AGDC 2005

Game developers in Australia meet and greet. Logan Booker reports.

Although smaller than previous outings, 2005's Australian Game Developers Conference was still packed with content for up-and-coming developers, as well as veterans of the industry.

With names like Chris Metzen and Rob Pardo of Blizzard Entertainment, Eidos' Ian Livingstone and BioWare's Dr Ray Muzyka, there was no shortage of high profile, experienced developers. While Metzen and Pardo gave talks on the success behind Blizzard's strong franchises like Starcraft and Warcraft, Dr Muzyka was focused on delivering the good news on the joining of BioWare and Australia's own Pandemic Studios.

There was much to learn from this year's speakers. Pardo stressed that developers, considering the current state of the games industry, should focus on execution, not innovation, when creating new titles. Like any business, games need to make money, and according to Pardo this is what developers should concentrate on -- at least in the short term.

Metzen on the other hand was all about plot and cultivating back stories. The huge amount of lore behind Blizzard's MMORPG World of Warcraft made the game possible, allowing designers to flesh out all the game's tiny details. It's thanks to these details and the history of the Warcraft series that the game is a conversation topic when away from the keyboard.

Livingstone, in his new role at Eidos as product acquisitions director, was on the hunt for potentially good games as well as talent, and even Blizzard had a stand manned by two of the company's HR people, scoping the Australian developer landscape for enthusiastic, bright-eyed Australian artists, programmers and designers. Livingstone was also out championing the reprinting of the original Fighting Fantasy series of role-playing novels.

If you're interested in reading more about this year's AGDC 2005 in detail, including its change of hands and plans for future conventions, check out the February issue of Atomic magazine.