Lena Zúñiga

This week I attended the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. I was covering some of the talks and announcements thanks to my friends in Hipertextual.com.

These large conferences are fun but also quite challenging. There’s so much to see, and yet it is all in a very traditional format of panels and presentations… zzzz. Also, every topic makes me think of a dozen research questions!

A few personal highlights:

Intuitive design. I really enjoyed a presentation of the new version of the Fable game because it shows the evolution of a classic RPG game going more into Adventure. The changes in the new version of the game really show you what is possible today. I like how the designers are creating more meaningful interactions between players, and how humor, tenderness, anger and fear are all so vivid in the story line.

Indy games. I had the chance to see and play a lot of the independent games on the conference floor. Indy producers can be bolder and take more risks than big studios. They explore more difficult themes and take more chances with concept, art and sound. A good session was “The Indie Game Maker Rant” where indie developers had 5 mins to rant about an idea. I love indy games because you can see the love and the passion of a personal project reflected on the final product.

Social games. Social games in platforms such as Facebook have converted new audiences into gamers. I’m really interested to learn how social games are working outside the US and Europe, and how localization works when an update is launched every month. I’m interested on the low entry barriers of these games, and how playing with your friends makes them so much more meaningful. There’s a lot to learn here.

Women in games. I guess the panel I attended was a little off topic, because it was very general. Maybe it’s a good sign, and producing games for women is no longer such a specific topic? Anyway, it was refreshing to hear game producers opening up to more interesting concepts on how to make a game more attractive to women and girls, if only because of the huge market opportunity.

Comedy in games. This was one of my favorite sessions, in which the panelist talked about actual game writing. I find this process very similar to some of the small multimedia design projects I’ve done in the past: concept, storyboarding, dialogue, table readings, voice actors… I like the idea that the humor and personality of the design team translates into a funny game. I like this topic, I wish there was more of it in the program.

Some videos and audio from GDC can be seen here.

This year we started sharing office space with Accion Latina, a non-profit organization publisher of El Tecolote newspaper. El Tecolote is part of the history of the Mission district in San Francisco, and has been a vital part of its arts and social justice movement since 1970. It has also been a training ground for many aspiring latino journalists. I’ve been helping out with occasional translations, and it’s always a thrill to see my name in old-fashion news print!

As many other independent media outlets, El Teco has been feeling the economic downturn and the challenges of adapting to new media, social networking tools and citizen journalism. Recently, they have started an alliance with Mission Loc@l, a project of hyper-local online news coverage developed by UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.

A couple of days ago I translated this article (english) about the upcoming Encuentro del Canto Popular, a folk music festival that Accion Latina has been organizing for 28 years with local performers.

*Photo by edgehill