A question prompted by our discussion in the past few weeks of acid blood and aliens.

Not a deep question, but you have to wonder.

This event is going down in the Obsidian history books, and may be one of the best moments I've ever experienced in game development.

Technically, this is "Unofficial GDC Report, Part 3." Technically. This is because this topic goes faaaaaar beyond GDC.

Regardless, I wanted to take a moment to show you why we love the fans who hate us.

Continuing the shocking, unofficial GDC report with in-depth coverage of the rampant drug use at GDC parties.

Finally made it back from the Game Developer's Conference, and I'll be blogging the experiences through this coming week and the next.

I will say, that parties at GDC can get awkward, depending on the celebrity turnout.

At the Game Developer’s Conference, but more fun questions.

Do you ever feel limited by electronic forms of communication as opposed to in-person with your team? What about when communicating with gamers when in-person interaction is not possible?

No, it’s more of an advantage – instant messenger, especially, makes asking a quick question to a team member a lot easier than walking over to them at times. And when teams start getting over 40 people, it’s hard to simply walk a few feet over to ask a question. Also, electronic communication (and the decisions that result) from it are a lot easier to catalog and store for future reference or for incorporation into a design or technical document later on.

In speaking with gamers, electronic communication (usually via email or the forums) tends to work fine, since there's rarely opportunities to deal with all of them directly except at conventions or presentations. And with conventions (and Ferg and Josh can probably speak to this as well), it's usually presentation-style format for about 40 min with only 10 min or so for questions. (Although people can ask questions after the presentation is over.) I think the best interactions have been when we’ve actually been able to demo the game personally in a booth (like we did for NWN2 at Dragon-Con).

What is the strongest aspect of communication a new employee could have? Does it change for vets?

It depends on the developer's role. I can speak for (non-lead) designers, and in that case, written communication is the best. The reason is (1) all design must be documented, (2) the documentation must be clear, concise, and cover all the design aspects for someone to implement (whether artist, programmer, or scripter), (3) it needs to be able to be transferred in its entirety to someone else with no confusion if the originator is hit by a bus, (4) and most of our submissions for design (aside from the gameplay) is in written format, so strong writing skills help sell pitches and game ideas to publishers.

For leads, however, having face to face communication skills is better, since their job is primarily to track what others are doing and make sure any issues people are having are brought to the forefront.

What affect does culture have on your game? Do you try to add or remove any content because X culture/gender/religion won't or will like it?

Plenty, especially with regards to "localization," the process of translating games into other languages. There are a list of requirements for each nation's localization procedure for what parts of game are acceptable and what is not – for example, Germans can't have too much violence or blood in the game and will not sell titles that are excessively violent, so that has to be taken into account with game design, even if it's something as simple as a setting in the code that switches out red blood for green blood (which is acceptable). Publishers and franchise holders also have a say in what content they find acceptable as well, but that varies according to the publisher.

Is there anything that enrages you?

Oh, yes. Many things make me mad.

My Obsidian message inbox is full, and it’s hard to find the time to clear it out. Still, every once in a while, some questions slip through to my work address. Here are some for the week before I head off to GDC:

Do you ever talk with other gaming studios? Is there a networking system that connects everyone together? Do you have a rival studio or even a friendly studio?

We do talk with other gaming studios, both formally and informally, about projects, share development war stories, discuss our working relationships with past, current, and potential publishers, and a variety of other topics. Sometimes we discuss sharing technology, assets (if we work closely), or using each other’s game engines. Developers will chat over lunch, emails, and even through a few forums just for game developers – it's a pretty small industry, so word gets around pretty fast. We don't usually have rival studios unless they are in the same genre we are, but even then, it tends to be a friendly rivalry.

As an example, a lot of people at Obsidian used to work for Interplay, and once Interplay had its series of layoffs, suddenly everyone knew about 300+ people that were now scattered at other companies around the industry once they got new jobs. Usually, we know people at just about every studio that we can just chat with, and it doesn’t always break down across department lines (programmers, artists, designers).

How does your team flush out new ideas? Meetings, independently, impromptu group study?

One person is given ownership of an idea or concept to pitch (even for developing new game proposals). They are given whatever parameters they need for the idea, then they do a first draft of the idea (either art concept, design concept, whatever), then post it or present it publicly to be reviewed by everyone else for iterations. If there are a lot of issues with the idea, a meeting is arranged, but if everyone seems good with it, then we move on to implementation and prototyping the idea (the sooner it's in the game, the better).

With new game proposals, everyone in the studio pitched in with pitches for our next series of games, and then we discussed those to see which ones would be the best direction for the company.

How is the bulk of your studio laid out? Private cubes or shared offices? Is there an advantage to the way it is? (Less distraction in a cube as opposed to more communication in a shared office.)

We typically have 2 people to an office (unless the person is a lead or producer, because those offices tend to have a lot of traffic and sometimes those folks need to have private calls or private meetings with other people), but game studios are laid out both in the office format and in cubeland format... Pandemic, for example, probably has one of the best cubeland set-ups I’ve seen in a game studio. There are advantages and disadvantages to both – office format allows people to concentrate easier and get more work done, while cube format allows more constant communication between team members, which can prevent wasted work.

Anyway, that’s a brief slice of what life’s like inside Obsidian-land. This was only a few of the questions, I’ll try to post more as the weeks go on.

Am heading off to GDC next week. If you're going to be there, let me know.

I'll be part of a panel discussing the future of the PC gaming market at the invitation of Mr. David J Edery, lord of Game Tycoon and master of various X-Box Live Arcade portfolios. Perhaps he seeks the destruction of all things PC and wishes to have us all in one place before calling in the Hammer of Dawn, but I doubt he intends such sinister aspirations. At least I am pretty sure he has no such aspirations.

Speaking of blogs, this one and others, if you're interested in writing (game writing or otherwise), feel free to check out the Writers Cabal blog – some good stuff, and far, far better presented than anything you'll see here.

What will life be like at GDC? What will I do?

Well, let me show you in my own special, non-company-safe-well-maybe-a-little-way.

Someone wrote me a letter this weekend, asking if I had any suggestions for breaking into computer game writing, and it occured to me I didn't. I had suggestions for breaking into computer game design, but...

Anyway, here's the gist of the response in case anyone else has a similar question about how it all works.

Writing for video games is something of a different beast compared to game design. My experience is that someone will contract a writer (and usually late in the process) once an idea and game direction has already been determined and then it becomes the game writer's job to flesh out the idea for the game. Sometimes you're employed basically as a script doctor for a title, brushing up the dialogue before it's taken into the studio.

If you wanted to propose your own world and characters for a game, though, one could do it through the mod community on the internet and then showcase those – that way, if someone ever expresses an interest in your work (or if you're trying to pitch it) you have a demo of game material to show someone.

Also, writing for games also is a little different than writing for novels or comics (usually in terms of brevity and branching options, at least in CRPGs), and working on an actual game, even if on your own time, will cause you to make edits or even expand on your work and get it game-ready before you even pitch it.

I will say that it pays to find a concept artist or an artist friend that can showcase the visual qualities of your world and characters as well - pictures and concept art often give a reviewer or someone you're pitching to a much stronger view of the world, and people rarely have time to read more than 1 or 2 pages of a written pitch (sad, but true - although that forces people to get to the "hook" of your world and your idea much faster).

Last thing - and not to be discouraging, just for perspective - in 10 years, I have never had an opportunity to work on my own computer game world, I usually end up fleshing out other game systems or franchise (Star Wars, Star Trek, Dungeons and Dragons, Fallout, Planescape, Aliens), so it's pretty hard to break into if you want to show your own stuff. I usually find that there's enough room in any franchise for you to find your own voice and plot, though, so it's not as confining as it may seem.

In other random news, I joined Live Journal to try and break through my occasional bouts of Writer's Block but fortunately, not Catoonist's Block. This week features Kung Fu, writing in general, and probably something else I've forgotten.

Hope everyone had a good weekend. Me, I saw Ghost Rider, and my eyes are still bleeding from his Penance Stare.

My cartoon game designer blog about what we look for in game designers at Obsidian.

It all comes down to "what are you playing and what did you think of it?"