GameSetWatch: Thank you for joining us for this discussion of the music of Mega Man 9, original and arranged. Could you tell us a little about your background in writing music for the Mega Man series?

Ryo Kawakami: I’m Ryo Kawakami. I started working for Inti Creates in November of last year. I’ve written songs for a few games previous to joining, including Mega Man ZX and Mega Man ZX Advent. Recently I composed songs for Mega Man 9.

GSW: Does the arrange soundtrack for Mega Man 9 differ from previous music albums made by the company?

Yamada: Past Inti Creates albums have been developed along different lines than Mega Man 9 Arrange Soundtrack. Previously the original soundtrack was not published, so to remind listeners of the original, we stuck close to the source material in the instruments that we used. This time, however, an original soundtrack has been released, so the remixes ought to be something new and different. For this reason we hope people will find it interesting to compare these two versions.

Manami Matsumae of Mega Man 1 & 2 (also known as CHANCHACORIN MANAMI) has arranged Shimoda-san’s Wily Stage 2. In addition to this track, BUN BUN of Mega Man 3 [Yasuaki Fujita] remixed Kawakami-san’s Special Stage theme。 You might think of it as a kind of Breath of Fire-style orchestral track. It has a symphonic sound and a fighting spirit to it. Then there is Makoto Tomozawa, who I worked with on Resident Evil and Mega Man 7. He arranged the Wily Machine song.

After that, there is Luna Umegaki, a composer on Mega Man Zero. She provides a soothing arrangement of Splash Woman’s theme. We were also joined by a musician that has no prior experience with the Mega Man series. Guitarist Toshiki Horizawa arranges Wily Stage 1 in the form of a Jeff Beck-style power ballad featuring a suitably dramatic performance. In that sense, a number of artists have contributed a variety of styles to the album.

Full interview here

Also hanging out in here - the cute Castlevania: Order Of Ecclesia comics translated (pictured), NVScene lecture videos available, a digital version of MCV debuts, some fun Taito recommendations, and more besides.

Cha cha cha:

Xbox Live Community Games Roundup Article // Xbox 360 /// Eurogamer
Really nice to see mainstream media covering these so adroitly, since there's certainly a lot to wade through.

demoscene.us - NVScene seminar videos available
Some excellent technical talks from the Nvidia-sponsored U.S. demo scene event are now available in video form.

8bitrocket:Atari Nerd Interviews The First Mainstream Game Journalist - Michael Schrage Of Rolling Stone
A great informal interview with a super-early mainstream game journo, with quotes like this, among other things: 'it's like sushi; japanese video games were an acquired taste but they transformed how americans both played and designed them...'

Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii vie for Christmas salesXbox 360, PS3 and Wii vie for Christmas sales - Telegraph
No, not VGChartz :/ As I've explained at length, reputable news sources should not be using them as a lead stat.

Translation of Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia 4koma at WELCOME TO THE DREAM OF FUTURE
Some very odd/cute official comics for the latest Castlevania DS fanservice, translated by (former?) GSW cartoonist Persona.

MCV Issue 515, November 28th 2008
UK game biz trade magazine MCV now has a free digital version for the first time, and it's fun to look through to understand the still independent-friendly - though, one would imagine, increasingly less so - world of UK games retail.

The Reticule » Blog Archive » Cliff Harris Interview
This interview with the Kudos/Democracy indie game maker has some interesting opinions on using portals for distribution: 'You MUST have some direct sales. By all means have some portals as part of your game plan, but all developers attract some gamers who just happen to really share their tastes, and these people WANT to buy direct from you.'

1UP: 'EGM Extras: The Essential Taito'
It's nice to see video game history well-documented in pieces like this - particularly when the Taito Legends/Memories packs have a number of these games easily playable legally on consoles, which is wonderful.

Following the release of Mega Man 9, the Inti Creates sound team developed an arranged music album composed of remixed songs from the NES-style platformer.

Produced by Ippo Yamada, who participated in a Siliconera interview last month on the subject of the original soundtrack, the new album includes the participation of composers from Capcom’s 8-bit era and other musical guests.

Here Yamada offers an introduction to the arranged album and the process behind its creation, this time joined by Inti Creates composer Ryo Kawakami and guest arranger Akari Kaida, whose songs can be heard on the Breath of Fire III and Luminous Arc soundtracks, among others.

The discussion offers an informal look at how videogame composers consider the context of their music and the process of adapting in-game tunes to other genres, including classical, hard rock, fusion and jazz.

Thunder Tornado, Mega Man 9 Original Soundtrack

See the translated track list. Hear other samples at Inti Creates.

Interview by Jeriaska. Translation by Ryojiro Sato. This text is also available in Japanese on Game Design Current and in Portuguese on Bem Vindo a WarpZona!

GameSetWatch: Thank you for joining us for this discussion of the music of Mega Man 9, original and arranged. Could you tell us a little about your background in writing music for the Mega Man series?

Ryo Kawakami: I’m Ryo Kawakami. I started working for Inti Creates in November of last year. I’ve written songs for a few games previous to joining, including Mega Man ZX and Mega Man ZX Advent. Recently I composed songs for Mega Man 9.

GSW: Which songs that you have been responsible for composing for the Mega Man series stand out in your memory?

Kawakami: Previously I have written quite a few songs, but maybe the best known is the Prometheus and Pandora Battle Theme “Trap Factory” from Mega Man ZX and “Trap Phantasm” from ZX Advent. For Mega Man 9, I wrote the opening, the title song, the themes for Magma Man, Plug Man, Wily Stage 1 and the Special Stage.

GSW: Were any of the songs you just mentioned composed in collaboration with other musicians?

Kawakami: Those songs I wrote independently, though I received a lot of good advice.

GSW: Which of your songs for Mega Man 9 are you particularly proud of?

Kawakami: I’m really pleased with how the atmosphere of Wily Stage 1 turned out. The sun is setting, thunder is echoing… it’s got something of the feel of Mega Man 2’s Wily Stage 1. For Plug Man, I wanted there to be something of an electrical static to the song, kind of like the high frequency sound in Quick Man's stage from Mega Man 2. I thought it turned out pretty well.

GSW: What were the songs that you were involved in reinterpreting for the second soundtrack?

Kawakami: For the arranged album, I remixed three songs total. The opening and ending themes have received piano arrangements. How might you describe the Plug Man remix? It’s kind of an electronic, progressive rock song with keyboards at the forefront and live drums.

Akari Kaida: I’m Akari Kaida. I joined Capcom in 1994 and have written for a variety of projects, but as far as Mega Man is concerned, I wrote songs for Mega Man and Bass, Mega Man ZX Advent, and Mega Man Battle Network 1 & 5. I went freelance in 2005, and joined the arrange soundtrack for Mega Man 9 this year.

GSW: You are often credited as Akari Kaida Groves. Is this your formal name?

Kaida: Yes, my husband is Australian, so I compose music under the Western surname of Groves.

GSW: Mega Man & Bass is one of the few early Mega Man titles not to be localized for English-language territories, only receiving a release years later for the Game Boy Advance. There were various musicians who contributed to the soundtrack. Which songs were yours?

Kaida: Let's see, I think they were Cloud Man, Ground Man... and Tengu Man, I'd say. There may have been others, but it's hard to remember.

GSW: What was your contribution to the arrange soundtrack?

Kaida: For the arranged album, Yamada-san suggested I write something stylish and easygoing... a kind of European, French-style scat vocal. The state I was looking to capture was laid back and untroubled. Because quite a few of the other arrangements involved electronic instruments, I was going for a more acoustic sound by comparison. There’s an acoustic guitar in there if you listen closely. It was fun to write.

Ippo Yamada: I’m Ippo Yamada, sound producer and sound director for Inti Creates. I did not focus so much on composing this time, writing two tracks total—Tornado Man and the Staff Roll theme. I really would have liked to compose more, but my hands were full serving as the producer. In addition to working on the game itself, I produced the original soundtrack album along with the arrange soundtrack.

We wanted to do something different in terms of style of music, while retaining the quality of the original tunes, or perhaps preserve the quintessential images from each of the stages and robots. The Magma Man arrangement is interesting. Magma Man resides inside a volcano, so the track features a passionate Spanish style sound with a furious rhythm. I asked Uchiyama-san, who worked on Mega Man 8, to write a dance tune that retains both Tornado Man’s characteristics and the melody line itself. It was asking a lot of him, but he sure did a great job.

Kaida:　That one is very cool.

Yamada:　 Weren’t you surprised? It sounded really fresh to my ear when I first listened to it. The entire idea behind this arrange album was to enjoy the music in a different light.

Magma Burning, Mega Man 9 Arrange Soundtrack

See the translated track list. Hear other samples at Inti Creates.

GSW: What can you tell us about Inti Creates'... well, creation?

Yamada: Inti Creates started off with eleven employees. Everyone chipped in on the work programming, designing characters, planning the scenario… it felt less like a company than a small team. In fact, it was a company founded on teamwork. We were young and skipped meals, working twenty-four hours making games. While I had gathered some experience while working for Capcom, here I was involved in every area of the creation process. It was a learning experience. We ensured the highest quality possible and got a lot of pleasure out of investing as much substance to the game as we could.

GSW: Does the arrange soundtrack for Mega Man 9 differ from previous music albums made by the company?

Yamada: Past Inti Creates albums have been developed along different lines than Mega Man 9 Arrange Soundtrack. Previously the original soundtrack was not published, so to remind listeners of the original, we stuck close to the source material in the instruments that we used. This time, however, an original soundtrack has been released, so the remixes ought to be something new and different. For this reason we hope people will find it interesting to compare these two versions.

Manami Matsumae of Mega Man 1 & 2 (also known as CHANCHACORIN MANAMI) has arranged Shimoda-san’s Wily Stage 2. In addition to this track, BUN BUN of Mega Man 3 [Yasuaki Fujita] remixed Kawakami-san’s Special Stage theme。 You might think of it as a kind of Breath of Fire-style orchestral track. It has a symphonic sound and a fighting spirit to it. Then there is Makoto Tomozawa, who I worked with on Resident Evil and Mega Man 7. He arranged the Wily Machine song.

After that, there is Luna Umegaki, a composer on Mega Man Zero. She provides a soothing arrangement of Splash Woman’s theme. We were also joined by a musician that has no prior experience with the Mega Man series. Guitarist Toshiki Horizawa arranges Wily Stage 1 in the form of a Jeff Beck-style power ballad featuring a suitably dramatic performance. In that sense, a number of artists have contributed a variety of styles to the album.

GSW: When did you first start becoming interested in videogames?

Kaida: It’s hard for me to recall the game titles, but I often played when I was in elementary school around 10 or 11 years of age.

Yamada: NES？

Kaida: That’s right. The 8-bit era. It’s probably the same for everyone, but I started out with Super Mario. To tell you the truth, I never dreamed of making videogame music. I often played games, and especially enjoyed trying them out on my PC. It was only after entering music school that it even occurred to me that this could be a job.

Yamada: That’s a common story, though. For myself, I had the vague notion that I wanted to create music, but it was not as if I had this insistent notion that my destiny was to write game music.

Kaida: It wasn’t sought out.

Yamada: Game music, that’s something you think of as fun. Games are all about the interplay of action and reaction. That dramatic component of the experience needs to be reflected in the music. That might be what attracted me to this field in the first place.

Kaida: That sounds about right. You are given a certain theme to work with, and discover how to endow the scene with that feeling. I like that challenge.

Yamada: You are also working with data. If you lose sight of that, the consequences can be devastating. Back then, it wasn’t like now where you can make music using a Mac or PC—you really needed to know how to program. You had to know about compiling and decoding data and be able to discern what was going on within your program. Making videogame music would be very difficult if you did not have much practical knowledge on those subjects.

Kaida:　There were also size limitations, forcing you to think about how much information you could include before running out of space.

Kawakami: 　The music this time around was designed so that even if some of the sound gets cut off due to the emulated limitations of the 8-bit hardware, it would not interrupt the musical flow. The music still sounds good, even if one or two instruments are interrupted by sound effects every once in a while.

Yamada:　You know, I recently was listening to CD recordings of Dragon Quest and Bomberman. It was shocking—Bomberman only uses a single line for the music!

Kawakami: Complicating the melody sometimes distracts from the gameplay.

Yamada:　 The trick is to write a strong melody line that drives the music forward regardless of sound loss in other portions of the song. NES music is very particular in that sense.

Kaida: This title intended to imitate the NES, so the sound effects do cut off certain part of the music. If there were the chance in the future, I would want to further explore that aspect of composition.

From left to right: Inti Creates designer Yukimasa Tamura with musicians Ryo Kawakami, Akari Kaida & Ippo Yamada.

[Images courtesy of Capcom and Inti Creates. Photos by Jeriaska. Mega Man 9 Arrange Soundtrack is available for import through VGM World and Amazon.co.jp.]

Let's go through a few of these, complete with some brief personalized GameSetWatch-specific comments for those still recovering from Turkey Day:

- The Last Express: Revisiting An Unsung Classic
Based on some chance interviews conducted after Jordan Mechner's Comic-Con lecture, Chris Remo has done an excellent job of documenting The Last Express, a beautiful late '90s Mechner-authored adventure game that was roundly ignored at the time - but can be played via GameTap now, for the intrigued.

- Postmortem: Tale of Tales' The Graveyard
I believe we already linked to a version of this on GSW, but the story of the making of short/neat art-game The Graveyard - including funding info and download stats - is painstakingly well-documented here by Michael Samyn. Bravo.

- Emotions And War: The Valkyria Chronicles Interview
Some people claim that Sega's Valkyria Chronicles is one of the most under-rated games of this holiday season. The PS3 strategy game has some beautiful visuals and some interesting ideas about mixing real-time and turn-based action. Personally, it's not my kind of thing, but Brandon Sheffield did a great job talking to the developers about the intricacies of the game.

- The Designer's Notebook: The Moral Panic Isn't Over Yet
Possibly the most controversial Designer's Notebook opinion piece thus far - let's just quote the description for this one: "After Barack Obama's U.S. election victory, do we still have to worry about game censorship? IGDA co-founder Ernest Adams looks at an Obama administration, games and 'moral panic'."

- Gameplay Fundamentals Revisited, Part 2: Building a Pacing Structure
An in-depth design article from an EA and THQ veteran - and there's some really good point made in here about how to pace the level design of games correctly to keep people guessing, but still have a neat ratcheting-up of tension/difficulty - without the designers having to redo things 8 times.

The Halo series is in a period of rapid expansion. The first title outside of the mainline numbered installments will be next year's Halo Wars, a console-oriented realtime strategy title for Xbox 360.

Unfortunately for Ensemble, Halo Wars marks the final game from the Dallas, Texas-based Age Of Empires studio, with the Microsoft-owned developer set to close in early 2009 following the game's completion.

Nonetheless, Gamasutra recently had the chance to speak to lead designer Graeme Devine and Bill Jackson, the game's campaign producer.

The interview focuses on the challenges of bringing an original realtime strategy title to consoles, what focus tests taught them about Halo fans and grenades, project origins, and why one of their job titles is simply 'Game Developer'.

Prototyping and Testing Functional Controls

So, you guys are pretty far along in development, then, on this title, and it's gotten to the point where everything is pretty much set completely, at this point.

Bill Jackson: Oh, yeah. We're four years into the title, so...

Really? Four years?

BJ: Yes. Four years. Four long years. The first year was some R&D work -- controls, and things like that -- so I'd say three solid years of production.

That's what I want to talk about... There are two big obvious challenges: bringing this franchise into this kind of genre, and then bringing this kind of genre successfully onto consoles. How did you approach both of these?

Graeme Devine: That is exactly the problem; getting Halo fans to play a realtime strategy game, and getting realtime strategy fans to play a Halo game.

So I think that's one of the very core virtues that we took, in how to make the game approachable. "What are the best things about Halo?" You know, that visceral experience: the sound of the combat. The actual units and style aren't different than an RTS game, so, that helps. And then, bringing realtime strategy to the console; just that kind of crunch there too.

One of the very first things that we did was not try and port any other game. We didn't try and think, you know, "Okay, how can we get these keyboard/mouse equivalents onto the console?" That seemed to be where every other game went wrong; trying to emulate, somehow, that same same pattern -- some of them even had a pointer.

[We decided to] really start again from the ground up, and think about what we wanted to do in realtime strategy games -- controlling large armies, building structures, building some economy, and some technology -- to be able to do those constructions and then controlling them easily with the controller. When you start to think about it that way, instead of how it's been done before, the solutions started to present themselves, and it became pretty easy.

Did you go through a heavy prototyping phase? At that point, were you trying to make functional control schemes?

GD: Oh yeah. We actually started out with Titans, one of the expansions on one of the Age of Mythology games. We spent a long time trying all sorts of variations; we had all sorts of things -- circle menu changes, with twelve things round it, and sub menus, and...

You you actually took an Age of Mythology game, and hacked it to use as a prototype?

GD: Yup. Yeah, basically the first year of the project. And then about six or seven months in, Justin -- one of the balance testers at that point, and he's now a game designer -- he's a real big RTS player, and he came up after one of the games, which he'd tested every single day. He said, "I think it's now easier to play this game with the controller than it is with the mouse and keyboard." And at that point we thought, "Well, okay, we're on the right track."

At that point did you unleash it on focus groups, or at least people who had not encountered it before, to see what their reaction was? Because obviously he had probably been there, observing that process.

GD: That was one of the actual concerns. In game design, it's very easy to reach an evolved process. You know: We have an evolved set of controls; we're now here because we did A, B, C, D, E, so if someone new comes in, can they get the E right away without having gone through A, B, C, D? So, we actually had a high amount of belief in what we were doing. I remember when we did our first focus test...

BJ: It's been at least two years since we started testing.

GD: But we started early on in the process. We weren't Halo IP when we did our first.

BJ: So about three years ago we did our first, and we've done focus group testing with different types of people, not just with the same group over and over. So, we've done Halo fans; we've done non-Halo fans; we've done people that have never touched a console game; even people that have never touched a game.

And we've gone the whole gamut, and gotten feedback. And useful feedback, from just about all of those people. With that said, I would say that Graeme and everyone who worked on the controls, it was a design that was internal. We just used the focus testing to validate assumptions -- as opposed to, "Hey! What do you want in an RTS control scheme?" And that's why it's so different than the RTS control schemes that are out.

GD: Our first focus group was actually Halo fans. I remember that. It was interesting, because one of the first things we learned was how much hardcore Halo fans like throwing grenades.

(laughter)

GD: It seemed like a really funny thing to get out of the control test, but they all would come up and say, "This trigger needs to throw grenades!" Over and over and over again, that was direct feedback -- "We need to be able to throw grenades!" So, you can throw grenades now.

(laughter)

BJ: Another thing that we found out is that there's a pretty big overlap already, between Halo fans and RTS -- at least some RTS experience. Whether that's RTS on consoles on some other products, or whether that's RTS on PC.

So we actually had to go out and say, "Let's change our criteria; let's only get Halo players that have not played a realtime strategy game." When we first did it, we just ended up with a large proportion of people who understood what RTS was as a concept. So we have really stretched our wings on that, and really tried to find every little nook and cranny, to get the feedback from all groups.

Design Is Also a Solution

You're aiming at some problems that are pretty ripe to be solved on consoles, still. First, getting an RTS just to function as a genre on the console is still a relatively large issue that hasn't really been addressed. Like you've said, some have done better and better at emulating the existing control mechanism from the genre, but there hasn't been a lot of effective work in developing new, meaningful controls.

GD: I think, even, it goes beyond controls sometimes, too. I mean, on a PC RTS, you can sometimes get 3,000 units, or something. You can get so many units that you just can't physically do this on a console. But they try! And then you get the photo frame-fest, of just one frame every three seconds, and the game becomes non-fun very quickly.

So design becomes a major component in getting people to understand the game, both as a Halo game, and as a strategy game that they can effectively play?

GD: I think it was key that it'd be console-only. And everyone was like, "Oh, there will be a PC version down the road," or, "I'll wait for the PC version," we see that all the time. But no, there's no PC version coming, because it was designed for the console.

We thought about going both ways, but as soon as you make that thought in your mind, it's easy to say, "Well, I'll use the text interface device that's coming out... That'll be how I do macros; I'll start to use the shift button to do more than one control thing," It starts to become an issue. But if you've only got this thing [holds up controller] and this thing's complicated enough -- it's a good challenge.

Yeah, the challenge of consoles, I think, is to simplify the controls to the point where they still function, rather than complicate the controls to the point where you can do everything on different buttons.

GD: There's ways to simplify the two, I think; they're kind of invisible. One of the ways that we simplify, say, the economy in the game. We have just one resource in the game. The supplies come in, and they come in all the time; you don't have to send people to go dig in the dirt.

But one of the other things that we have is our bases, in order to simplify -- that provides, actually, depth -- that there's only so many slots around the base that you can build at. It starts with three, you can upgrade to five, and then upgrade to seven.

But the decisions that you make there, as to what you put in the slots, is actually a really complicated problem. But because it's a visual problem on the screen, it's like the map becomes a desktop, almost...

If you become really good at Halo Wars, it's actually a hardcore decision, like, "Do I build two supply pads and upgrade one to get the reactor?" It's a different way of presenting the same problem, but visually, and with the controller, it's solved pretty well.

Working With Bungie's Baby

Were you able to pull any assets from Bungie's stuff, and use them? Or did you have to build it all from scratch?

GD: We had to build it all from scratch.

Did you have really good reference material from them?

GD: At the time, the movie deal was in process, so they actually prepared a lot of stuff for Weta. We used that. We also found the Halo art books to be very useful. But one of the other challenges was, all of their stuff was from this [forward] perspective, and all of our stuff is from the top. So we actually had to change things up quite a bit for that perspective, to make the units recognizable.

Getting the Halo units to look and feel the same was also one of the other challenges, because everyone knows what those Warthogs look like, when you drive them and so forth, but up in the air you can actually exaggerate that a quite little bit and they'll still look the same.

So, you know, that thing's actually jumping three times as high as it does in Halo, and it goes four times faster than it does in Halo, and all these things -- but it looks the same. Very different, between look and accuracy.

Did you have the wherewithal to create new units and machinery? Or did you have to have to stick to what had been established in the mainline Halo series?

GD: One of the things about Halo is... Well, Master Chief is a one man army, right? So he's got a couple of ODST troops to help him, but that's really about it.

We actually had to fill in a little bit on the UNSC side to make the side more complete. The Covenant, they were actually more complete than the UNSC side, so then less work went into making them a complimentary army.

Because you're already fighting them as an army.

GD: Yeah.

From a design perspective, when you just threw the extant Halo ideas into a new perspective, did it offer up design ideas, by dint of just changing the view?

GD: Yeah. And it's a cool universe, because the humans need to fire lead, and the aliens need to fire plasma. You can't just suddenly give the humans ray guns, and say, "Okay, now we're gonna go out there, and kick ass with ray guns."

On Job Titles

I actually have a question that's totally outside of this, but I notice that your card just says "Game Developer," rather than a specific discipline. Is that a philosophical choice, on crediting? Or is that because you do a lot of different stuff?

GD: Well, I can kinda do a lot of different stuff! I've been making games almost 30 years now. So, I am terrible at drawing, but I can make games. But I'd program, write -- you know, juggle...

One of the things, when you make games, is that there's no badge when you make a game: You might be a programmer on the game, but you're still have an actual opinion about the actual game you're making. So many people are labeled "Programmer", and, "I'm not going to listen to you because you're a programmer," that's just the wrong approach to take. Someone's discipline is not necessarily their role in a game.

BJ: That's why I chose producer, Graeme.

GD: Yes. You can't comment on the story at all! No, you comment on the story the whole time. But that was exactly -- you know, it's a good example, I mean, Bill read through the scripts and gave great feedback on the story.

BJ: I was the editor.

GD: He was the producer on the campaign, and was integral to a lot of the actual design of the campaign maps, and how they were laid out. When you say the word 'Producer', it doesn't conjure up in your mind the guy who is helping me out with the script, or working on campaign map layout.

Yeah. If anything, it's one of those roles that, depending on what studio you're talking to, it means one thing or another.

BJ: Yes, that's very true. It's very true. I think, at our studio, we've always had the mentality that everybody can comment on the design of the game in any way that they want.

So it doesn't matter what role you are, or how long you've been there; you can say whatever it is you want to say. And our job is to hear that and respond to it. And if we can't respond to it, then it probably means there's some validity to what you're saying -- so, it's worked well, I think. It makes good games; high quality games.

[This piece originally appeared on big sister game business site Gamasutra - don't forget to visit, check out the jobs, and subscribe to the RSS.]

Every summer, the GDC advisory board gathers to discuss the direction of the next event. The board is made up of 17 of the most dedicated, brilliant people in the industry. And I’m not just saying that because they might read this.

You may have heard of some of them, for example Blizzard’s Rob Pardo, Electronic Arts' Lou Castle, veteran creator Mark Cerny, Bungie's Chris Butcher, MGS's Laura Fryer, and Maxis’ Chris Hecker. See, it’s true. Smarties.

Anyhow, during this meeting they talk about everything from networking opportunities (“wouldn’t it be cool to have a roundtable follow a thought-provoking lecture so the attendees can discuss what they just heard?”) to session formats (“what if we gave speakers 3 minutes each to present their cool idea or technology”).

The meat of what they talk about, however, is the session content and how to make it better. It’s all-quality all-the-time with these folks.

Our attempt at improving (and some might say maintaining) session quality for GDC 2009 was evidenced in our Call for Submissions. The board is always looking for interesting, well crafted submissions but the reality is they are really looking at takeaway.

When reviewing submissions, they want to know if the attendee is going to walk out of the room knowing something they didn’t know when they walked in.

We updated the submissions process this year by dividing it into two phases with takeaway being the focal point of phase one.

GDC Submissions: Phase One

We asked three things in phase one of GDC submissions this year: what do you want to call your talk?; briefly explain the focus of your talk; and explain to us how the attendee is going to benefit from attending this talk. We received over 800 of these.

The board then reads, reviews and grades every single one to determine who moves on.

This process involves locking the board into a hotel meeting room for 2 whole days while they productively discuss (sometimes I call it bickering like little girls but they don’t like that very much) the merits of the submissions.

It breaks down like this: by track, we sort the submissions by the reviewers average grade and discuss every single submission that received a grade of 3.8 or higher (1=not so much, 5=much awesomeness).

The board determines which of these will move on to phase two. After that, we go around the room and each board member has an opportunity to fight for a submission that didn’t score so well but they want to save.

We continue to go around the room until no one has anything left to save. Wash and repeat. All weekend. And you wonder why I drink.

GDC Submissions: Phase Two

Right now we are in phase two. Submitters are in the process of, well, submitting the bulk of what their Game Developers Conference presentation is going to be for a second round of review.

This is where the board can see if the content matches the intent. And this will, fingers crossed, help us in making sure that what seems like a super awesome submission turns into a super awesome GDC session.

We shall see!

[Meggan and her colleagues will be posting regular updates from behind the scenes through the lead-up to next March's Game Developers Conference 2009, including content reveals and other helpful information. You can subscribe individually to the GDC News blog via its RSS feed.]

Firstly, I'm not sure if everyone has been reading for long enough to realize this, but GSW has been through quite a major series of shifts over the past three years or so (yes, we've been running since 2005).

Here's a potted history, with links to weekly archives to give you a good idea along the way:

- Early Prehistory (January 2006)
We started things off with more of a group feel and eclectic, six+ posts a day styling. In fact, our initial group bloggers theoretically included Michael McWhertor (nowadays at Kotaku, of course), Brandon Boyer (who just started the BoingBoing-affiliated Offworld, which early GSW vaguely resembles, only with less Greenblat), and Wonderland's delightful Alice Taylor. It evolved into a solo effort (with a few exceptions) over time, though.

- The Mid-Period Evolution (April 2007)
Halfway between the oldschool and the new school, GSW in mid-2007 had quite a few link-style posts. It was still clocking in at about five posts a day, some on eclectic subjects, but now had a regular-ish GameSetLinks link round-up. It was also starting to increase longer-form columns from folks like Slashdot/Massively's Michael Zenke, the indefatigable John '@Play' Harris, and quite a few more besides. It was a transition time...

- The Here And Now (November 2008)
Well, now we're at three posts per day, with the daily GameSetLinks round-ups picking up some of the more thoughtful writing online. The other posts alternate between GSW-exclusive columns (generally design analysis/critiques, like 'The Interactive Palette', or more personal perspectives, like 'Chewing Pixels'), and there are more crossposts from sister sites - particularly longform writing from Gamasutra that we think might get lost, but also link round-ups from sister sites like FingerGaming and IndieGames.

So that explains where we were, and where we are.

In a lot of ways, today's GameSetWatch is an 'unblog'. Which is to say - instead of lots of tiny, pithy posts, we hit you with three big chunks of text every day. I guess this is a little bizarre - and in our regularity in doing so, we're practically recidivist.

Of course, the site's current structure is partly a reaction to the site itself being a sideproject to our regular dayjobs running Game Developer magazine, Gamasutra, and helping with GDC, so there you go.

But I'd like this to be a call for ideas, and feedback. What bits of GSW do you dig now - which columns, whose writing, what particular features? What would you like to see more of, and what would you like to see less of? What are we doing that's important and enjoyable, and what are we doing that's tedious or less than necessary?

[Feedback to editors at gamesetwatch dot com welcome, of course, but the blog comments are the best way to get discussion going.]

My article on 'Why I Outgrew Video Games', originally posted on my blog and then on Gamasutra and on GameSetWatch, has received considerable press coverage from Slashdot, from Kotaku, and other online news outlets.

The discussion generated around the article has been very thought provoking; many readers sympathized, claiming that they too have been forced to leave games behind as other more important aspects of life crept in during their 30's and 40's, unable to justify the time sacrifice for pure entertainment. Many more readers had some very intelligent contentions.

I'd like to further fuel the discussion by responding to some of the great points raised by readers:

You say that as you grew up, you found no adult parallels to Super Mario. What about games with deeper themes, such as Shadow of the Colossus or BioShock?

Shadow of the Colossus and BioShock are both magnificent games. The reason that they don't quite reach the goal of being life enriching experiences is that they are still designed from the ground up with the primary purpose of being entertainment. Yes, the compelling stories, settings, and characters in both games may provide some tangential learning of the concepts of mindless pursuit of a selfish motive (Shadow) or the perversion of humanist beliefs (BioShock), and these are not to be downplayed.

However, games as a medium could offer much more if the original intent was to express an idea. It's the difference between a fictional movie that causes viewers to consider the real world parallels and a real life documentary. Both eventually get to the purpose of causing the audience to grapple with the concept, but one goes through entertainment on its way, and the other seeks to make its point first and be entertaining second.

Of course, the reasons behind this have a lot to do with the nature of the video games business itself. Games are made for a profit, and entertainment is more profitable.

There are plenty of mature games that were made quite some time ago: Trinity, Hidden Agenda, or works of Interactive Fiction, to name a few. What about those?

Great point! These are all games that do much more than provide entertainment. Hidden Agenda, for example, educates players about the intricacies and difficulties of the political climate in South America, and does so through engaging gameplay (despite its use of only black and white colors).

Many of these games were tested by the market in the 80's, and sadly faded from the mainstream. Jim Gasperini, creator of Hidden Agenda, wrote that "Hidden Agenda was created in an early, idealistic time in the development of the game medium. " Since then, it would seem that simple entertainment won out in the marketplace. This is good for those who simply want entertainment, but it's bad for others who need more to justify the time spent.

Still, those are some games with more mature themes than Mario. How can you say games are still a child's medium?

In addition to the low proportion of games that deal with adult themes, another issue here is simply the public perception of games. While the Wii, online casual gaming, and other movements are helping to make great strides, it is not outlandish to say that many people would still view games as kid's toys, though few would say the same of a medium like literature. There are children's books and there are adult books, but with games the public perception is more myopic.

This is also true of comics; many readers commented that comics that touch on mature themes do in fact exist, such as Watchmen or Maus. but the public perception of the medium as a whole tragically does not reflect this.

Your article claims that many people have outgrown games, but many older people DO actually play games: board games, like chess.

True, but as someone who left my NES behind, I wish that there were video and computer games which received the same love from the general public. The capabilities of video and computer games are far beyond what any board game could be, and thus are something to be taken advantage of.

Also, board games oftentimes have peripheral advantages that make them "worthwhile" in the player's mind: spending time with family, flexing mental muscles, etc. It's difficult to come up with the same justifications for many video game titles out today.

Why are you saying we need more boring games? Games are supposed to be fun.

This was actually a misconception of Ian Bogost's recent Gamasutra article. The goal isn't to create boring games, but when boring games have been created, then we will know that games have truly been accepted as a versatile medium by the general public.

Some readers mentioned army training and pilot training games, which is exactly the type of boring games I believe Bogost would say he's looking for. As these become more ubiquitous, it can be seen as a thermometer that our medium is becoming more accepted.

What's wrong with games as simply entertainment? If you want intellectual stimulation, why not turn to something else?

Nothing is wrong with viewing games as entertainment, but there is so much more that could be done! Games have the capability to be incredibly experiential because of their capability to provide interactivity.

As designer Dan Cook from Lost Garden wrote, it's the difference between hearing about the time someone decided not to pull the trigger, and deciding for yourself not to pull the trigger. Actually going through experiences yourself is much more compelling and personal than reading a story. The opportunities are too ripe not to pursue the possibilities.

Additionally, it's sad for someone who loved games while they were younger to have to turn away later in life because the days become busier. Other activities, sports for example, are still viewed as a worthwhile use of time, but only because of some other benefit in addition to being entertainment, such as exercise.

Video games also have the capability to provide the same kind of peripheral benefit. This doesn't mean entertainment should be shown the door, but I think even popularizing the idea that games could be something more is a good step.

"Edutainment" games are terrible. Why would you be asking for more of them?

Edutainment games aren't terrible by definition; sadly these games have that reputation because they are oftentimes simply not designed well. A few years ago, we all would have agreed that those crazy bicycle games in front of TVs at the science museum were terrible.

Exercise games don't work, we would have said. But after a professional team got their hands on the idea of exercise, Wii Fit was born (and I don't need to talk about the popularity of Wii Fit).

The problem is a game design problem, not a content problem. In terms of making compelling reward systems, the content is nearly irrelevant. I would venture to say that the greatest asset games have over other media is to take any topic and make it interesting, such that the player decides to forge ahead of their own volition.

Game Design Competition

Games have the ability to discuss and teach real world politics, history, science, health, business, psychology, and so much more. Games have the potential to not only be entertaining, but to have the player put down the controller and say, "Wow. I am a better person for having played this game. Those last few hours have contributed to my well being and will continue to enrich my life long after I'm done playing."

Many developers would agree with this thesis, but the real question is how. To follow up this discussion, GSW editors have allowed me to host a game design competition, focusing on creating games that do more for the player than simply entertain.

If this topic has interested you, I'd invite you to consider participating. You can find more information on the competition on my weblog.

[Brice Morrison is a game designer who has been developing quirky titles since he was in middle school. Before taking a job at Electronic Arts, he developed several successful independent games such as Jelly Wars, an action adventure franchise, and QuickQuests, a casual MMORPG.

While at the University of Virginia, Brice founded Student Game Developers, an organization which continues to produce games every semester and open the doors to the games industry for students. His blog at BriceMorrison.com discusses games in a broader context and how they can be more than simply entertainment.]

This time (and going forward), I'm going to try to make GSW user-centric - and maybe even nuanced - commentary on some of this past week's best articles.

More Than Just Lips: Keiichi Yano On Music Game Innovation by Christian Nutt
I've been a fan of Yano's output for a while, thanks to titles from GitarooMan through Elite Beat Agents, and although it seems Lips is getting some mixed reviews, his genuine music-loving attitude and enlightened approach to the medium makes this Gamasutra interview a whole lot of fun.

Persuasive Games: Disjunctive Play by Ian Bogost
Jason Rohrer is going go down as an important, but likely divisive, figure in the history of art-games - and in this neat, if slightly mindboggly Gamasutra feature, writer/author Bogost analyzes Between to help map out a new, indirect style of multiplayer gaming.

NPD: Behind The Numbers, October 2008 by Matt Matthews
We were absolutely delighted to get Matt Matthews' NPD column back in Gamasutra's care, and this latest one shows his mastery of the stat crunching insanity. Some of the neat stuff in here - Guitar Hero sales analysis and some cleverly extrapolated top single-SKU games of 2008 so far in the U.S. - Smash Bros for Wii leading the way.

Effective Art Directors: Gaming's Something Something by Ben Cammarano
We love to run developer-written articles alongside the analysis and interviews, and Microsoft Game Studios uber art director Cammarano does a great job of documenting the five major traits that make the video game art director truly effective, from partnerships through unlikely inspiration.

GCG’s Game Design Challenge: Achievement and Insomnia by Jill Duffy
I'm gonna quote this one, cos Jill Duffy and Manveer Heir are doing a great job on this anyhow: "GameCareerGuide has recently posted its next Game Design Challenge: design a card game that incorporates the theme ‘insomnia.’ The site has also posted the top three submissions to a recently closed design challenge, in which readers invented a new Xbox Achievement for an existing game."

Also original and worth checking out on Gamasutra from last week: Share Your Experience: YouTube Integration In Games; Interview: GameStop's DeMatteo Talks State Of Holiday Market; MIGS: Imagining A Hero - Ubisoft's Mattes On Prince of Persia's Visual Evolution; MIGS: Microsoft's Fryer On Creating a Culture Of Production ; MIGS: EALA's Smith - Games Have Feelings Too; In-Depth: Casual Game Execs Aim For New Audiences On Core Platforms; Stardock CEO Wardell Eyes Star Control, Orion, And More.

Anyhow, quite apart from the actual release of the (pictured) Night Of The Cephalopods, scattered in here are Esquire's full Jason Rohrer piece, an odd Japanese print ad for God Of War, James Mielke's finally fantastic marriage proposal, and more besides.

The Yukon river:

STANFORD Magazine: November/December 2008 > Farm Report > News > Virtual Worlds
On Henry Lowood and friends' virtual worlds and classic game preservation efforts, with an interesting quote from a Library Of Congress rep on the importance of video games: "Besides showing us how society has entertained itself, they also provide a graphic picture of how technology itself has evolved over the decades.”

press the ACTION BUTTON!!: Tim Rogers reviews Gears Of War 2
Filled with enjoyably inflammatory piquant rhetoric, as per normal: 'What we’re saying is, if you’re going to make a game that blatantly rips off another game, for god’s sake, rip off Gears of War 2, not BioShock.'

1UP EIC Proposes With The Help of Final Fantasy Creators
James Mielke "...called upon two of the creators of the Final Fantasy series -- composer Nobuo Uematsu and artist/designer Yoshitaka Amano -- to help him out. Amano designed the ring for him and Uematsu composed a melody that played as he proposed." I really like the ring design.

Future of Video Game Design - Jason Rohrer's Programming Online Games - Esquire
The companion article to Rohrer's new game on Esquire. It's a really interesting outsider view of the state of independent games, and some of the mixed emotions people have relating to them. The fact it can be written shows we've arrived.

xkcd - A Webcomic - Theft of the Magi
Uhoh, Left 4 Dead vs. Xbox 360 tragedy in the making from the perpetually wry webcomic.

Dusk and Dawn » Salaryman of War
An ad for God Of War PSP from earlier this year in Famitsu: 'I’m not sure what about this ad I like better: the flame-rimmed salaryman going batshit with the Blades of Chaos or the ad copy proclaiming this game a remedy for today’s stressful Japanese workplace.'

Night of the Cephalopods - official site
Oo, Artsy Game Incubator plus Lovecraftian goodness equals an awesome-looking PC indie freeware game, downloadable now, good folks.

An American Game Journalist in Paris | GameCulture
John Gaudiosi: 'This was my fourth videogame trip to Paris this year.' Seriously? Not really sure what this has to do with the ECA or GameCulture.com, which is normally very smart, but all of Gaudiosi's posts for the site just seem to be playing up his oldschool publisher-funded worldwide jaunts.