D.I.C.E 2007 Highlights: What They Said

Author: by Staff

Gamasutra is reporting live from Las Vegas on the 2007 D.I.C.E conference, and we've now put together the best quotes from the summit's two days, from Harmonix's Alex Rigopulos and Gas Powered Games' Chris Taylor through earlier quotes from Harrison, Wright, and Lowenstein. You can find full coverage of all of these speeches at Gamasutra's special D.I.C.E. 2007 page, which also features exclusive coverage of the D.I.C.E. Golf Tournament, for kicks. And now, on with the quotes: "There’s a new fear of high expectations for our next game, and a fear to not let down MTV... we have the resources and expertise to get our vision right, and along with that comes the stress with wanting to make absolutely certain we don’t screw it up. And in a lot of ways this stress is every bit as potent as it was before we made a hit game." - Harmonix's Alex Rigopulos talks about what keeps him up at night. "I love [my son] more than anything in the world, but I’m in this industry where I’m never going to see him, because I’m in this world where we say you have to stay until midnight. No, I have to change it! So I started to change it... I put my son and my family and my health first, work third. We put this on our walls at Gas Powered Games." - Chris Taylor makes one of the most personal speeches of the show. "Already we use the same rendering software, we use the same animation software, we model the same polygon count. Where it's going now is that people creative in one medium will extend to others. We're going to see people who got their start as really basic animators or scenery designers in the game community someday standing at the Academy Awards and thanking their mom and their agent." - Sony Pictures Digital's Yair Landau discusses the game-film convergence in action. "If dissonance is followed by constant harmony, this is a good thing... Dissonance creates tension. If you follow that by release, this is a great thing. Tension-release, tension-release. It’s stress, and the relieving of that stress, and these are the building blocks of music." - Inis' Keiichi Yano holds a design symposium on rhythm games. "I’m calling for an open marketplace of developers... If anyone in this room wants to call me, you just call me, and I’ll take your call. I don’t have to sneak around. Now, an open marketplace has a lot of implications, one of which is that it’s really scary. But I believe in markets, and I also believe in talent, and I believe that if the market is open, talent will come out. I guess I’m kind of betting on that." - Method Games' Michael John on the advantages of going solo. "Nothing annoys me more [than] the publishers and developers who make controversial content and then cut and run when it comes time to defending their creative decisions. If you want the right to make what you want, if you want to push the envelope, I’m out there defending your right to do it. But, dammit, get out there and support the creative decisions you make... If you want to be controversial, that’s great. But then don’t duck and cover when the shit hits the fan. Stand up and defend what you make." - Doug Lowenstein's stormy farewell speech to the game business. "By what measure is the launch of PS3 unsuccessful? We had people lined up in stores in three continents... we can always sell more, but [the European launch is] on track for March... the boat with the first supply is on its way from China as we speak. I think it’s a fantastic achievement." - Phil Harrison's in-depth grilling at the hands of Newsweek's N'Gai Croal, when asked about Gabe Newell's indictment of the PS3 launch. "I think we’re at ‘fast, cheap or good, pick one.' You can say you’re going to do a 12-month title, maybe it ties with a movie, but the thing is, don’t plan on being cheap and don’t plan on being good also. Pick one... At id, we always pick ‘good.’ If we turn out a game that’s not very good in one of our brands, it ultimately hurts the value of the studio. So we always focus on good. Quality is always number one." - id's Steve Nix talking about 'Studio Survival, One Level at a Time'. "I’m more the traffic cop than anything else." - Maxis' Will Wright explains why he didn't want to be the sailor for the purposes of making Spore. "The key messages that I want to drive home today are that in-game ads are going to make you rich, they’re going to make you famous, and they’re going to make you better, and I’m going to explain to you how I feel that will happen." - Ubisoft's Jay Cohen loves those in-game ads, apparently. "I don’t mean to belittle developers, but we’ve only managed to recreate PS2 in the palm in your hand... I think we can go deeper, I think we can explore more features of the machine, connectivity, social aspects, media aspects, and integrate it into game design that is unique to that format. It’s not a missed opportunity so much as a future opportunity." - Phil Harrison gets surprisingly honest about the fortunes of the PlayStation Portable. “It’s very easy on the keyboard to type up a bunch of criticisms about how ESA isn’t doing this or that right. Then you look and where are these people? Are they getting in the fight? Are they making political contributions? Are they going to their senators? No, they’re sitting on their hands. I’m sick and tired of people sitting on their hands.” - Lowenstein's farewell speech again? Of course.