brinking - nabeel hyatt: 8 Snapshots of Austin GDC '07

Virtual Worlds News has good liveblogging coverage of the talks at the Austin Game Developers Conference, including the panel I was on, Startup Lessons from Recent Online Games (audio is available here, for a fee). There's also stuff at Gamasutra and Raph's site. AGDC didn't have many overall themes, other than it feeling a bit like a bunch of MMO folks trying to ignore the social web crowd in their midst. So instead of a summary I'll do the same thing I did for GDC and give some snapshots of the last couple days.

On how teenagers live their lives online, and take that for granted.

"Fourteen year-olds playing our game were born in 1994, they've never not known the Internet. Pictures of them as a fetus could have been posted online before they were even born." - Sulka Haro (Habbo Hotel)

On user generated content, player control, and the feeling a player can effect the world.

"It turns out that a sense of autonomy is the single strongest relationship to sustained subscriptions [in an MMOG]." - Scott Rigby (Immersyve, Inc.)

On the dangers of not paying attention to the small percentage of hackers.

"Hacking is like a drug. If your whole guild is using it, you'll be pressured to use it too. Then, once our users try a hack tool they actually find it hard to get back into the game." - Minho Kim (Nexon America)

On customers look for something different from their MMOs than their games.

"Games are a one-night stand, you want a playboy bunny. MMOs are marriage, you want the girl next door. Still a little sizzle, and a lot of potential for the future." - Damion Shubert (Bioware)

On the virtual goods bandwagon.

"We really really really have to make a distinction between the concept of microtransactions -- which means spending a tiny amount of money -- and the ownership of digital assets. They are not the same thing. We cannot equate them." - Eric Bethke (GoPets)

On the fallacy of building a game only for a hardcore audience with Shadowbane.

"Everyone thought they were hardcore. It turned out only 15% got to be, and the rest were there to die." - Damion Shubert (Bioware)

On hacking and the creativity of users.

"I have a 1 in a million rule. With 80m registered accounts, at least 80 people are doing anything you can think of." - Sulka Haro (Habbo Hotel)

and some Nexon stats for the US market.

"$1.6m virtual item sales in February, over 600,000 items. And over 1m in item sales in June." Which would be $2.6m in sales if the pricing averages hold, a 61% increase.