waving android

I am currently a software engineer at Google, where as a member of the Android platform team I build frameworks and user interfaces.

The blog here at is mostly historical; you can find more recent posts on .

Notes from the GDC

March 13th, 2005

Alice Taylor has been taking meticulous notes from the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco. Starting at the end, take a look at the Game Developer’s Rant, which is a hilarious panel discussion with some deep insights too:

[Brenda Laurel:] GTA. I talked to 22 little boys in LA, all of them wanted to see that game. With only one exception, the thing that they wanted to see was to be able to drive by their house. They weren’t interested in stealing cars. Or the criminals. Or the back-story. They weren’t interested in that, they wanted the simulation of driving by the house. 

Or read about storytelling in games from BioWare’s Greg Zeschuk:

We have a blueprint. It’s the first time we’ve revealed it.. it’s five main pieces of a story in our games:

  • Introduction,
  • Prelude,
  • The Linear Start,
  • The Wide-open World,
  • The Linear Finale.

Maybe you’d like to hear Peter Molyneux talk about Black & White 2:

How many of you played B&W? yes. Ok. I didn’t really know what that game was. It was a bit unstructured. Here’s what B&W2 will be: are you the god of war (Ron: YES) or the god of peace (Ron: BOR-ING)? Do you want to build cities? Do you care about your people? Or are you a player that wants to go out and destroy things? (Ron: YAH! OF COURSE!). So we brought them together. (Ron: WE SAT AT YOUR HOUSE AND HAD BEER AND BURGERS).

And of course, Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata:

On my business card I am a president. in my mind I am a game developer, but in my heart I am a gamer. Today I’d like to speak about my heart, the jobs and this industry.

(Now you can go back to the developers’ rant panel, and read Greg Costikyan rail on the elimination of innovative, third-party, small-budget, fun game design.)

Then there was the Nintendo keynote. This was the company who established the business model that has crucified the industry today.. Iwata-san has the heart of a gamer, and my question is what poor bastard’s chest did he carve it from? […] Nintendo could make development kits cheaply available to small firms, but they prefer to rely on the creativity on one aging designer.

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