News Story Linked Here

Dreamworks is going to make a 3D live-action version of Ghost in the Shell, which was originally a manga written by Masamune Shirow.

Not only is Masamune Shirow one of my favorite artists of all time, but Ghost in the Shell is an inspiration and forerunner to many recent works on topics of robots, machines, humans, virtual networks, and notions of soul and identity.

Hmmm…if I had to pick between which one I’m more excited about, Ghost in the Shell or the Warcraft live action movie, I’d have to say that it’s a tough choice, with perhaps a slight leaning toward Ghost in the Shell!!!  Wow, these are both going to be absolutely amazing projects.  I can’t wait…

Well, by this time I’m kind of tired of typing up lecture summaries. The only other two lectures I went to were a talk by a former economics professor who is currently on the staff of CCP (Eve Online). He talked a little bit about how to build a virtual economy, but it was one of those talks that was theoretically interesting yet hardly practical. Certainly it was a very good introduction to basic economics.

The other session I went to talked about tools and practices for brainstorming, which was interesting for the fact that it took inspiration from things like product design (a la IDEO). The session went into a group brainstorming process that involved defining a focus, challenging ideas, and harvesting and analyzing the ideas.

The expo show floor was actually more interesting. The highlights of the expo floor were actually new interfaces, at least in my opinion:

• Novint Falcon: This is a weird, robotic grapple like device where you hold on to a knob. An evolution over the joystick, mouse, or other controllers, the Falcon supposedly “lets you feel game actions, objects, environments and force feedback when playing enabled games.” I watched some people playing first person shooters with this device. I can’t attest to how good it is, but it certainly looks weird and cool.

• Wii Fit: I saw some Nintendo Wii games that were controlled by standing on a small white platform, which would detect subtle changes in body motion due to changes in pressure and weight. There was a yoga game, a skiing game, and a funny soccer goalie game where you had to catch and deflect incoming balls with your head. That coupled with the fact that I played Rock Band at the office earlier today, and it’s really pretty freaking amazing the types of input systems there are for games these days.

• NeuroSky: “Powered by your mind,” and “Brain-enabled technology,” were certainly catchphrases that immediately caught my attention. This is a new headset interface that, via a small metal detector, can sense brainwaves and translate them into actions in a video game. The demo was an on-screen, 3D environment where users could push, pull, lift, and burn objects with just a mere thought. The way it works, according to their brochure, is the headset “captures, filters and amplifies brainwave (EEG) information received from a non-invasive, dry electrode, and outputs the information via a UART, USB or Bluetooth interface to a controlling device (PC, mobile phone, toy, etc.).” I watched as random people put the headset on and lifted Tie-Fighters out of lakes, pushed white blocks into the distance, and so on. The NeuroSky rep that I spoke to said that currently they detect two modes of “thought” - attention and relaxation (which translate to the pulling, pushing, lifting, and burning activities). He said that they are certainly capable of detecting more complex thoughts as well, things like excitation, drowsiness, and so on. The really cool thing is that NeuroSky has an SDK, which means we are probably be going to see a lot of really really cool games coming out (Wii, anyone?) that will require the control of your mind!!!! Omg the future is here!

Regarding this great and highly entertaining panel at GDC, you can see a much better recap on Terra Nova than I can write here.

However, if you want a summary of how the panel went without any thoughtful rumination on meaningful content, it went something like this (in my words, not theirs):

Jack Emmert (Cryptic Studios): WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! WoW is a better game than CoH. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! Blizzard has more money. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! Life isn’t fair! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
Matt Miller (NCSoft): I agree with everything Jack says.
Ray Muzyka (Bioware): It depends on the type of game you are making. You have to understand your type of game and your audience. Know first who you are and who you’re selling to. Know your game. Know thyself. Make a good game. If it’s good, everything will fall into place.
Min Kim (Nexon America): Micro-transactions work, damnit! (Also, I am hot.)
Rob Pardo (Blizzard): Smile and give a non-inflammatory response. Doooooooooooooon’t feed the animals.  Don’t feed them!

On Thursday morning of this past week, I dropped in to listen to Jack Emmert talk about his experience building City of Heroes. He is one of the co-founders of Cryptic Studios, and was the lead designer on CoH and CoV before he took up Cryptic Studio’s latest project, Champions Online, which is set in the Marvel universe.

He had a very candid, honest, and somewhat sardonic recount of the way events transpired with City of Heroes. Keep in mind that City of Heroes launched and hit 160,000 users, and then WoW launched 6 months later. Here are the highlights:

• At one point they were looking to create new content for a new expansion pack, and they looked at the current hump in the player population, and create content aimed toward that majority. In retrospect, they should have created content for players 3 months ahead of the current hump. Players didn’t want to play content for where they currently were, they wanted to look forward to content that they could aim for.
• Their playtesting process was flawed. Emmert was only looking for validation of fun and functionality, and it never occurred to him that he should think about corner cases and min/maxers, who would examine every ability in the game for the maximum gain. As a result, they had character types that were insanely powerful, such as flying heroes that could shoot at enemy NPCs (who could not fly) from the air, or heavy tanking hero types that were also capable of massive damage, so they could kill hundreds or thousands of mobs at one time.
• Throughout the lifespan of CoH, no nerf ever caused a statistical drop in subscriptions. So, despite the fact that players complained about nerfs, subscriptions actually were not impacted.
• He referenced Star Wars Galaxies’ reboot, which was basically a “do-over” of many in-game systems. The reboot, although it was deemed by developers to be ultimately better for the overall game design, was actually not desired by the users at that time. Those users wanted the game to stay the way it was. Most people that were playing the game at the time did not like the reboot.
• After the first month of CoH, 2/3 to 1/2 of the customers left. However, of the customers that remained, CoH retained 80%-90% every month. It was like you couldn’t get rid of the rest of them. There was never any new large scale acquisition, but there was constant re-acquisition of old players. City of Villains, the expansion to the original game that added new content, only brought in about 60,000 new users.
• Design your game from the beginning to be expandable to accommodate new systems. For example, they introduced a guild system much later, but when they added it, they realized that the rest of the game was so self-contained, there was actually no purpose to having a guild. They also had to design and implement additional content, just to give guilds a purpose. The lesson is to plan for things like guilds (and other features) from the beginning, even if there is no money to build the feature at launch.
• Consider player nature. You are what you are at launch. If you don’t have x at launch, it’s unlikely you can add customers later. CoH launched with a certain feature set, and they attracted many players in the first month. City of Heroes today has many new features that were not present at launch, including PVP, a crafting system, reworked zones, a Flashback system to replay old missions, etc. but none of the players that saw the game in the first month know that; they had long since left.
• Create systems that are easy to update, like WoW’s spells, which have ranks to them. City of Heroes has unique abilities, so the effect of adding new levels to the level cap are that they have to design new skills.
• Min/max like crazy during development.
• They had almost no market research during their development process. Emmert also said that you shouldn’t listen to marketing.
• When asked if you should continue feeding the same old game with content or make a new game, he said that you should make a new game. With City of Heroes, they added lots of features but it didn’t acquire any new users, although constant updates was what he attributed the 90% retention to.

Between work and meetings this past week, I had the opportunity to drop into GDC sessions of my choice. Knowing me of course, the one that I most wanted to attend was the talk that Rob Pardo, Senior VP of Game Design at Blizzard Entertainment, gave regarding Blizzard’s approach to multiplayer game design.

For anyone that did not have the opportunity (or the $$$) to attend GDC, here is an inside look at what he talked about:

Although I didn’t copy down his slides word for word, his talk touched on a couple of broad topics: Player vs. Player, Game Balance, Player Psychology, User Interface, and Visualization.

He started off the session by talking about how Starcraft is a series where they built the multiplayer portion of the game before the single player. Starcraft had a four year production cycle, of which only 9 months were spent on the single player campagin. In the photo of the slide below, he also mentioned some core differences between PVP and PVE play. To most MMOG players, these should be familiar.

He also talked about how including non-combat PVP mechanics is important to keeping a game interesting from a multiplayer perspective. For example, economics (WoW Auction House), politics, racing (such as racing to get to the max level), and dating.

Multiplayer games should have mechanics that allows skill differentiation, including such as the following, and the games that they are inspired from:

• twitch/micromanagement (FPS, RTS)
• multitasking (RTS)
• strategic thinking (RTS)
• economic dominance (RTS)
• knowledge of classes or races
• map knowledge
• avatar improvement

I found his comments during the next section, the part about Game Balance, to be especially relevant to what I am doing now. One valuable piece of advice he had was to define your criteria for the game balance before you go into the project. To highlight an example of how this works, he compared the criteria they used to balance World of Warcraft and StarCraft 2:

WoW:

• players were to be able to solo their way to max level
• every class was to have an important role in a group
• every class was to have an important role in a raid
• every class was to be competitive in group PVP
• it was to be fun!

Starcraft II:

• each race is to be different and unique
• better players can win games fast
• offense over defense
• allow players to come up with creative strategies
• every unit has a counter
• it is to be fun!

Understanding that as a designer you need to draw your battle lines and stick to them is extremely valuable. However, what I also read Mr. Pardo to say although he didn’t say it explicitly, is that as a designer you also need to understand the essence of your game and what will make it fun, and draw your lines in the sand according to those core beliefs. After the stake is put down, stick to your principles, and execute them well.

Getting a bit more technical, he said that math is certainly the foundation to the interactions between the elements of a game, but your philosophy should be to make everything feel overpowered. A siege tank rush should feel incredibly powerful and unstoppable, even though there is a counter that exists in the game. Pyroblasts should feel powerful, even though they can be shut down, etc. etc.

As he spoke about game balance, I wondered if I will ever be as mature of a game designer, someone that understands the finest nuances of every little decision and the rippling effects on other interactions, as he is. It certainly gives me something to aspire to. And another piece of good advice: he mentioned that you should always use your Beta to your advantage. In a Beta, one of your goals should really be to get people to use every feature, even if it means launching a Beta with an ability or a skill that is overpowered. If it is overpowered, people will use it, and give you data. If a skill isn’t ever used, it will be extremely difficult to get people to use it later, when they already believe it is underpowered. Overpower things in a Beta, because it is much easier to de-power them later than the get users to pick it up.

As the lead designer on WoW, Pardo knows this better than anyone: Change is always bad to players. Evaluate every change carefully, because players will react to the fact that there is a change, even if the final outcome of the change is ultimately for the good. Maintain your games to keep them relevant. Warcraft II and Starcraft, even though they are years old by now, are still regularly patched and monitored. Ban cheaters. Plan patches and leave yourself time to be reactive. And don’t panic! Sometimes a change that you think is bad at launch actually isn’t that bad, because players find a way to counteract it by themselves.

Player psychology, he said, is not always predictable. In fact, it is rarely predictable. However, be conscious of the perception of fairness. Even if your game is perfectly mathematically balanced in your spreadsheets, if the players don’t perceive the game as being fair, it makes no difference how perfect your numbers are. Players also hate losing, but losing may be more acceptable if it is like Counterstrike, where you can lose 10 games and win 10 games in an hour. Losing is more acceptable if the time period between matches is short. A lot of WoW battlegrounds are currently too long.

Pardo also spoke a bit about thinking hard about the type of ladder you want to implement for certain PVP styles of play. What type of ladder do you want to implement? How do players climb a ladder? There are ladders that are fun to play, vs. ladders that determine the best player. Some ladders are fun to play because they reward you for merely playing. Other ladders, such as a ladder they used for one of the earlier Warcraft games, was styled after a chess tournament ladder that is used to determine the best player. However, the top players end up rarely playing matches, because the higher you are on the ladder, the more you have to lose by playing another match. How can the game be fun if the top players in the world don’t even want to play the game? They need to have the right amount of complexity, and incentives in the right place.

On this same note, he mentioned the atrocity (my words, not his) that was Alterac Valley in WoW. He showed a funny diagram of a red arrow and a blue arrow converging from north and south to the middle of the battleground. This, he described, was the intended result of Alterac Valley gameplay. Players from opposing sides would converge in the middle, where they would fight small scale skirmishes to gain small advantages on the other side, and eventually push to the other team’s home base and defeat their NPC commander. However, the incentives were in the wrong place, because players figured out that the best way to earn Honor was to kill the other team’s commander. Players found that this was easier and FASTER achieved (and here he showed the same diagram, except with the red arrow and the blue arrow both pointing to the middle, but side by side) by simply running by the other team in an all-out race to kill the enemy general. (And believe me, I remember when AV used to take hours to finish, and then suddenly when they removed key NPCs, making it easier to start the sprint to the finish. The fastest AV games I played were sometimes 10-15 minutes, instead of the hours and hours that they dragged on previously.)

Other anecdotes included removing the Inspect message. Previously, when players inspected you, you could see a message that said, “Johnny is inspecting you.” Players complained that the Inspect feature was creepy, so instead of removing the entire feature, they removed the message and everything worked out. At one point in the WoW Beta, they had included a feature that allowed players to right click with their mouse to move their character to the designated spot on the screen. However, if a player right clicked on a mob or an enemy player, your character would automatically pathfind to that mob, and chase it if it began running away. They decided that this negated any reason to be conscious of the environment and terrain (since it created a pathfinding process that required little work from the player), and removed it. Finally, in the beginning, WoW had a different rested XP system. Originally, players automatically received 200% experience from killing mobs, to a certain point, at which their XP gain dropped to 100% XP gain. Players felt like this system was too harsh and punishing, so Blizzard cleverly reorganized the math and reversed it. Now, players automatically receive 100% XP gain, unless they log out in an inn, during which time they earn rested XP. When they log back in, they earn XP at a 200% rate until their rested XP bar runs out, at which point it returns to 100%. Clever. We are so easily psychologically manipulated.

In regards to UI and visualization, here are some of his notes: Visual clarity is important. The art should suggest function and power. A skinny guy probably runs faster and can’t take many hits. A big, bulky guy is probably slow and can take many hits. Differentiate teams.

For a while for their RTS games, they debated whether they should generate random maps or provide pre-made maps. They favor pre-made maps because it affords them better control over the game experience. Additionally, random map generation makes it easy for players to blame the map instead of their own skill. (”That map screwed me by starting me at x location.”) Bigger maps don’t equal better maps. And regarding the number of maps, more is not better. If there are 100 maps, how is a player to remember or recognize a map that they liked or disliked?

Matchmaking is very important for PVP games. Fewer buckets are better. Don’t give players too many power user controls, allowing them to choose every single option about the game they want to be put in, because the result is that there are very few people that will want to play the same game as him. Thus, rather than getting 4 people to play in one match, you’ll get 4 people that want to play in 4 different matches, and they end up with no one to play with.

One lesson that I felt was very valuable here is the idea that you really want players to use your system. If it’s not successful right off the bat, people will think the system is broken, and the momentum of the feature dies. Once no one uses the feature anymore, it is extremely difficult to get people to return to using it. One example I can think of immediately is WoW’s in-game Ventrilo system. No one I know uses it, and I am not sure as to the reasons why it failed. I think it was a combination of less than intuitive UI controls, bad sound quality, failure to achieve critical mass, and perhaps a mix of social awkwardness and unfamiliarity to boot.

Well, that was my summary of Pardo’s talk at GDC, or at least the parts I thought were worth jotting down. Hope it’s valuable!

My mind was totally rocked today by this simple game created by a guy named Yoshio Iishi.  Called Cursor 10, you absolutely have to take 5 minutes and give it a try.  Personally, I think this game is cooler than Portal.

In other news, I have started Twittering.  I ignored it while it was all that buzz, but Volty recently started and I found myself pleasantly surprised when I could read his Twitters and find out what he was thinking.  It helped me get a sense of what he was thinking about - things that he doesn’t necessarily share with me.  Alli also twitters, as well as several people at work, and before I knew it I was getting more updates about my friends than I could ever imagine.  I can definitely see the appeal of the app - it feeds into my own obsessive, easily bored nature.  It gives me something to do when my hands are twitching, and something to read when I run out of web feeds.  Another distraction to add to my online wanderings.  Yes!

Lastly, I saw an article on Wired (but sadly cannot find it again) about how a lot of companies, such as even Amazon.com, are offering self-publishing options to aspiring authors.  I thought this was pretty cool because it affects me obviously; now I don’t have to worry about impressing an editor to get any future book projects into print.  I just have to order them online and get them in hand.  Neat-o.

I hope everyone had a great holiday! Well, New Year’s is still around the corner, but the last week and a half has been full of playing Wii games at Volty’s house in Florida. In between going to parties and playing real tennis (yes, real tennis, not make-believe Wii tennis!), we were flexing our surgical skills in Trauma Center: New Blood. This is a game for the Wii with a cooperative mode for two players. I believe it is the second Wii game in the series, although the first game does not have co-op play. There are also Trauma Center titles for the Nintendo DS (although I liked New Blood better than the DS version I have).

My conclusion? This was a really awesome, innovative, flavorful, exciting, and FUN game for two people. I never tried single player mode, but why bother when Volty and I were tackling surgeries side by side? Basically, this is a narrative driven game with “episodes,” where each episode includes some amount of dialogue between characters, and at least one surgery scenario to play. You play as a doctor that has to use several tools to diagnose and deal with medical problems in a patient. Tasks include stuff like using a scalpel to incise a tumor, draining blood, removing tumors with forceps, and patching them up with anti-biotic gel. More involved procedures are tied to the main plotline - tracking down evil villains that are releasing a strain of a deadly new disease, STIGMA, and using it as a biological weapon in terrorism.

First of all, the innovative nature of the entire Trauma Center series is something I’ve admired for a long time. The Wii is a perfect platform for surgical procedures also. At first I thought the controls would be unwieldy and too hard to use with precision, but the game allows for just the right degree of error to make it possible to excel at the game.

Second of all, if you are looking for a cooperative game to share with a loved one or a best buddy, this is an awesome experience. Warning: your partner should have some degree of hand eye coordination though. Volty and I had a ton of fun working together on surgeries, yelling out at each other to coordinate our movements (”I’ll suture, you laser!….Quick, deal with the vitals! I’ll use my Healing Touch!”) in a frantic atmosphere that really made us feel like we were performing emergency surgery, while the game had an appropriate level of difficulty at the same time. We weren’t able to breeze through every single level with flying colors, and most of our resulting scores were C - Rookie Doctor. The occasional time we got an A or a B were ultimate triumphs.

The difficulty ramping was great. The game was appropriately easy in the first few levels, and got harder at the appropriate times to keep us interested. Toward the end (we haven’t finished the whole game yet), we were doing three back-to-back surgeries where we could control the pace and timing, as well as choose when to use power-ups, which has been great fun so far.

Conclusion: Trauma Center: New Blood is one of the best games I’ve played yet in the last few months (maybe other than Portal…sorry I never blogged about it), and is a must have if you have a Wii.

post moved here.

What a weekend! Blizzcon was a blast.

We drove down to LA on Thursday. After about 7 hours and hot temperatures, we arrived in the land of Mickey Mouse - Anaheim. The first thing we did, of course, was to grab our badges and pick up our goodie bags:

One of the things we got in the bag was a starter kit for the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game. I wasn’t really that interested, but I got dragged into playing a round. Here’s my deck in play. I never understood what “tapping” resources and all that stuff was, but now…I’ve become one of them. Yes, one of those “Magic” card players. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still not into TCGs, but now I actually know what all the numbers and doodads on a card means. I feel enlightened and corrupted at the same time.

The next day, bright and early, we hit the convention center. Blizzcon was about to begin!

Even the lobby was well decorated with gorgeous hanging posters. Here is one example:

Once inside the convention center, my first impression was that it was very dark. Lots of people were there already, and the lines to the Blizzcon Store were already several zigzags long. We wandered around for a while. Here’s a shot of the Starcraft Board game.

There were many booths set up, some from partner vendors like Dell and Jinx. Here’s a shot of the UDE (Upper Deck Entertainment) booth. They are the company that makes the WoW Trading Card Game.

Wandering around some more, we noticed this huge banner, so the secret was out of the bag - the next WoW expansion, “Wrath of the Lich King,” was already in the works, and it would involve the story of Prince Arthas. As a side note, it seems to me that sooooo many Blizzard fans love Arthas. Is it because he’s badass? What’s his appeal?

Also on this side of the convention hall, there were numerous displays set up with art from the upcoming expansion. Here are some shots:

By this time, we decided to wait in line for the Blizzard Store, so we could get all our awesome gear before they ran out of stock. Here’s a shot of some of the merchandise for sale in the display case. I picked up a wall and desk calendar, a souvenir poster, a compendium of their novels, and a mouse pad.

More cool posters, this one of Kerrigan from Starcraft.

More concept art from Wrath of the Lich King:

One of the items we got in our goodie bags was a “quest” to turn in at one of the booths. We never did get around to completing the “quest,” but here’s one plucky adventurer collecting his reward.

One unfortunate thing was that with so many WoW fans in one place, there would inevitably be long lines. Here are fans lined up in front of the Jinx t-shirt booth.

By this time it was almost 11:00 am on Friday, and the Opening Ceremony was about to begin. Here’s a shot of the audience, which was a healthy mix of just about everyone under the sun.

After an opening speech by Blizz President Mike Morhaime, he showed the Starcraft 2 trailer again.

And then came the big news: Wrath of the Lich King, and Northrend!

Here are Tigole (Jeff Kaplan, very left) and Tom Chilton (forget if he has a known nickname, very right) talking about the game.

Us looking on during the presentation.

Close-up on the continent of Northrend.

Concept art for some of the zones:

This is art for the Dragonblight, an important place for the Dragonkin of lore, including the place they go to die.

Guess what those sneaky Kirin Tor mages have been doing under the bubble of Dalaran? Transporting it to Northrend of course! Dalaran will be the new capital of Northrend in the expansion.

Dalaran’s placement (in the center) in Northrend.

Tom Chilton talking about Wrath of the Lich King. I actually talked to him at E3 in 2005, because he was the Blizzard employee standing closest to me at the time I was standing in their booth. I remember asking him about PVP…I think I asked him if they had considered an observer system for PVP matches, much like how Guild Wars does it. I didn’t know then that he was the lead designer of WoW!

Slides about the Death Knight class rune system. Death Knights will use runes as their resource system instead of something like rage or mana, and there will be three types of runes.

An example of how the runes might look on a unit frame. Notice that players can select what combination of runes to use. Before I forget, in a later presentation, Jeff Kaplan also admitted (by strong implication although he didn’t say it outright), that one of the new content zones in the upcoming patch would be the Sunwell. They also said that they plan for at least one more 25-man raid zone before Wrath of the Lich King, so I’m guessing that Sunwell might be it.

Later on I wandered over to the Starcraft tournament. I believe this was from the Quarter- or Semi-Finals. It was a match between Yellow on the left and Iris on the right. Iris is currently ranked #4 in the world. More on competitive Starcraft in a little bit.

Here is a close-up shot of Iris in his booth during the competition. The players are sealed off in sound-proof booths while they play. It looks totally cool and sexy!

This is how many people were watching the Starcraft competition. About another 2/3 are off camera.

Also in this area was the Arena 2v2 tournament. Here’s the competition area.

And here are some of the players in the competitive DotA tournament. Myself, Valie, Mitts, and Volty (the other three of my friends who also attended Blizzcon) considered entering, but we were short one person and had to sign up for the tournament online, so we didn’t get around to it.

Then of course there was the hands on Starcraft 2 demo. We were able to play one Terran or Protoss mission for about 20 minutes. I felt like the play was very smooth, and the aesthetics very pretty. My mouse sensitivity felt a bit too high, so that map scrolling was way too fast, but I chuck that up to my machine settings and not the game itself. Overall, I was intrigued enough to want very much to buy the game when it comes out.

People trying out Starcraft 2:

Then of course there was also the opportunity to try out some of the content from Wrath of the Lich King. Before the convention, we were allowed to transfer existing characters to a special Blizzcon test realm. So Valie, Volty, Mitts and I logged on and made a quick run over to Howling Fjord, where we got a quick look at the scenery and then popped into the first 5-man instance in the zone, Utgarde Keep. We were only able to get a few pulls in before our time was up, but the area definitely has a Nordic flavor (and is inhabited by giant wolves and orc-like fellows).

Players trying out Wrath of the Lich King:

Later that evening, it was time for the contests! Talk about user generated content! Here is a shot of the show’s host, comedian Jay Mohr. I thought he was a decent comic - although some of his jokes were outright crude or rude, the rest of them were quite funny. He was very good at improv, and I think overall he won me over, especially since he was a very open and personable guy that was honest as well as friendly with the crowd.

The first contest was “sound alike,” where contestants came up and did their best vocal impressions of famous quotes from Blizzard games. The special guest at the end was none other than the famous Leeeeeeeroy Jenkins himself.

Another contest that evening was the Dance Contest, where contestants tried to do their best impressions of WoW character dances. This young man did a very good impression of the male Blood Elf dance, which is rife with pelvic thrusts and jams. I thought he was exceptional because not only did he imitate the movements, he put some spirit and fire in…in other words, he actually danced!!

Here is another dance contestant, who, true to style, did the ogre dance and ripped his shirt off during the routine.

Here is the crowd going wild before the Costume Contest!

I loved this costume personally, but unfortunately it didn’t win anything. It’s Lady Vashj of course.

Rogue in Bloodfang and a Thunderfury.

Warlock in Tier 6.

King Arthas. I also thought this was an excellent costume.

Warlock in Tier 5.

Infected Kerrigan.

Moonkin!

Dreadlord.

Lady Sylvanas.

Arugal from Silverpine Forest.

Priest in Tier 5.

Another warlock in Tier 5.

Tauren Druid.

Naga siren casting fear on people around her.

Illidan, the Betrayer.

Hydromancer Sepethrea from Mechanar, complete with fire elementals.

Harpy from Stonetalon Peak.

Rockflayer from Burning Crusade Alpha.

Another infected Kerrigan.

Warlock prom date.

Spirit of Redemption.

Priest in Tier 5.

Paladin in Judgement gear.

Blood Elf Mage.

Booty Bay pirate.

Blood elf rogue.

The man who was the inspiration for “He Who Has No Life” in the WoW South Park Episode.

Costume contest winners! Assassin from Diablo, Moonkin, Terran Ghost, and Warlock in Tier 6.

Day 2.

The morning started with a panel about the Warcraft movie being made in conjunction with Legendary Pictures (they brought us 300 earlier this year). I am definitely excited about the end result, because I know it will be an incredible movie. My only question is when they will be casting extras, but it looks like they haven’t even cast the main actors yet so I feel more relieved that I haven’t missed my chance to be an orc.

Concept art for some of the ideas going into the movie.

Here are some folks playing the WoW TCG at the conference. There were actually quite a lot of people who were playing the trading card game, which was cool.

Most of Day 2 was spent watching tournaments and events. The Starcraft finals were about to go down!

First we watched the semi-finals, which was a match up between Iris and Nal_rA. The first game went to Iris, with the second two going to Nal_rA. I have to say that I was quite taken by Nal_rA, who was a very cheerful guy that was modest and funny. He admitted that the second game where he won against Iris was a lucky win, while his strategy actually worked in the third. Thus, he said, as long as you like playing StarCraft, any one of us can also be as good as he is.

Nal_rA went on to the grand finals, where he would face off against Savior. Here is a shot of Savior below. He is ranked #1 in the world and has been for quite some years. In the pre-game interview, he said some things that made him appear very arrogant, and I’m not sure if he really is full of himself or whether there was something lost in translation. He said things like, “I will show you that I am the best player in the world at Zerg,” and “I’m confident I will win” (against Nal_rA), and I wonder if in Korea, that sort of statement is seen as a positive show of confidence or something.

And here is his opponent, my underdog, Nal_rA. Woooo! I feel a sort of attachment to him since I saw him win the previous match, but even more than that, I feel a fascination with professional Starcraft gaming starting to grow. Do you ever wonder that too? Like, what sort of lives they lead? How much they have to practice, how they deal with fame and celebrity, whether they are friends or enemies with their opponents in real life? I think it’s fascinating. And mostly, how their brains function during a match? The audience was able to see each of their screens during each game, and the speed at which they move their cursors and tap hotkeys is phenomenal. They apparently are measured as fast as 500 APM, or actions per minute. I am fascinated by how fast and how far forward they have to think, and it’s no question that their micro/macro management skills are impeccable. These are truly the best strategy players in the world, and how old are they? Savior looks like he’s 14 years old to me, while Nal_rA might be 17 or 18!

Anyway, the games began, and basically, Nal_rA had to win twice in order to win the tournament. In the first match, which was decently long and VERY exciting, the fight came down to a critical expansion base in the middle of the map. Although the resources were technically on Nal_rA’s side of the map, Savior expanded there. Nal_rA tried to take back the resource node by building up something like 8 or 10 photon cannons in a defensive grid to slowly push forward. They clashed three or four times in that very area, and although it was an incredible show down, Savior’s Zerg were just too many (true to the Zerg) and overran the Protoss defensive line.

Another great part was that the game was commentated by announcers, who were excellent! I want to give a quick shoutout to Tasteless, who was the guy that gave a play by play and helped us understand what the heck was going on. He was obviously very very well versed in the game, because as soon as one of the players did something, he was able to tell us why that player might have made that move. For example, Nal_rA placed a pylon (which is like a “farm” that basically allows you to build something like 4 more units (soldiers, vehicles, etc.)) in a different camp than his main base. Tasteless was then able to tell us that this type of strategy, because his opponent could easily tell that he was short one pylon in his base, was a very elite strategy - it was used to trick the opponent into thinking that Nal_rA had already expanded into a different area, and would put him on the defense and cause him to look for that expansion. Cool.

Along with these great matches, I felt even more inspired to see if I can find any opportunities to shoutcast (or announce) something like WoW arena matches. I think I can do it since I’ve played WoW for so long, as well as PvPed for a good amount of it, but yeah, we’ll see. ^_^

After all of this excitement, we headed to the Arena for the closing concerts.

The Arena got full pretty quickly.

Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain performing. I have to say I was not impressed at all by their performance, and 3 things greatly detracted from it: First, they were much too strong in their proclamation that Horde was better than the Alliance. I would love to play Horde and, given the choice, would prefer Horde to Alliance, but the fact is that all my important gaming friends play Alliance. I don’t appreciate being made to feel inferior because of a choice that I cannot completely control. Second, Mr. Morhaime was in the band. I didn’t like that because it made it feel like a Blizzard band, or more specifically, that the band had preferential treatment because hey, guess what, the President is playing guitar in it! I think he should have changed his shirt to be less obvious or something, but basically I felt it gave the band less credibility. And third, it was quite a lot of yelling but I guess that’s just the heavy metal style, which honestly…I don’t know how much of the younger generation is a fan of these days. But still, they were very lively and energetic, and the lyrics to their songs were certainly excellent. I think one of my favorite songs was Terran Up the Night, and of course, I am Murloc is their signature piece.

Close-up.

Video Games Live, which is a symphony orchestra, then played several selections from Blizzard games.

It was quite the light show.

Finally, the woman that does the Sindorei song performed a beautiful solo.

I even got misty eyed during certain parts, when they showed footage of our favorite places in Azeroth, or the cinematics that we all have seen and love.

Overall, Blizzcon was fun. The crowd was awesome, and I felt like I was surrounded constantly by people who totally got it. At any moment, anyone could jump into a conversation about nerfing Warlocks. People cheered and hooted respectively whenever the developers mentioned their class; spirit and pride was obvious everywhere. One of my favorite moments was when one of the dance contestants, who was a very nervous and awkward looking lady, was about to go up and perform. It was clear that she was really nervous, and the crowd responded with a tremendous roar of cheers encouraging her to go on. Basically she represents what all of us are - imperfect, but deep down, the same. That moment was when I really felt like part of…maybe not necessarily a family, but still part of something really special - people who had seen and shared and felt the same wonder from something as simple as a video game.

That leads me to my final thought, which is that holy crap Blizzard has created a monster of a brand. It is absolutely phenomenal - from games to books to manga to comics to a movie - that millions of people have bought into and share and are absolutely loyal to - that is just amazing. I think it is because Blizzard has always stuck to one principle, and that is to build and release games that they themselves love to play, and not just to make this thing called money.

I can’t wait to go home and get back into game (ironically, attending Blizzcon rendered me unable to play WoW), and I’m definitely looking forward to many, many good things still to come.

Is the future of flight here?  Click.