Monthly Archives: March 2009

I wrote this article for Henry Jenkins, and am reprinting it here for you. Enjoy!

Hi Everyone! Henry, thanks for inviting me back for my annual round up of all the interesting things that happened this year at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC). For those of you who are reading my posts for the first time I’m Eitan, local Boston game nerd and developer. I used to be a grad student at MIT doing games research, and now I’m the founder and creative director of Fire Hose Games.

But enough about me, let’s talk about games! This year I’ll be doing two posts: Talking the Talk, and Walking the Walk. The first (today’s post) will be all about interesting talks, lectures, rants, and totally inappropriate outbursts heard at the conference. The next post will be all about the amazing developers I was lucky enough to meet who are making things happen. So let’s get started – what was awesome?

Usability, Motherfuckers!
Sure, it’s a little self serving to talk about your own session first, but it was a damn good talk and I want you to hear about it. A lot of people out there can’t play video games due to some sort of disability (this applies to computer systems in general). However, with a bit of extra thought and planning game developers can frequently make their titles work for many of these disabled groups, and in the process make their game more usable for everyone. This can even lead to increased sales, so spending money on making a game highly usable will often earn money! I covered a bunch of concrete tips for things that developers can do to make their games more usable, and pointed out examples of games that exemplify this behavior (like Half Life 2 and Peggle) and games that could do so much more (like Trespasser and Puzzle Quest). If this sounds interesting you can grab the slide deck here.

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Yesterday I gave my talk to the GDC 2009 Serious Games crowd, and it went pretty well! I covered why we made AudiOdyssey and what we learned in the process, and then doled out some extra large scoops of take home tips for developers in the crowd. It seemed to go over pretty well, I only saw a few audience members fall asleep and I got some great feedback afterwards.

I’ve gotten a bunch of requests for my slides from the talk, so go ahead and grab ‘em!

Eitan’s GDC 2009 Talk on AudiOdyssey, Usability, and Accessibility

Going to GDC this year? Not quite sure what is worth checking out? Well never fear, I’ve got your back with a list of what I suspect will be some of the more interesting talks at GDC this year. Of course, I think the highlight will probably be my 1:30 talk on Monday at Serious Games on AudiOdyssey and all things accessible/usable, but here are the other great choices:

Monday, 11:15 – 11:45am, Simon Carless talks about Indie games sales and stats in room 304 of the Indie Games Summit.

Monday, 1:30 – 2:00pm, I’ll talk about Mega Man 9 errr AudiOdyssey in room 305 of the Serious Games Summit

Want more? Follow the link!

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Studying entrepreneurship at MIT, I constantly hear the importance of engaging customers early on in the development of new products. To create a successful new product, you have to listen to the customers and really understand their needs.

But some companies don’t do it. A common reason not to engage the customer is the feeling that its a waste of time because customers can’t conceive of breakthrough products. Henry Ford once said “if we asked our customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” The key to this quote for me, though, is the question that’s being asked. You can’t just ask a customer what they want. You have to really get to know them, observe them riding the horse and ask questions about the experience.

This is where marketing comes in. The last thing we need is another Segway.

When I started helping Fire Hose on the business side, I wondered how marketing would work at a video game company. Without a clear customer need to address, I wondered if games were developed in a bubble, without any input from customers at all.

It turns out, that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, startups everywhere could learn something about marketing from a video game company. Since the first week of development, Fire Hose has brought in potential customers to test and the input received has strongly influenced the direction of the game. Rapid prototyping has allowed the team to test every couple of weeks or so. What other startups are getting that much feedback on their product, especially in the very early stages? I can’t imagine many. It’s been refreshing to see and I think the final product will reflect the valuable input from customers.

Boston cares about us! Really! Or so my good buddy Tom Menino would have us believe. It seems that he’s done a bit of an about face on his prior stance towards our local games industry, probably when he realized that we provide a ton of high tech jobs in the area and not all of our titles are murder simulators. The local government has unveiled Powering Up, a portal for developers in the greater Boston area. I don’t know exactly where this will lead, but I’m happy to see that the people in charge recognize the business video games bring to Boston.

I’m also hoping that Jason Schupbach had something to do with this. Jason is our local government cheerleader, and has been busting his ass trying to win us the support that we need. Perhaps he was successful? Who knows.

Menino, now that we’re good friends and all how about giving us that 15% tax credit that you give the film industry. What do you say?