Ending Up

Nice view after we had seen 300

Well, the conference has finished. I just thought I'd put down in words what I've managed to learn from my time in out here, at the various sessions and on the exhibition floor:

• Sony are starting to do some sensible things with the PS/3. I hope it is in time.
• Community is the new buzzword for everything. That and getting your wife to play computer games (I'm looking forward to that one)
• Writing a shader is actually quite easy. (especially if you just fill in the blanks in a Microsoft lab)
• The Nintendo Wii controller is just as hard to program with as I thought it would be. Probably more so.
• XNA Express is even better than I thought. The tutorial on it was a model of clarity and fun.
• The Motion LS800 is a truly wonderful portable computer (I plan to write a whole item about this lovely device)
• Computer games writers take incredible pride in their work, and the games that you take for granted contain huge amounts of technical ability, imagination and passion. You think there is passion in a Ferrari? Take a look at something like Motorstorm, or Gears of War. These people love their work and it shows when you hear them talk about it.
• Computer games should be taken at least as seriously as other media fields such as TV and film.
• The film "300" sucks.
• San Francisco might be my favourite place on earth. Maybe even better than Hull (although the bridge is a bit smaller).

And with those profound thoughts floating out there into the ether, time for the Friday photos.

Dusk.

We didn't bother with steak in the end

..'cos Lori's had pinball

I just love this back screen. The rightmost zero is just stuck in there to make all the scores seem bigger...

Bloody Hell, it's 300!

It seemed a good idea at the time. Jon had never seen the Imax screen, there was a new film out which had received less than damming reviews and so off we went to see "300", a simple tale of simple people killing simply everything.

Just about everyone in the film is a bit dim. From the Spartan king who thinks that just because all his recruits had a rough childhood they can take on the might of the Persian army to the traitor who thinks that it is a plan to carry around his ill gotten gains in his pockets, complete with nicely minted head of chief baddy on every coin.

The violence is very well realised, so if detailed decapacitations are your thing you are in for a great time. Unfortunately they aren't mine, especially when projected on a screen the size of a house side. Jon said, at the end, "I don't think the Imax added much". He was right. What it gave you in this case was a much better and bigger rendition of something that you really didn't want to see in the first place.

If you are into comic books, computer games with slow motion fight scenes, comedy beards and utter tosh you will like the film. If you want plot, character and scenery other than very large piles of dead bodies then I suggest you give it a miss. However big the picture.

XNA Party Time

Thanks to help from Kieran at Rare, Jon and I managed to snag invites to the XNA party, which was held at a really swish nightclub.

We had to pick up the bus outside the Metreon centre

As soon as we got to  the club, had our ticket taken, hand stamped and passport checked (no - really, it was that exclusive) we grabbed some free food and drink and, old people that we are, headed for the chill out zone. Which was really, er, cool.

The blue ceiling was amazing

Microsoft do parties well. Very well. Sitting watching the world go by with people bringing you free drink and food works for me. After a while though, we thought we'd explore the place.

Blue with XBOXes

We wandered into one room and found a band playing.

Forget the "Wedding Singer" looks. These guys were seriously good. And loud.

And they had even more XBOXes for gameplay whilst you party

Finally, we went upstairs and took a look at the winners of the XNA Express challenge. These people had spent the last few days at the show creating a video game from scratch using only XNA Express Edition. The winner looked very snazzy, with real time lighting and all sorts. If the competition runs next year there will be somebody from Hull in the mix, you mark my words.

XNA Winners

Then, having drunk and eaten our fill, and with the band ringing in our ears it was out into the chill night for a brisk walk back up the hill to the hotel.

From Shaders to Singstar via Mario

We started the day bright and early. At 9:00 we were learning how to use shaders at an XNA lab.

Plenty of nice monitors for the XNA lab..

It has to be said that I'm not actually a great video game programmer. But after today I'm a lot happier writing shader code. Even if it looks a lot like C++. Once we'd got our flashy music player working I bailed out of the lab and headed for the next keynote. I really wanted to see the next man speak.

Building Mr Miyamoto

Shigeru Miyamoto is a true video gaming legend. The man behind Mario and a host of other Nintendo classics last came to GDC 8 years ago, and today he was back to give another presentation. The slant was broadly similar to the Sony pitch yesterday. Community is good. Games which are fun are good. And we now have games which can bring in people who up until now have never played games. Including Mrs. Miyamoto. The presentation ended with some mouth watering footage of Super Mario Galaxy.

Coming to a Wii near you soon

At lunchtime I took a bunch of pictures.

Reflections on a city square

Flowers

Another nice day

Later on there was another community themed talk, this time by the brains behind EyeToy, SingStar and Buzz. It seems to me that games are getting more and more mainstream, and soon they will be part of life for pretty much everyone. Later we went for another wander.

567 Pine

Grant

More nice lumpy streets

A planet you are going to want

Today was the day that the conference really got going. The exhibition was open and we had the first keynote presentation.

Crowd pleasing football

Before the presentation we played a kind of football, bouncing a large ball into goals each side of the auditorium. Our side lost. Then  it was on with the show. This one was from Sony, who make the awesomely powerful (so they keep telling us) PS3. Very little that I've seen of the PS3 has convinced me of this power.

With the exception of MotorStorm and some tech demos there has been little that has impressed  me about this machine so far. Namco should be singled out for an especially big kicking at this point, their PS3 versions of Tekken and Ridge Racer are a textbook exercise in lazy launch coding. I can understand the pressures that they must be under, but I still can't see  an excuse for serving up poor rehashes of previously great games. Anyhoo, I digress.

Fortunately today the talk was not pixel pushing power, but community. Things kicked off with a description of the Home service. This is not an old BBC radio channel, but a virtual world of take on your personal space on the PS3.

Coming to a life near you

You can wander through an advertising adorned 3D environment, select and position furniture and Sony products around the place and generally make your pretend existence and appearance better than the one you have at home. There is a community area too where you can play pool better than in real life, and a place to put the trophies from all the games you've bought.

There was no evidence of a world between these virtual spaces, so whether you can walk across rolling hills and ford babbling brooks to get to your friends pad for a spot of low quality Tekken remains to be seen, but if Sony get their act together on this one I can see property values in Second Life taking a bit of a downturn.

A virtual world worth visiting

At the end of the talk was the best bit. The game "Little Big Planet" takes social gameplay, realtime physics and the rendering power of the PS3 and creates a really fun place to be where you can build and modify the game environment as you play the game. This did look good, and had a Nintendo like appeal, in that I could actually see a game that was using the technology to make new kinds of gameplay experience.

At the end of the presentation I must admit that I'm now quite happy to be getting a PS3, something that I wasn't too sure of when I went in...