Nordic Game Conference 2008

On the 14th and 15th of May – last week – I attended the Nordic Game Conference in Malmö for the first time. It is always exciting to hear about products in development and future releases. And it is also a lot of fun to meet and talk to other professionals and students – but I must admit, that I am a bit disappointed.

There were no talks on game audio!!!

But there were two talks that I found interesting:

• EVE Online
• LEGO Star Wars – LEGO Indiana Jones.

EVE Online
The speakers on the talk about EVE Online were PhD students working at CCP Games. Their research gave a deeper aspect to the whole idea and future development of MMO games.

One of the subjects regarding the MMO EVE Online was emergence and social structures in EVE Online. In the light of MMO development – giving the players the right tools to emerge can open more opportunities for players in EVE.

The speaker’s research was based on how small systems of structures interact with other systems and how their interaction have an impact on the formation of larger structures – like for instance how social networks and interactions can create formations. As an example he talked about how all the players in EVE at one point formed two large Alliences that went to war with each other. Another example was how 4000 players build a Titan together. A consequence, of this collaboration between 4000 players, was the impact on other trade and economic systems within EVE, such as the marketprices for minerals and mining. So in many aspects the MMO is a mirror of our society in real life.

Another subject that was interesting was the social institutions in EVE. The talk was based on how EVE has developed as a society and how players specialize in professions beyond in-game professions and how the populations are distributed in EVE.

The most interesting subject though was CCP Games development of the Council of Stellar Management 2.0 for EVE Online. CSM 2.0 is going to be a council of 9 representatives democratically voted by EVE Online players. This gives possible candidates the opportunity to campaign politically in forums and web sites. The winning candidates are then encouraged to step up as real persons and work together with CCP to handle and solve issues in EVE Online. This is a very interesting development because the empowering of players opens up for a whole bunch of opportunities in the online community!

LEGO Star Wars – LEGO Indiana Jones
The talk on Lego Star Wars was not particularly interesting – apart from the introduction of the conference, where the speakers came up to the stage as hostages of Darth Vader!

Anyway – I am definetely going to pre-order LEGO Indiana Jones! I can tell you that the demo and in-game sequences looked awsome!!!