MY Games Industry Map?

This particular interview is interesting. I certainly think that yes community is going to play a major component in the future of the game industry. At the same time though there are going to be folks that want a good non-community experience from time to time.

There is also this thing with the release of GameIndustryMap.com in many respects just a flashier version of the long existing GameDevMap.com. I'm puzzled about his possessive use of "my" game industry map in the context of his discussion of community.

Overall he's got a lot of interesting things to say, and the connections that enable someone to actually get stuff done. I'll be curious what a year or two can bring.

David Perry: Publishers' Days Are Numbered

My game industry map has proved that to me; the programmer came to me and asked, "How would you like this done?" and I said the obvious, which is a storage database where you put the pins on the map with a search system, give me a category filtering system, country filtering system, and he goes, "Ok" and he coded it... that's actually a bad design, because in a world where you keep adding more and more pins and every pin has to go through Google and that's a very slow system. The more pins we put in the map, the slower it gets. Coming back from the show, they're going to really slow the site down. It's going to be horrific when people start whacking pins in there together, there's going to be thousands of them.
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I agree with him [Doug Lowenstein] completely. He said, "Anyone that's a member of the Video Game Voters network put your hand up." I'm a member. I promote the site and have written congress twice. So I completely support him and agree with him 100%. Our industry is really sucking when it comes to supporting such measures. You know when the industry is going to start noticing he's gone, when people don't fight that fight we will lose that battle and he took it to them, like he really was fighting very hard for our industry. It's very easy to bash him. People are bashing him now that he's gone and he can't answer for himself, but the fact is that guy took the most un-fun job in the world in politics and he fought and fought and fought to try to keep our freedom in making games, and I believe very strongly in not censoring games.
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No, we need better and better of what's good. We need a fricking killer driving game or a stunning first-person shooter. And if you think of a new genre, you should get a award for the year. You should be the guy standing up at the choice awards. Like, "You just made Guitar Hero and you've made a new genre for us. Thank you very much, that's a fantastic job and you should be applauded for it." It shouldn't be everybody needs to make Guitar Hero or they suck, which is just not cool. We'll end up with a bunch of random junk.

Microsoft Releases XNA Express - Let the REAL Revolution Begin

I really do wonder when Sony and Nintendo are going to notice what's going on here. I mean, if they don't have a plan to answer this, every game industry hopeful, hobbyist, and Open Sourcer interested in games is going to be developing code for the 360. You're going to have a wealth of available tools and code. Microsoft will still control the delivery pipeline (unless people start pressing their own CD's and distributing them, but who cares, that sounds like Indy music to me?!?) (Xbox Live Arcade) but they've opened up the production pipeline. This is still massively closed for Nintendo and Sony.

I see the consequences of this behavior in the game industry all the time. I've seen it in the last couple of days with folks here in India developing games these platforms. They feel like they're constantly reinventing the wheel, with no information as to how others have done it. And they're right! They are. This is part of the reason why crunch exists in the video game industry. You have an entire industry built up entirely around secrecy. Sharing is rare. It's rare even amongst studio owned by the same publisher.

I can seriously understand why you want to protect intellectual property. The importance of that is not lost on me. Nor is the importance of education, learning how to deal with these systems. I think what is ridiculous is to expect developers to do all of this work without any sort of community structure outside of their own organization. The IGDA certainly helps with this, but it's not like they can talk about how to get good read-rate performance out of _FILL IN BLANK HERE_ because it's covered by their NDA's.

Open up the production pipelines. It's good for the industry. It hasn't hurt the art world, music world, movie world. As a matter of fact it tends to invigorate things.

Microsoft Releases XNA Game Studio Express // GamesIndustry.biz

Microsoft has also announced plans to launch a new competition, titled Dream-Build-Play, which is open to Windows and Xbox 360 XNA Game Studio Express users. The winning game will be released through Xbox Live Arcade, and the contest will begin in January.

"Xbox Live Arcade has opened up a wealth of new publishing opportunities for established and independent developers alike, so it made perfect sense to also extend this privilege to hobbyists and amateur programmers," said Greg Canessa, group manager of Xbox Live Arcade.

"We have a tremendous opportunity to shine the spotlight on up-and-coming talent through the Dream-Build-Play contest, and we can�t wait to share their creativity with our gaming community around the world."

User Created Content vs. User Created GAMES

I saw the following post, and thought two main things.

1. User created content is WAAAY different than what Microsoft has done with XNA Express. [and]
2. Anyone that compares Second Life or any other user created content with actually opening up the development environments for consoles needs to have their web-publishing privileges revoked.

While it is exciting to see Sony considering the value of users being able to create content and work with and within games to make their own worlds, art, etc. is powerful, it is nothing compared to the ability to create new games. I think it has been obvious thus far on Sony's stance on "home brew" games with their treatment of it on the PSP. At the same time I suppose there is some trouble there, because a lot of the "home brew" interest actually comes from people wanting to run MAME on their PSP rather than making new games.

Harrison Predicts Major Role for User Created Content on the PS3:

"I have to be really careful not to give the game away because we're keeping this secret, but don't think about it in terms of maps, think of it in terms of behaviours, environments, physics, rules... All the tools that you could want, but in a very consumer friendly way."
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News that Sony is considering how to make use of content creation facilities is likely to draw comparison to Microsoft's XNA Studio Express suite, which is already up and running in beta, and will soon allow users to make their own playable Xbox 360 games using simple tools - albeit for the cost of a subscription fee.