Online gaming is booming in Europe.
Wildly successful pioneers like Jagex, CCP and DICE are giants on the international stage, while Brighton is becoming a hub for massively-multiplayer online gaming thanks to inward investment from overseas players like NCSoft and Linden Labs.
Sony is developing PlayStation Home in London, while with the likes of APB, Little Big Planet and Burnout Paradise, ever-inventive European developers are finding new ways to add an online dimension to traditional games.
Develop Online gives a unique opportunity for European developers to come together to share their insights for a day.
9:30-10:15-KEYNOTE
PLAYSTATION®Home: Why is a Virtual World Important to Gaming and How can I get Involved?
Liam Wickham & Darren Cairns, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe
PLAYSTATION Home is an exciting new 3D gaming service for PLAYSTATION®3 that is being rolled out in 2008. It will deepen the gaming experience, providing a place where gamers can meet, chat, plan, and launch games together. PLAYSTATION Home not only offers a new service for gamers and a new way to interact with their PS3, games and other gamers, but also provides new opportunities for developers to get involved and further drive their titles. Find out why you should get involved and how.
10:30-11:00
Western MMOG Market Review: Opportunity Assessment, Growth Expectations and Sector Trends
Piers Harding-Roll, Screen Digest
‘Blizzard’s World of Warcraft reaches 10 million paying customers!’
These sorts of headlines, the potential rewards on offer and the continued growth of the MMOG market have prompted massive investment in this sector from a wide number of entertainment media companies. The Western market is now a melting pot of different content genres and business models, yet there is a high chance many of these games will commercially fail especially in the traditional premium subscription sector. Piers’ session will cover how the incumbent subscription MMOG market is growing, Blizzard’s domination of that market and what is left for the rest, what impact the adoption of Asian online gaming business models is having on the Western MMOG opportunity and will also give an overview of the burgeoning browser-based MMOG sector.
11:00-11:45
I'd Like To Teach The World To Code: Scripting Your Second Life
Jim Purbrick, Linden Lab
Second Life is a large, on-line virtual world where avatars dance, fly, shop, play, meet, work, fall in love... and program. About 256k residents of Second Life have written 2.5 billion lines of code and run 30 million scripts 24/7 in a continuous 3D landscape twice the size of Montreal. This giant, collaborative development environment is run on a grid of over 12k CPUs that simulate the land of Second Life. This talk will explore the challenges inherent in running untrusted scripts in a user created virtual world and Linden Labs current work integrating the Mono open source virtual machine.
11:45-12:30
Creating a Successful MMOG: Challenges, Insights and Production Techniques
Henrique Olifiers, Jagex Ltd.
Less than 1 in 20 massive multiplayer online games released every year reaches maturity in user base terms. Even heavy weight studios with previous experience in the creation of MMOG have recently failed. What lies behind this harsh reality, and what makes a successful multiplayer game tick? Why so many fail pursuing elusive online players and, perhaps a clue is in place, why current MMOG look so similar to one another design-wise? This session will discuss the major challenges presented in MMOG development while providing insight and techniques to overcome these problems, managing production risks.
13:30-14:15
Working on Persistent and Unique Game Worlds; Challenges and Solutions
Moussa Khan, CCP
Massively multiplayer online games, due to their persistent nature, offer particular challenges in designing and maintaining them. The session first introduces some of the common issues encountered when working on persistent worlds. It then expands onto the additional challenges brought about by a unique, or unshardedTM, world. For each step, possible solutions are drafted and examples shown from different MMOs and EVE Online in particular for the unshardedTM aspects. Finally, it elaborates on the motivations for going with a unique gameworld design rather than the usual shardedTM ones.
14:30-15:15
Prelude to W.A.R.: Confessions from the front line of Warhammer Online The 11 key lessons learned in developing Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Speaker: Paul Barnett, Creative Director, EA Mythic
16:15-17:00
Virtually Legal - Liability Issues in Online Gaming Robert Bond, Speechly Bircham
The legal and regulatory issues for developers, providers and users of online games and virtual worlds are a potential minefield. Tackling topics discussed will including IP rights, libel & defamation, liabilities and obligations, localisation, competitions, marketing, advertising, branding, virtual money, child issues, privacy and disputes, this session will provide delegates with a checklist of items that will equip them to avoid liability, protect IP and minimise risk.
17:00-17:45
Real World Threats, the Dangers of Illegal Real World Trading on the MMO Space and Possible Ways to Tackle Them Imre Jele, Blitz Games
Illegal real world trading is a real and present danger for the MMO industry. Professional estimates place the market's size up to the staggering annual $3 billion level. This issue escalated to a point where it ruins game-play experience, divides virtual communities and ultimately can endanger the financial stability of developers. Yet, owners of these massive virtual worlds seem to be reluctant to act; they often settle with half solutions or bury their heads in the sand. To understand the reasons of the present status quo one has to dig deep, analyzing the economic reality of virtual worlds and dissecting the underlying game design principles. The aim is to give a comprehensive cover on the details of Real world trading during this speech.
First I would like to define Real world trading then describe the dangers posed by Gold farmers. Finally I plan to present the strengths and weaknesses of the commonly used tactics to tackle the player’s lust for gold from embracing Real world trading to aggressive counter measures using the best and worst examples of top selling MMOs, like World of Warcraft, RuneScape and many others.
Overall, this lecture aims to provide delegates with a detailed understanding of this important issue, present ready-to-use solutions to tackle the problem and gives a unique insight into the inner challenges of MMO development.
17:00-17:45
Playing Together: What Games Can Learn from Social Software Tom Armitage,Headshift
Much of the focus on the so-called "Web 2.0 movement" is on social software - not just social "networking" sites, but collaborative, connected tools that place their focus on a bottom-up, user-generated ecosystem. Whilst people rarely use these products for work, they are also unlikely to describe their usage of social software as "play" - and yet that, often, is the act it most commonly resemble. Indeed, whilst the tools and products they are using are not games, they often end up exhibiting game-like behaviour: these applications are compelling and sometimes "addictive" experiences that reward investment of time not just with "points", but also with kudos and social capital.
Right now, there's a huge buzz around "casual gaming", but the most popular spaces for casual play at the moment aren't games at all - they're services like Flickr or Facebook. Web 2.0 hints at a new understanding of what "multiplayer" could mean. Given that, what are the lessons for game design that we can learn from social software? And what would games based upon the lessons we can learn from social software perhaps look like? This talk seeks to provide answers to both of these questions.
17:45-18:30
Money! How to Monetize Your MMO or Virtual World Randall Price, SVP, Global Business & Legal Affairs, ArenaNet, Veronique Lallier, Marketing Director, NCsoft Europe Ltd
What MMO and virtual world business models are on the market today? What are the hot trends and most successful models? Your speakers from ArenaNet and NCsoft will walk you through the many different ways that publishers and developers are monetizing their games and virtual worlds, and share their opinions about the best models to pursue for the future.
