job since a long time and shipped 100+ games, some of them I won't even tell - those are my skeletons in the closet .

So therefore I got a lot of "friends" on Facebook who either read or ignore whatever troll post I publish. I know who my close friends in the industry are, and I also know that many don't like me simply because I polarize a lot. This is basically part of my self promotion: instead objectively publishing analyses about theories I do talks which are a little bit more - lets say - demagogue.

Why? Simply because it gets people to think than to get bored about numbers and careful statements. That's all I want.

Recently I went into fights with 2 industry colleges on Facebook on 2 different occasions. On one case he simply attacked the f2p business model aggressively in a way which I don't even know from him.

The other case I simply posted that the writers of magazines & blogs should at some point return the favor when they find newsworthy things on my wall (which happens more than I thought it was). One of them attacked that post in a way which I never have seen him - emotionally, aggressively - even damaging to both of us.

On Gamescom I met them both. The journalist surprised me as we simply talked about other hobbies and we both realized that we are pretty much nerds alike. He was building tank models like I did - something which I never thought of him doing. This somehow gave us common ground and a better understanding of each other.

The other one was totally changed and we talked about one of his upcoming titles which gets excellent previews so far and he simply said "email me, I send you one". Maybe a peace gift, but I see it simply as "maybe we both went too far - lets get over with it".

All I want to say is "I am sorry" - next time we should simply clarify things one on one instead publicly fighting about the small things. There are more important things than to fight each other.

Thanks to you two, you know who you are.

My GDC Europe 2013 talk is online

GDC 2013 vault opened today and my talk "Getting past pay to win" is among the free content. Check it out here:

http://www.gdcvault.com/free/gdc-europe-13 for a list of all talks

and

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1019236/Getting-Past-Pay-to

for mine. Enjoy!

Gamescom is behind us

Gamescom is exciting for me as I meet all industry friends easily within one location. I rarely go to that show to check out new games as websites do a much better job giving me all information I need (check out HD Titanfall trailers, or Watchdogs, even better, awesome!)

But some players need to wait for hours to peek at a new game for 5 minutes. Wtf. People. Why does Gamescom use that system to filter people (I know age rating). There were 340.000 visitors this year. Awesome record!

But less than 5000 can be jiggled through your lanes waiting for the games presentation, assuming you can get 50 people per 30 minute presentation all day long.

That is a huge price you pay for your booth to get only a fraction of the audience. 1.7%. One point seven! It is time to rethink the game show concept I believe.

Source: http://www.gamezone.de

The Tigers of Asia

When I started in online games 1997 I realized this is going to be big. I had no idea how big, but I felt it as I was already hooked to online gaming.

When I experienced free to play the first time and learned it came from Asia I knew they were ahead of us. Luckily the Asian developers and publishers didn't know how to tackle our gamers at that time. There seemed to be a vast difference in play style and game style. I even made a talk about it on KGC, the Korean Game Developer Conference.

Some years later the Asian Tigers became giants, so large in fact that they own major shares in western gaming giants. The revenue they pull in just from their local market is so high that they can play money games in the west - exactly when we are shaken up by the console transition year.

I said years ago we should be prepared for the time when Asia understands our gaming market. Are we prepared? I doubt it. Maybe we should prepare for a time where most large and creative companies are owned by Asian online companies.

GC Day one

GDC last day wednesday is problematic as Gamescom opens its doors as well. So some talks do not attract enough developers but the organizers made sure some highlights were scheduled on that day to fill the rooms.

So I walked GC as this was the only day I had time and I was shocked. A lot of room was left empty, some halls had wide highways free - so large was the distance between the booths. So what happened? Besides Nintendo & Microsoft not attending or having booths I guess the transition years shows its toll. The publishers have less revenue from the old console generation and the new one isn't here yet.
GC mirrors this. The show was clearly either online games or games with heavy community relations like League of Legends, World of Warcraft or Diablo.

On wednesday Ubisoft also had its press conference and finally anounced the projects I had the honor to work on with some of the best teams in Ubisoft Blue Byte in the free to play business. So here they are:

Anno Online - register for closed beta
Heroes of Might & Magic Online - register here for closed beta

So with these:
Silent Hunter Online
The Settlers Online

we will have 4 f2p browser games online
4 projects in 2 years. Growth  from 50 to 200 people. What can I say? Online games change the world.

GDC Day two

Day two had less exciting talks for me personally but the feedback from people I talked to showed that some really good speakers were around.

My goal was to network on that day and I met mostly old friends of the industry and some new ones. Rarely* did I encounter someone who was not working on a f2p title, be it browser, mobile or client. If developers jump ship from the "old retail" when will the world stop buying them?
*Regional differences apply.

The evening was plastered with parties and I followed the latest trend of GDC this year: party skipping. So I went home, played a bit Eve Online (50 kills, yes baby!) and watched Fringe with my wife.

GDC Europe - day one

So I walked into sessions which I thought are interesting. You never know: many sessions end up in rants how cool the speaker or his company are.

So I was surprised to end up in a talk - the first one by Jared Psigoda (Reality Squared Games) - which was very good. I learned a lot about the Chinese MMO market and also gained insights how westerners are looking at it and vice versa - as the presenter was American working in China since a decade. Details later. Best talk so far!

The next talks were exactly what I feared. DICE ceo had a talk how cool they are. Nothing learned - no knowledge transfer. But he was level designer in 1998 and now is CEO of Dice. See? You can have careers!

World of Tanks CEO was funny. For a Russian he did pretty awesome jokes on the industry but after 50% he lost it and of course said how cool World of Tanks is blah blah. Nevertheless he gets my sympathy bonus.

Then I ended up in a f2p companies talk which was 20% on topic and 80% "This is how f2p works". Not learned much here but it gave me enough reflection in my work that I had 2-3 ideas I emailed myself to put onto ToDo (I email myself ToDo's)

At least I ended up following a new trend on GDC's: skipping the parties. So I drove home and have a nice evening instead talking to the same people every year. I will see you all tomorrow guys!

GDC Europe and Gamescom

So it is this week again. Networking, meeting all friends in the industry, exchanging gossip and latest news (Business cards) and see where the industry is heading.

I try to post a summary as soon as the parties are done ;)

Cheers!