What I learned from the 2012 DICE SUMMIT, and I wasn’t even there!

      I’m going to break one of the first rules of video game journalism, right now!  I watched a whole slew of videos over at Gamespot on the 2012 DICE SUMMIT and wow were they good.  You can watch them too, head over here…

    Why do I do this, break one of the first rules of running your own thing. “Don’t link to and endorse other sites, especially those that are much bigger than yours.”  Because in the past two years Gamespot has gotten better and better.  Probably due to the involvement of a certain VP at CBS.  But hey, who knows… Right…  While I leave you with that little nugget, I’ll tell you what I learned on my journey through DICE 2012.

    I was once told by a very trusted friend that as a game journalist that I would someday need to learn exactly how games are made and what goes into making them.  I never really believed them until a couple of years ago when I found that this knowledge became more and more necessary to write effectively about games.  So I started to get very interested in conferences like DICE and GDC and tried to get as much information as I possibly could from them.  I read extensive essays on the internet, I watched video presentations.  But never had the quality and quantity of that information been as well done as it was this year from Gamespot and DICE 2012.  So what did I learn.  I learned a lot of things.  Here are a few of them…

      First, Game Developers are people…  Yes, I know that sounds crazy.  Of course they are people.  I find this to be an insanely important thing to say however, because the internet loves to complain and focus on just one person as a figure head for a group that could be as large as five hundred.  All people, all have lives, families, hopes, dreams, and worries.  And of course, they all have problems.  You know those things that keep popping up at your job.  That guy in marketing keeps hitting on you or maybe you just got a new boss and he makes you feel that homicide might actually be the correct response in some situations.  Yes, these offices are not the lands of elysian that many gamers and students may believe wholeheartedly.  These ordinary people, in some cases or perhaps most cases.  Also happen to be brilliant.  Yes brilliant, how else do you explain something like a modern video game with a million moving parts and all most as many bugs actually coming out to ship at the end of the day?  Luck?  No, I prefer brilliance.  When the games aren’t as good, this just means things didn’t go as well.  Sometimes this means funding didn’t come through or “gasp” someone didn’t do their job.  Yes, just like your job.  There is all ways that one person that just won’t play ball.  It twas all ways thus and all ways thus shall be…

     Second, I learned that many times the people that we put out as figure heads for their studios are usually more brilliant managers and leaders than they are game designers.  Someone like Ted Price or Mike Morhaine probably spend more time dealing with people than code.  This is what makes the games we play great.  Not some lone visionary sharing their genius with their team so they can create some amazing piece of art.  No, it’s more likely that there are hundreds of people responsible for your favorite game, not just one or two.  In fact, that is why I usually talk about a given studio in my reviews and not one person.  Because no matter the success or failures, it’s the group who is ultimately responsible not just one person.

    Third, every gamer needs to listen to at least one of these DICE SUMMIT talks.  Not every one of them and certainly not every year.  But as a gamer who reads, plays, and watches stuff on the games industry it’s important for you to understand how these things come to be and what kind of places they come from.

    Finally, I love listening to developers talk about business and game design structure.  It makes me feel like everything has a solid plan.  No matter how insane a game seems to be designed that somewhere a bunch of folks had a design doc and a plan.  It may not have all gone well or perhaps they ran out of time.  But there was a plan…  Lastly, the cold hard truth is that bad things some times happen and the consequences of which are out of everyone’s control.

   Of course, this Summit was all about grand ideas, philosophy, or HOW-TO…  No, it was was also about people trying to sell their company on others.  Sometimes more blatantly than others.  These talks really turned me off, but then they weren’t aimed at me.  But I will say that if your going to sell your business you might want to be both funny and entertaining rather than just TRYING to be.  Otherwise, even the people you ARE trying to reach will just go off and do something else(the summit is in Vegas after all).

   That’s it, I’m done.  If you want to see some of these talks for yourself; hit the link at the top of the article.  Please hit me up in comments and let me know what you think of the talks or perhaps if you’ve been to DICE or GDC what you got out of them.  I love games and game developers so it’s nice to get to know them in equal measure as much as possible.