3:30 – 5th Cell: from mobile to handheld & beyond (scribblenauts) (summary)
Overview:
I had to run across from North hall basement to South Hall mezzanine, with zero time break, so i showed up 7 minutes late.
I thought this talk turned out to be a waste of time. but maybe I missed something in beginning?

raw notes:
Drawn to life led to many inquiries about making kid’s games. so they made Lock’s Quest to break out of the paradigm. (he asked for a show of hands as to who had played Lock’s Quest. I had the sense no one raised a hand. What the hell is Lock’s Quest?).

The key to Scribblenaut’s success was having mature tools for their devs to go nuts with, right from the start. They’ve been using/evolving the same tools from previous games apparently. somehow. He showed mysterious screens of their Tileforge & Objectnaut tools. Again, i believe the idea is that these both started out mobile.

“mobile/handheld hardware limitations require gameplay to sell title.” Basically you actually have to make it fun. … This is sort of disproved by the mass of crappy games out there, right? but. Wii, and social, and handheld/mobile developers seem to say this a lot. basically, their wise advice is to focus on gameplay in your games rather than tech. yawn. yeah.

…
meh. This talk was mostly about “we have done well because we keep remaking the same game.” which isn’t very useful. maybe first 5 minutes had the gems of wisdom? meh? I am frustrated when devs say ‘we made these great tools, which we can’t discuss in detail. That is why we’re successful! HOPE YALL LEARNED SOMETHING TODAY, ‘K BYE!!!