[SAAM Theme Music]
[Applause]
Chris Melissinos: Now, for the first time in the history of the games industry and the history of technology, and the history in general,
we have the first children who grew up playing with these, who understood there was more to this medium, more to the story,
raising children of their own,
and to me, I think it is absolutely tremendous that we’re standing right at the precipice of this because
the art that is going to come out of that movement, the art that’s going to happen over the next 10 years is going to be staggering.
Right? The social messages, the things we want to impart on society,
is just going to absolutely blossom moving forward,
so it seems like we’ve just kind of been building up all this time to the jumping-off point now.
Ken Levine: It’s weird that you say that, games can be isolators, you could not find a person more isolated than me when I was in sixth or seventh grade.
I had no friends, I had no connections, I was lonely, I was weird, and
games were my, my Atari was my companion, and then,
and D&D, which at the time--Dungeons and Dragons--at the time, people probably don’t remember,
that was one of those things that was corrupting our children.
If you were there, you remember, I mean, no joke, it was serious, people were serious conversations, a TV movie with Tom Hanks,
where somebody got involved with, they got involved with this D&D group, and then, oh my god, what happened, and he ends up dead, and drugs,
[Laughter]
and seriously, and it was this, and when I found, I heard of two people, both were talking on the bus in the ninth grade about Dungeons and Dragons,
and I started talking to them, and one of those guys, and then I had, for the first time, really, in my childhood, then I found my friends,
I found a group of friends. I’m still friends with this guy to this day,
and it absolutely was, it did not shut my world down, it opened my world up, and I’m forever grateful,
and those ideas were dangerous, and they were strange, and they were weird, and they were all I had,
so I’m forever grateful to games for that.
Melissinos: No, and I didn’t say it was a problem,
that we didn’t, we all did it.
Levine: That’s a perception, right?
Melissinos: And you know, that’s the problem, the perception. My mother would always tell me, “Why are you doing this? Go outside and get some air,” and I’d--
“Alright, got some air.”
[Laughter]
Paul Barnett: On the drawings in here…
Melissinos: We’ve done that, I’m sorry. We actually took a black-and-white television and the big 20 out into the back yard with an extension cord,
and we’re out there playing some terrible, I think it was,
I can’t even remember the name of it right now. “Radar Rat Race.”
Barnett: The cab driver driving me in, asked me where I was going, and I said, I’m going to the Art Video Games,
do you do anything with video games, well, not really, but sort of.
And he then said, "I need your advice." So I said, "So, what’s that?" He said,
"I, how can I stop my child playing computer games?"
And I was like, well, not sure I’m the right person to ask that.
[Laughter]
And he was like, “He obsessively plays them all the time, you know.” I said, “Oh, okay, that’s interesting.”
And he said, “It’s not good for him.” I said, “Oddly enough, my mother
had a very similar attitude, I was up in my bedroom constantly playing on my computer, and she was always going,
‘Go outside, get some exercise, get some sun. Go out and play with other people.’
And all those people who were outside, if I went outside, would beat me up and...
would be mean to me, and now, of course, when I go home, and I’m driving past there, they’re holding up stop signs and waving me through and cleaning up roads,
right? Sometimes. So I’m sort of from the other side, which is not that you shouldn’t play more games. Which everyone is.”
Melissinos: You know, if it’s important to play more games, we’ve talked about the Golden Age, I’d love to,
not that you can stop me, I’m going to share this story with you, which,
which had this juxtaposition that
struck me and my wife as we were sitting discuss this as just the craziest bizarre thing,
when the Wii was released, and we looked at how
controls and new types of gameplay, which are old types of gameplay, ping pong, tennis, kind of
opened the door to acceptance of games of a different generation.
My parents, my father, my stepmother, they had wanted a Wii for Christmas, they
they couldn’t get one, they had bought one at, like, a silent auction for, I think, 600 dollars,
because they had wanted one so desperately, and then they asked me for games for Christmas.
So, my parents were asking me to get things, games for Christmas. Now, It gets better.
One night, we had gotten, our kids homework done, got them all to bed.
Oh, we’re exhausted, let’s watch a little TV. Must have been 10:30 at night or so. The phone rings,
and it’s my stepmother, and there’s all this noise in the background, and she says,
“We’re having trouble getting these two controllers connected to the Wii. What do we need to do?” And I’m going,
“What the hell are you doing, it’s like Wednesday night at 10:30.” And she goes, “No, I’m trying to play.”
I say, “Well, what game is it?” And my wife’s like, “What are you talking about?” And I’m like, “...I don’t know.” And
I’m like, “oh, that’s not a four player game, it’s a two player--” “Okay, we gotta go, we gotta go, it’s my turn, bye.”
And she hangs up the phone on me.
[Laughter]
Seriously. I’m like--
Kellee Santiago: It was like, “go outside and get some air, Mom.”
[Chorus of “Exactly” from the others]
[Laughter]
Melissinos: Alright, listen, before we open this up to some Q&A, what I really want to talk about is, you know, I’d like us,
you all, I’ve spoken enough, to take yourself a little outside the games you do, and if you could,
we’ll start with Kellee, tell me some things that
you would hope for the future of games. What video games could achieve
in the world. Something that sits maybe apart from where you think we are today.
You know, what would be your biggest hope for where you think games could go?
Santiago: Well, I mean, I’m kind of borrowing from what Mark said at the beginning, which is that the,
the people that are making games, and what those people look like,
completely changes. I think that’s where we’re going to see new types of stories, and new types of experiences,
and yeah. I mean, I think that with the more accessible technology and distribution channels,
that’s what’s really exploded in the last five years and impacted it so much. The stories around the types of people that are finding
success, however rare or, or huge they may be on the app store, it has sort of
I think flipped a switch for a lot of people, thinking “Oh, well,
I could do that, too,” you know, and at least open them up to the possibility of thinking about
making games themselves, and telling their own stories, and I think that’s what I’m excited for.
Levine: Yeah, I mean, I think that, what’s interesting about games is what,
is those surprises we get, and I think they are becoming much more democratized, like you were saying, with the App Store, things like Kickstarter.
In terms of people feeling, it’s not something that a bunch of guys in suits decide, it’s a bunch of things. It’s the things that we decide,
that individuals decide, and certainly when I was coming up, and I’m sure when you guys were coming up,
it was already sort of like the record industry. It was formed, there were people who had the funding,
and then the requirement for funding goes down, for external funding goes down,
and the creativity is naturally going to go up, but I also think that
there’s going to be cycles. The Kickstarter thing, there’s probably something giant that explodes, and causes a problem there,
and then there’s going to be some weird hybrid model with some funding coming in,
and a venture capital, getting interested, creating excitement in this space, and not so that, so the future’s not really clear, but I think
the fluidity of the funding model is going to be the most
exciting driver for, you know, as you’re bringing new people in, and different kinds of people in,
and just for the creative process, so you don’t need to convince a marketing person that this so going to be a successful idea.
Minecraft’s a great example. If he had tried to convince some marketing guy, it probably would have been a really hard sell.
Barnett: What do I think?
Melissinos: Tell us.
Barnett: I think that it’s going to be easier, I think it’s easier to be a computer games maker.
What you should do is get a hold of anything, anything,
and no matter what anyone says, make something. No matter how good it is. And put it out. No matter if anyone buys it.
It doesn’t matter, because then you’re a game maker.
From then on, the only thing you have to worry about is budget, scope, and ideas.
But you’ve already done that, so it’s just... [Laughter]
At that point, so I think that’s really, really exciting,
and I’m really, really impressed with...
When I started, there was no way of going to school to learn how to do this,
then there were some courses that started up that were terrible,
and now there are some courses that are actually astonishing.
I’ve been blessed to go to lots of different universities and see them. Ones where they run, like, actual little studios,
and have their own little budgets and they’re making games, they’re doing stuff, then [inaudible], I just played recently.
So there’s a whole new wave of people coming out. They’re fearless.
They expect success.
They have wide-ranging views.
They’re not built in the same sort of grounds that I came from, and they want to make games.
They don’t want to make games that are art, they want to make games that are awesome,
and that’s the place that I like being in. I don’t want to make art, I want to make awesome, and so I’m very, very happy about the future.
Melissinos: Before you go.
Typically, more times than not,
an artist doesn’t get to choose whether or not their work becomes art.
So, while you want to go ahead, you can say that “I’m an artist,” I can say that every time I, you know, put a brush to canvas, what I’m creating is art that will be held,
will aspire to be labeled as art. I,
you could make, we can all make the accurate argument that it, if anything comes out of expression, it’s art.
Right? It’s art.
What we’re talking about in the context of it being recognize by a broader segment of the population as art.
It’s interesting that, while I agree that games need to be awesome first, because terrible games are terrible
games, regardless of how beautiful they are, or regardless of what the message is.
You can’t connect the player in a meaningful way, if the mechanics don’t work, if there’s frustration that removes them from what it is you’re trying to say,
then it falls apart, so I agree 100% that games should be awesome,
but I also think that it’s important to recognize that...
where the next great games that are viewed as art, artful,
are not necessarily the ones that we can discern, they’re not ones that we really have a say in,
right? One can argue that Minecraft is an extraordinarily beautiful game, much more artistic,
held up more as art, than so many more photorealistic games, or games that really push, you know,
mass amounts of space, because within it, you have them viewed to be,
kind of the desire and the creativity of the player themselves, and you’re kind of self-reflecting that.
So, I just want, the point that I, while I agree that games must be awesome first and foremost, where art’s going to come from is
anywhere, and we can’t predict that, and trying to go ahead and
make the case, you’re not trying to create art, may not be entirely in your control. They may deem what you think is just “awesome” as “art.”
Barnett: The more that gamers get old,
and then they have money, and then they want to invest in museums,
and they want to invest stuff, and they want to run for president, because they were gamers,
the more they will legitimize it, that’s great, and the thing they will talk about will be awesome games,
that they now say are “art,” and I am all for that. That I accept.
[Laughter]
Melissinos: Awesome art. Awesome art. Mark?
Mark DeLoura: I forget what the original question was, but I’ll just react
[Laughter] because that’s what I do.
Melissinos: The original question was, what is your hope for the future of video games, what do you think they can actually go, what can they teach us?
DeLoura: Well, I guess I ranted about that a little bit earlier, but. Being a technologist, I feel it’s incumbent upon me to represent my peoples.
The engineers.
And, I think it’s been fascinating this day, because we got to hear about, you know, the guys who brought us in television, and
the gentleman who brought us Pitfall, down here in the front row-- Melissinos: David Crane, right down here.
DeLoura: Which is fantastic.
Spent a lot of time on it. [Applause]
[Applause]
And Rand, Rand the Robin Miller, and I still remember the opening chime to “Myst,”
it just, it plays in my dreams, to your point about game tracks.
And I think about all the constraints they all faced as they were making games, and I think it’s easy,
especially as a technologist, as we go forward from
platform to platform to platform, we get more memory, and more CPU, and more resolution, and more channels of audio, to think,
“Wow, we can do anything we want,”
and then I think about, I want to come back to you, Kellee, because I think of the way it felt when I played “Flower” for the first time,
and the way I felt was, “I would never have made this game,"
because the constraints that I grew up inside of,
this was not something that I just, that I would conceive of. The tools I had, the power, horsepower I had,
I was trying to replicate other things I had seen and gone through,
and so what gives me great hope is thinking
that, for me, looking back, when I got my start, and the constraints that were there,
the people who are looking at the platforms we have now, and thinking that they’re constrained on these platforms,
what are they going to be doing in 15, 20 years? This is what I get excited by. I want to see, when, you know,
the constraints of today seem like i’m some primitive guy,
I’ve got handcuffs, I can’t even make a character articulate properly on screen.
What are you going to do when you got 10x of horsepower, and 5 channels of video around you in 360 degrees.
I don’t know what it’s going to be like, but I hope it’s a lot more immersive, and I hope that it’s a lot more educational content, because,
that would sure be really nice.
Melissinos: That would be nice.
[Applause]
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