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[Gamasutra correspondent Patrick Dugan sits down for a wide-ranging interview with ThatGameCompany's Kellee Santiago alongside the studio's newest hire, Electronic Arts veteran Robin Hunicke (Boom Blox) on the indie space, the studio philosophy and more.]

After several years at Electronic Arts Los Angeles, Robin Hunicke has moved on to flOw and Flower house ThatGameCompany, a small studio founded by USC alumni Kellee Santiago and Jenova Chen.

In her time as a designer at EA, Hunicke saw three titles ship, most recently Boom Blox, and she's now working on an unannounced title with the team at the Los Angeles-area studio.

Gamasutra caught up with Hunicke and Santiago to learn what prompted the new collaboration and what fuels their vision of their studio, games and the evolution of the industry.

ThatGameCompany is right on the line between independent and not -- you get autonomy, but you also get funding, incubation services, office space, the works. Do you think we are going to see more structures like yours?

Kellee Santiago: I think there are some movements in publishers -- but especially in independent... or VC [-funded studios] -- towards a more project-oriented funding structure like you see in film.

Instead of the software company model where you would buy a piece of the company and maybe rights to the IP, there is some motion away from that, and at the start it will depend on whether those initial projects are successful or not.

So I'm really hoping that those investments go well and we do move towards that model, as it does permit a lot more creative freedom in a company. As with our arrangement with Sony, a big part of that was we got really lucky with the timing and people at Sony Santa Monica wanted to invest in a studio or a couple studios to let them loose on the Playstation Network and experiment with what you could do with digital distribution.

So that's how our deal came about, and you can see that with games like Everyday Shooter and Linger In Shadows. It really worked out for us that we found a publisher who was also somewhat creatively aligned with our goals, and I think that's important because no matter what you put in a contract, it ultimately comes down to the people you're working with day to day.

Robin Hunicke: I think Sony has been exceptionally supportive of ThatGameCompany. It was partly timing, but I have to Kellee some credit for convincing them and negotiating this deal. It's not just luck -- she's extremely passionate about the company and the projects, and it shows in the results that she has been able to generate for us. Sony believes in us because Kellee believes in us.

Was this part of the motivation for moving from EA to TGC?

RH: Absolutely. I knew Jenova and Kellee from when they were students at USC; I've always loved their work. I followed it, I actually tried to recruit Kellee once but she was like "no thanks, I've got my own thing."

You know, TGC games have that sort of fresh and intimate feeling. They're really handcrafted -- you can't help but love them when you play them. That's something that I think any developer notices immediately. It was clear to me that they are extremely concerned about the player experience -- and that's not something that's just lip-service, it's something that they think about every day.

Also accessibility -- that's something I've been really passionate about over the years. I worked on lot of games that were aimed at kids and families, and I wanted to go someplace where I could take that focus to the next level. So when she told me there was an opportunity to produce the next game, I just had to go for it.

So you're acting as producer rather than game designer?

RH: That's right. But at TGC we all contribute to the game design, and that is not just lip service. Everyone has an opportunity to contribute creatively to the project. The reason I enjoy my job is because I get to do what I'm great at, which is production and design.

How many people are you employing?

KS: Ten of us. We started on flOw with four people, and Flower with seven, and now we're at ten.

And your ranks swell during production, with contractors?

KS: At a certain point on Flower, we were at ten people for the last two months of production or so.

Just for the record, Flower and flOw made money, right?

KS: Yes, I can say that.

And by a decent margin, which is a relative term that gives you some leeway in saying "yes"?

KS: Sony did release their top 10 downloads for 2009 and Flower was number 9.

Three quarters of the development time involved was just prototyping -- just getting the feeling right, and the last fraction involved producing the actual game content?

KS: Yes, but to clarify -- we threw a lot of stuff away during prototyping, but we also kept a lot. It says something about our process that Flower took two years to develop, but we were in production for only six months of that. we had 18 months of our prototyping phase. That's more time prototyping than other development models would use, but I think Robin can speak to that.

RH: I think that one of the things the team does is work on what inspires them, and in Flower's case they followed it in several different directions. It was a dialogue with the publisher to try and figure out what this game was going to be, and that took 18 months.

That dialogue might take nine months on one project and 18 months on another. Flower was super-ambitious; it was a really out-of-the-box concept, and it took a lot of time to dialogue on how to get there.

Do you think a major problem with the game industry is that that kind of gameplay experimentation is prohibited by the cost and management models?

RH: I don't think it's a problem. A lot of successful, amazing games are made by picking a target, going for it and hitting that target. It's not uncommon for something amazing like Call of Duty 4 to come out; I mean, they know exactly where they're going when they start that project, and they nail it.

For us, trying to do stuff that's out-of-the-box, we've found a successful way to prototype and dialogue with our publisher. We're really glad we could establish that relationship with Sony and get these games out there, so it's not a problem - it's an opportunity.

You've proposed a solution here. Do you think there's a way for that to be widely adapted and made both feasible and scalable?

KS: Scalable is something that we hope to answer one day, as a company. We want to keep pushing the boundaries, and part of the exploration is developing a process for larger-scale experimentation.

Before you said "scalable," I was going to say that what's been really advantageous for us in the digital distribution space is that we're allowed to make games that are smaller than what you purchase on a disc. You have room for a $2 game, a $5 game, a $10 game, a $15 game, so you have room to think about what kind of product you're going to make, and the time involved in actually producing it can be relatively short. But I'm not sure if that could translate to a large disc-based title.

RH: Or to multiple projects at one time.

There's a size dimension and then there's this horizontal dimension of how many different niche titles can be fielded.

RH: Honestly, it's up to the marketplace. We have seen the maturing of the gaming market. We really believe that our players have rich lives, and that games are part of that rich life.

One of our core values is that their time should be respected. We want the time that people spend with ThatGameCompany games to be something they value and feel is appreciated by us. As that market matures, we have to continue to create content for them that can be enjoyed on their terms, in their time, in their lives.

The marketplace will support as much valuable, entertaining and supportive content as it can. It's up for developers to create that. It's a challenge for us to continue to find ways to thrill and create wonder and give new, fresh feelings, and if we can't do that there's no guarantee that the customer will respond. We have to respect them through our work.

How has the global economic downturn constrained the market's scope?

KS: Neither of us is an economist, so we can't really speak to that, but there's a demonstrable trend in people spending time online, for more people playing together and purchasing content online. We definitely see audiences moving towards digitally-distributed content, and also a desire to play with people in other places in the world.

Is that going to be console-centric or PC-centric? is that going to be in the study or the living room?

KS: That, I don't know.

RH: We know for sure that it's proliferating, so the general trend will be more opportunities to reach people in a variety of locations.

KS: There's also mobile in the mix now, especially with the tablet PCs, we're going to see developers exploring the opportunities in that space as well. That sort of motion towards online is part of what we're seeing as presenting new revenue opportunities through alternative payment and business models. I'm very much looking forward to GDC and hearing what people are doing playing around with these models.

How do you think the freeware side of things, typified by [indie designer] Cactus, for example, is going to affect commercial game development?

RH: I really liked the game Cactus submitted [video link] to Gamma 4, which is amazing and really fun, and also really mind-bending. Cactus is amazing, and experiments that developers like that are doing can be showcased in events like Gamma, which takes the potential for commercial success and plays with it, makes art out of it, pushes it in new directions and exposes it to new audiences.

When you play his one-button game, it's almost like you're at a rave. It's hard to categorize; that's just amazing. We'll definitely see more events like Gamma and IndieCade, showcasing these kinds of games, and I would hope the market would respond to that and publishers would want to engage that. Its about "does the developer want it" and do they have the will to take it there? If they want to just keep releasing these experiments for free, hey, I'll play 'em.

Being inside the walled garden of a console-download marketplace, you're still on the side of the line where you're making a product to sell. Freeware developers might make one game at a time, but it's looked at as a service to the community or their fans or their own muse. Do you think that can evolve, over the web, to a sort of touring band model instead of a sell-the-album model? Will we see as much innovation on the business model as the content side?

KS: I certainly hope so. I was going to comment on your delineation between being on the console versus us being in the wild -- I don't think that's what defines us as a business. Jenova and I created a business because we want to be doing this for the rest of our lives. Figuring out ways to make it profitable allows us to do that; that's why we have a business around it. I think it's absolutely possible to do that without selling out and compromising on your creative goals.

RH: You can also reach more people if you have a distribution platform that's successful. We want to be able to reach as many people as possible and give them that experience, and it helps if you have someone distributing your game. But if you can make that happen and that's all you want, then great.

KS: I think our goals are common to other developers, all our goals is to keep doing this and that will lead to more experimentation on the business model end. I think the creative experimentation and the business experimentation go hand in hand.

What do you think of LA as a "scene"? Is there a good community for game development or is everyone stuck in traffic on the freeway?

KS: No, we're definitely a community. I have to say I wasn't planning on staying in Los Angeles after graduating, but it's come to feel like such a home to us. We're in close proximity in Santa Monica to a bunch of developers that we have community with.

My general friends network has a lot of developers, as LA has the highest concentration of developers in the entire world, and it's also the entertainment capital of the world. There are a lot of people in other aspects of entertainment to meet and collaborate and share war stories with.

I'm in a group called "Nerd Poker" here, where we play online. XBLA and Playstation Network are seen as the "new poker" -- which was the "new golf". It's people in music and film and games getting together, and seeing that all our mediums are evolving for one reason or another -- so it's great to be able to tap onto each other for information and resources.

RH: It's not just gamers; you can hang out with people in film, with people doing really amazing street art, the weather is always gorgeous so you can go to the beach, grab lunch, hang out with somebody.

We're around the corner not just from Naughty Dog but also MTV, and there's a huge Yahoo! center where there are a bunch of entertainment businesses, where people have lunch, so it's very easy just by happenstance to be one or two jumps away from someone working on something amazing. Kellee and I are blessed with a lot of interesting friends, because LA is a really interesting city.

KS: Despite the fact that California has some of the highest business taxes, it still happens to be filled with entrepreneurs, so that's good.

Robin, you're earning a PhD, and Kellee, you have a MA in Interactive Media. Can you speak to how the perceived value of those kind of advanced degrees has improved, and what doors they opened for you? For people considering pursuing such degrees, do you think that will give them an edge in their career?

KS: Definitely.

RH: If it weren't for the research I did on AI and gaming, I wouldn't have become a game developer. When I started at Northwestern University, I had no idea that I was going to become a developer, and at that time education programs were just getting started.

When I volunteered at the first IGDA Education Summit, people from the ETC were handing out announcement fliers for their program, and the USC people were there just getting ready to start their program. That was only ten years ago, and if you think about it, ThatGameCompany is primarily comprised of people who have graduated from these programs, and look at the impact that has had to our industry.

The most creative independent games that are being developed out there, they have ties to these programs. That impact is what generates the respect for the programs. It comes from the results.

And your company is one of the early beachheads of that?

RH: Yeah.

KS: When we were going around pitching to publishers in 2006, one of the common responses was "we really love what you're doing and we love your ideas, but you've never worked in the professional game industry and what are we supposed to do with that?" Now you can see a huge shift in that.

The attention put on the IGF and the Student Showcase there, we're seeing a lot more students going and starting their own studios. It's amazing how that happened so quickly.

RH: Yeah, it really is.

Let's talk a little bit about gender -- this is kind of too obvious, but it does deserve some words. There's traditionally been a very extreme skew in the gender ratios. Looking at GDC attendance since when I started going, and looking at some studios I've seen, I get the impression that the ratio is becoming closer to even. Do you think a shift has taken place, and how has the industry been influenced?

KS: Hmmm, the "women in the workplace" issue, there are just so many contributing factors its really hard to narrow it down to just one. It's not just about diversity in the workforce, it's about wanting diversity of thought within your team.

You can achieve that by hiring a wide range of types of people, or by hiring different personalities. One of the common impressions people have of ThatGameCompany is that we're all female, we're all Asian, and we're all on drugs.

RH: None of which are true.

KS: None of which are true, it's just that the team we've assembled takes influences from a wide variety of places, and there is such a diverse range of thought on the team. I'm seeing more conscious effort in other companies of growing out the teams in an organic way.

RH: The other thing is, to relate it to your last question, the development of educational programs that focus on interactive entertainment and gaming allow the industry to reach out to new people. 10 years ago it wouldn't be common for a young woman or a foreign student to be able to express their interests in gaming through a degree program, or even a class.

Now that trail has been blazed, and the opportunity is there for a lot of people. Lots of programs have started as one or two classes, and now they're in full enrollment, they're looking for professors. I get tons of e-mails from people looking to hire professors.

We've been able to broaden the scope of our recruiting efforts as an industry by exposing more people to the wonder that is video game production. It's not easy work but it's fascinating work, and it's challenging. No two days are alike, and who wouldn't want to work in that industry. We kept it a secret for a while but now the secret is out. Hopefully that means we'll get more diverse people in the work force, and as Kellee said, more diverse games.

It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy because the more diffuse the barriers to entry become, and the more diverse the people involved become, generally the better the quality of the workplace.

RH: Exactly.

There's a spectrum between the dark cubicle factory with the long-haired guys who've got the anime figurines, and an bright art gallery where people have Van Gogh on the wall.

RH: Hey dude, I've got a lot of anime statues, so...

Which characters do you have?

RH: Actually, I have a bunch of characters from Neon Genesis Evangelion on my desk right now.

That's an exception. Evangelion, that's its own thing.

RH: See, that's what they say...

KS: That's acceptable.

RH: They actually all come from the same place. I've got some classic '60s anime on my desk. It's a pretty anime desk right now.

Are you all still in the Sony BMG office?

KS: No we're actually in our own office now.

I bet the rent is a monster.

KS: We had the good fortune of having the economy crash right before we moved, so we managed to find a decent bargain.

You get these cycles, it all kind of balances out over time.

KS: Right, yeah we just kind of lucked out in that regard.

Can you two speak to how your craft of game design has evolved since ThatGameCompany began?

KS: With ThatGameCompany, the main thing, for me, has been figuring out how to make a better process for guiding teams through all the different possible directions that we could take a game. There's a really fine line between everyone's idea of what they want the game to be tearing the project apart and people being willing to compromise and bring it all together. What we are about as a company is that process, that way of negotiating and navigating through that space.

RH: For me, what it comes down to is being really honest with the people you're working with and being ready to fail. Being open to feedback is the most important thing and the most difficult thing for a game designer.

When I started, I used to take it as criticism, but what I've learned is there's no solution in that. You've got to want feedback, and don't be biased by your own ideas of what the prototype is supposed to mean. The truth is in the player. If you open your mind and you open your heart, you're going to make much better games.

The game is just a nexus for the manifestation of love.

RH: Right! That's what you've got to be open to, exactly.

Burlington City Arts and Champlain College are currently running Game (Life), an exhibition/arcade presenting "Video Games in Contemporary Art", at the Firehouse Gallery in Burlington Vermont. The show features titles from almost a dozen indie designers and artists, allowing visitors to play their games for free.

Some of the displayed games include Jonathan Blow's Braid, Jason Rohrer's Passage, Petri Purho's Crayon Physics, Jenova Chen/Thatgamecompany's Flower, Mark Essen's The Thrill of Combat, Paolo Pedercini 's Faith Fighter, and Jakub Dvorsky/Amanita Design's Machinarium.

Starting this Friday, the gallery and Champlain College will also offer a lecture series with several of the featured artists, like Blow, Rohrer, and Randy Smith (Spider: Secret of Bryce Manor). You can read more information about the presentation schedule and the Game (Life) exhibit, which ends on February 13th, at the Firehouse Gallery's site.

[Via Game Culture]

A record number (306) of entries to the Main Competition is, not surprisingly, followed by a record number of entries to the student competition. This year there were 193 games submitted by students to the IGF! I haven’t heard of many of the entries before, but they sound interesting – I’m seeing a lot of ideas and themes that are very rarely touched upon in gaming.

The IGF front page reminds us that previous student winners include Narbacular Drop (which became Portal), The Misadventures Of P.B. Winterbottom, The Blob, and Jenova Chen’s Cloud. Fine company to be with, indeed. Congratulations to all the student entrants! Continue reading

Independent games expo IndieCade has announced the full line-up for its festival running October 1-4 in Culver City, California (pass prices range from $20 to $290 depending on how much access you want and how many days you intend to walk through).

Now in its third year (and previously taking place at smaller gallery spaces in the Seattle area), IndieCade will feature panels, tools workshops, networking sessions, case studies, performances, artist talks, and pitch sessions with notable game developers. Each day will have a theme for the different sessions: Emotional Depth & Challenging Topics, Innovation & Art, and Next Gen Game Designers – Mentoring, Pitching, Retooling, and Games Education.

The event's scheduled keynote speakers announced so far include Namco Bandai's Keita Takahashi (Katamari Damacy, Nobi Nobi Boy) and Thatgamecompany’s Jenova Chen (Flow, Flower), who will share "a conversation about innovation". Further speakers include game designer Will Wright, Brenda Brathwaite (Jagged Alliance, Wizardry series), Richard Lemarchand (Uncharted), Robin Hunicke (MySims, Boom Blox), and a number of others.

IndieCade and Sony Pictures Entertainment will host an invite-only Award Ceremony recognizing standout indie games in the following categories: Aesthetics, Gameplay Innovation, Fun/Compelling, Sublime Experience, Technical Innovation, World/Story, Jury Award/Best in Show, Finalist Choice and Audience Choice.

Over two dozen of the finalist games -- the festival's primary attraction -- will be available for attendees to play at several exhibition venues. A number of the developers behind the games, which include Avaloop's Papermint and Daniel Benmergui's Moon Stories, will also be nearby to demonstrate and discuss their titles.

Other attractions include gamemaker art displayed at the Wonderful World Art Gallery, "outdoor gameplay" (alternate reality games, chalk games, urban bingo, etc.), and "conversation-style Salon sessions" at local cafes.

You can purchase tickets and find more information on IndieCade 2009 at the event's official site.

[Via Wonderland]

[My time at GDC Europe in Cologne has been a lot of fun, and continuing some highlights from Gamasutra's coverage, here's David Cage's incredibly impassioned GDCE keynote on storytelling and emotions in games.]

In his keynote at GDC Europe in Cologne, Quantic Dream's David Cage discussed "the thoughts behind" PlayStation 3-exclusive Heavy Rain, detailing his ideas on storytelling and the future of the medium.

Introducing his talk, Cage revealed that there are around 200 people working on completing Heavy Rain, with 100 staff in-house at Quantic Dream's headquarters in Paris.

He initially cited comments by both the BioWare co-founders and Thatgamecompany's Jenova Chen commenting -- in essence -- that emotional reactions are often missing from games, and wholeheartedly agreed with them.

Cage said that, in the past: "Video games were about shooting, driving, and solving puzzles - and nothing else." But now "we are not working for [solely] kids any more", rather people with an average age of 35, and 75 percent over the age of 18.

He also suggested that "fundamentally the games we [play] are pretty much the same." But game creators are older and their tastes are different, and they need a different method of output - "it's time for something new."

The Heavy Rain creator then talked about primal emotions that are ultimately related to survival, such as fear, excitement, frustration, or aggressiveness. These are essentially related to fight-or-flight tactics.

But there are more complex social emotions such as empathy, happiness, sadness, jealousy, anger, and shame, which "appeared at a later stage in evolution and played a different role."

Art, Cage said, "is about feeling," and art forms trigger a range of emotions and offer depth and meaning. He cited Picasso, Terry Gilliam's Brazil, and Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, and then turned to games.

He asked a difficult question: "There are very few video games able to trigger more subtle and social emotions... why?" Firstly, it's easy to spawn aggressiveness, fear, frustration, and completion via normal, interactive gameplay mechanics. And it fits kids' and teenagers' emotional wants in a good way.

Cage said, baldly: "Most games have no meaning", and games don't generally have anything to say -- "you just spend some time getting excited shooting and jumping", most of the time.

The Quantic Dream head added that he believed that games' narrative structure is broken. As opposed to simultaneous narration and action in movies and books, cut-scenes split up the action in games. So, Cage concluded: "No-one cares about the story because nobody is there for the story."

He added that most game characters must be close to caricature -- to look like what they are. They also tend to need a simple goal, and need to look good for a teenager. In contrast, many movie characters have a background, a motivation, have relationships, and are created to generate empathy.

In further controversy, Cage suggested that, most of the time, game art is mediocre compared to other art forms. But some games can compare because they have "developed the emotional side", he said, citing Ico, Shadow Of The Colossus, Rez, Katamari Damacy, and Flower.

So, said Cage, we have some decisions to make. Shouldn't we start thinking about social emotions, if we want to evolve? "Do we want to be toys, or art?", he asked provocatively. "Maybe there are books that you've read that have changed who you are." Shouldn't games do similarly?

How about the sandbox versus the rollercoaster? Contrasting with CCP's EVE Online talk earlier in the day, Cage feels that, since "nobody conceived this experience for you," it may fall flat. Whereas, in the rollercoaster, you can't go wherever you want, but "someone designed the experience for you to be optimal."

These are two different approaches, and Cage believes that the rollercoaster is the one he tends towards. Why? Because people want to play for just 20 minutes at a time, not necessarily for many hours or to find there's nobody in the sandbox to play with.

How about journey vs. achievement? Cage said he believes many adults care more about the journey, with emotional highs and lows carefully mapped out, and cited Flower as a great example of that.

After tackling censorship and 'Hot Coffee', David Cage re-iterated his points strongly, particularly saying on games versus toys, with reference to Nintendo's success with the Wii: "I don't want to make toys... I have a lot of respect for Nintendo and what they've done with the Wii, but this is just not what I want to do. I want to create something that's strong and interesting and emotionally involving."

He believes that the game industry will change, in a similar way that the movie industry did in its early days, to emphasize individual authorship, and that there's currently a lack of "interactive writers" to help accomplish these goals.

Cage doesn't believe that you should follow trends, and that you should "never let a marketing guy have a creative idea" -- leave it to the designers. Finally, you need to offer experiences with meaning and "dare to evoke new themes" in your games.

['The Magic Resolution' is a bi-weekly GameSetWatch column by UK-based writer Lewis Denby, examining all facets of the experience of playing video games. This time: the UK's Develop Conference provides a backdrop to consider what's really important about video games.]

Like many game developers, design students and press-folk, I spent a sizable portion of last week being forcibly thrust into Brighton's Metropole Hotel by what I'm sure were some of the most powerful seafront winds known to mankind. It's probably a good job, though, since I had a ticket to the Develop Conference, and that's where it was taking place.

On the first night, at the Icebreaker Drinks that break approximately no ice, I'm approached by a developer. He's spotted my press badge, and asks me what my angle is. I'm stumped. This is a reasonably new gig for me, and I'm probably still wide-eyed enough to think I don't need an angle.

I find myself regurgitating something I've used for a while: I look at the experiential side of playing video games. The things development isn't really concerned with. The stuff beyond the game. Understandably, the conversation moves swiftly on to drinking and beach parties.

The first day of the conference proper. Jammed into the most unreasonably small press office in existence, I type from the floor about thatgamecompany's Jenova Chen's eye-opening presentation of Flower's development. A glance at my Twitter feed shows an obscene amount of people doing the same thing. The headlines of each story are markedly different. They all have an angle. What's mine?

Evening rolls around, and I find myself enjoying a slightly gloopy Chinese meal with Gamasutra writer Mathew Kumar, everywhere-in-the-world writer Kieron Gillen, and a game design student whom I only remember by his internet tag, Larington. Conversation turns to Larington's ideas for the future. He wants to create the next big thing in large-scale, online shooting. It's an ambitious project, and Kumar asks him for a more concise pitch. "PlanetSide, but better," he says.

We muse over it and decide it's probably not the strongest vision. But it's an angle. Everyone has an angle, except for poor little me.

Too quickly, the final day of the conference is here. By this point, even walking there and before everyone's badges are on, you can tell who's who. The designers look casually-smart, with their suit jackets flowing over untucked shirts and jeans. Those involved in hard-development notch it up, tucking their tops in and masking their eyes with shades. The students appear eager, on the prowl for industry veterans with whom to vigorously network. The journalists just look hungover.

Predictably, I end up sitting in a lecture entitled 'Video Games as the Eighth Art'. On the podium is Denis Dyack, designer of Eternal Darkness and, more recently, Too Human. He's talking about the ways in which video game designers and developers can push their craft as an art form through careful methodology, rather than aspiring to what he considers the all-too-common "rock star lifestyle".

He starts talking about film theory. The term "Eighth Art" is extrapolated from an early film theorist's description of that medium as the seventh art, so it's an obvious comparison to make, even if it's one that's rapidly ageing. Dyack thinks the way forward is to speak the language of film. He also thinks that the way forward "isn't in gameplay."

I'm unsure what to think. Firstly, though examining games from a filmic perspective certainly yields interesting results, it seems odd to neglect approaches intrinsic to this medium. Secondly, the way forward "isn't in gameplay"? What does that even mean?

And then I realize. In amongst all the talk of digital distribution and whether the market's declining and what the industry's next big angles are, the big topic of the conference has essentially boiled down to story versus gameplay. Story's a tangible thing - it is, in essence, what happens. But this "gameplay" lark that's been bandied around so heavily is far too abstract to be useful.

I think back to other talks I've been to, and, yes, I'm definitely right. It's all been "story this, gameplay that." We're being taken over by an obscene buzz word that's completely undermining what should be convincing, thorough, nuanced arguments.

It needs to stop. So, finally, I have my angle.

Each year, Develop hosts something called the Opinion Jam. It's an informal session at the end of the conference, where all the attendees file into a room, grab a complementary beer, and have the opportunity to deliver a two-minute rant to the masses. I had my angle; I needed a platform. This was it.

I deliver my rant. It bombs. The Opinion Jam is judged by audience vote. I get a few in my favour, but the majority of the room disagrees. Perhaps it's just that people find "gameplay" to be an adequately specific term. Perhaps it's that I nervously and hungoverly ramble for far too long before running out of time and quickly blabbing my point. I suspect it may be the latter, so here's what I was trying to say.

Across the two days of Develop, I met an abundance of people with a lot to say. Many work in highly specific areas of game design and development, the areas we probably don't even consider when we judge the final product. If we do consider them, it's only within the realms of a much broader section of the experience. The section we call "gameplay".

Our unquestioning acceptance of the term leads to a diminished understanding in how games actually work. Dyack was right when he said the most affecting games are often developed with a keen eye for meticulous detail and methodology, and it's this detail to which we need to pay attention.

Doing so will make some big steps into our comprehension of how these streams of code and reams of assets flow from our television screens and computer monitors, and make something happen in our minds that engrosses us, invigorates us, even moves us.

But we can only pay this much attention if we know how to describe what we're talking about. And while ever we're content with scoring the gameplay a seven out of ten, or even saying "the gameplay was brutal" or other such vagueisms, we're only placing obstacles in front of ourselves.

The Opinion Jam ends. IGDA founder Ernest Adams deservedly wins with an excellent speech on the low quality of writing and acting in video games. As we file into the bar to drink away our headaches, a man approaches me. The man I met at the Icebreaker Drinks.

"So you think we need to adopt a new vernacular in order to understand our hobby more?" he asks.

I say yeah. I guess I do.

"There's your angle," he says. "Start the revolution."

[Lewis Denby is general editor of Resolution Magazine and general freelance busybody for anyone that'll have him. Wander over to his website for more information and contact details.]