All ye who enter here be doomed!

As if this year's GDC rant was not enough to convince everyone that innovation in the game industry was a thing of the past now everyone’s favorite tech curmudgeon is calling a top and declaring that the industry is doomed.

None of this will save a doomed industry. The business is going to attempt to sustain growth and creativity by making game players buy newer and newer machines. Computer gaming has always been sustained by never-ending improvements in resolution and realism. But once we get to photorealism, what is going to sustain growth?

Physics. Real-Time physics are next and after that believable character AI and then things will really start cooking when we innovate new interfaces and gameplay based on voice recognition.




Get the picture?

When the John Carmack’s,Tim Sweeney’s and John Ratcliff's of the industry get bored writing networked 3d rendering engines they will bring their drive and genius to the neglected sectors of game development. Keep those next-gen platforms coming because once we have photo-realistic rendering we’ll still have plenty of work for faster processors.

I really can't imagine this scene continuing as it is for much longer. I suspect that the next generation of machines will be the last—or at least the last in the current boom market. It will be downhill from there.

Didn’t someone once say something equally stupid like “no one will ever need more than 640k”?

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Jay Lee has joined the Team!

I'm very happy to announce that Jay Lee has joined the MMP Game Development Team!

Jay came into the games industry after a 10 year career with EDS, serving clients such as General Motors, Exxon and Sprint in their information technology needs. He started as a programmer with Sierra and contributed to titles such as Gabriel Knight 2, Betrayal at Antara, Colliers Encyclopedia and Swat 2. He entered the world of online multi-player games when he joined Origin Systems, working as the database programmer and scripting lead on Ultima Online 2. He then started at NCsoft's Austin office as one of the original team, serving as technical lead and database programmer for Tabula Rasa. Most recently he was lead programmer for an unannounced title at NCsoft.

Thanks Jay!

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Welcome aboard John Donham!

John Donham from Sony Online Entertainment has joined the MMP Game Development Blog Team!

As Vice President of Product Development for Sony Online Entertainment's San Diego studio, John Donham manages the teams producing EverQuest, EverQuest II, EverQuest Online Adventures, PlanetSide, two products under development, and SOE's publishing projects including Champions of Norrath: Return to Arms.

John started in the online game industry over twelve years ago as a programmer and designer for commercial text-based MUD companies Novalink (Legends) and Simutronics (GemStone III, DragonRealms). Beginning in '95, John worked as a producer and designer at Simutronics for several MMP products: DragonRealms, ArchMage, Hercules and Xena, and CyberStrike 2. During this time, John also helped manage Simutronics' transition from a dependency upon online services (such as AOL and CompuServe) to a service-independent internet game company, helping create the infrastructure needed to run an online game service (web site, billing system, customer service tools, 24/7 monitoring of the game products). In 1998 and 1999, he managed all product development and live products at Simutronics. In 1999, John moved on to Outrage Entertainment, where he helped the company grow from one development team to two, and he produced the early stages of the single player console products, Munukuru and Alter Echo. In 2000, John joined Sony Online Entertainment as a Senior Producer, shipped Star Wars Galaxies in 2003, and managed the Galaxies live team for the first several months after launch. John then moved on to be the Director of Development for the San Diego studio, and helped ship EQ: Gates of Discord, EQ: Omens of War and EverQuest II. John has led SOE's San Diego studio development since October 2004.

Thanks John!

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Trailing the latest Harry Potter book by a bit

We are still trailing the latest Harry Potter book by a bit but the sales rank of the new MMP book has not only bested the original it has also managed to improve the rank of the first book considerably.

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #47,434 in Books

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Now we can talk about MMP Art development issues!

Jeff Dobson from Sony Online has joined the MMP Game Development blog team!

Jeff is currently the Assistant Art Director on Star Wars:Galaxies. An eight year veteran of the game industry, he has spent his entire career as an artist working on online games. Having started his career with Simutronics and Cyberstrike2, he moved onto Origin Systems and the ill-fated Ultima Online 2, and eventually found his way to Sony Online Entertainment where he worked as the Lead Technical Artist for the initial release of Star Wars: Galaxies. Jeff was the also the Lead Artist on the SWG's first expansion, Jump To Lightspeed.

Thanks Jeff!

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