Speaking Soooo Sloooowly (Day 3)
The next day of the forum began like the rest, albeit with a spirited breakfast discussion of ways to ensure our presentations would be understood. Some of the presenters had simplified their slides, hoping that the audience could read what the translator might miss. I planned on a different tactic.
Blade Olson, an assistant producer at EA, was first up. Blade works with Richard Hilleman, the first producer on the Madden series and now EA’s chief creative officer. Rich spoke at SIEGE last year and is undeniably one of the most forward-thinking people in the industry. Blade works in Rich’s chief creative office, and his presentation focused on EA’s game production process, as exemplified by his recent work on Dead Space 3. Blade’s presentation was strong, and his Powerpoint slides were probably the best of any of ours (Marc Wang had the other really strong one visually). He went slowly, explained his slides in detail, and repeatedly stressed his interest in answering questions.
However, the translator still had difficulties on slides that got into the nitty gritty of game development and was completely lost when Blade talked about EA’s late-night shows - its policy of putting on Letterman-style interviews with different teams about their games, designs and production issues. I am looking forward to EA releasing a full-season DVD of these :-) Again, no student questions. We pros dug into EA’s development process for a while, and the translator tried to keep up, but it was not happening.
With the next speaker, I got to experience the translation issues from the other side. The speaker was Wen-Kai Tai of the Information Engineering Institute of the National Dong Hwa University in Taiwan. He had an excellent presentation on streaming game content and reducing the size of game clients (the software you download to run an on-line game), but the Gamerese and Techspeak were well beyond the translator’s capabilities. How do I know this? He spoke in Mandarin, and the translator had the fun of converting it to English for us. I am thankful that Wen-Kai’s slides were extremely detailed, but I ended up with a ton of questions.
Reducing client size is a major issue for on-line games, as the longer it takes for someone to download the client, the more likely they are to give up. In addition, the more data you store on someone’s computer, the more likely they are to hack it. Much of Wen-Kai’s presentation was in the form of algorithms, especially related to predicting what data the players will need to stream next. This is the kind of game design stuff I love, even if I am not the best at coming up with these algorithms myself. However, even with it being delivered in Mandarin, it was clearly over the heads of most of the students. Wen-Kai ran out of time before he could ask for questions, but I had a ton for him. Spent the bus ride back and much of lunch badgering him about cache-clearing issues, packet loss, and his predictive loading algorithm. I especially like his Anxiety Algorithm.
My presentation, “Storytelling in Games: Toward a New Mythology” followed Wen-Kai’s. I had divided it into three parts: the role of narrative in games, the tools we use, and my theory regarding the new mythology we are building with games. I usually try to make my presentations interactive, asking the audience questions, taking its questions along the way, and modifying what I say based on its responses and body language. Not this time.
I did ask the audience questions, but less than half as many as I had planned. I made all the questions binary, yes/no ones - who wants to make games, who wants to be a game writer, who has played Perfect World, and so on. I quickly learned to repeat each question to make sure the translator got them right.
This is the first time I have ever read a speech. Back in junior high and high school, I won awards for extemporaneous speaking (giving a speech only with notes) and have always preferred that style. Not this time. I read slowly and measuredly, rarely deviating from the prepared remarks I had supplied in advance to be translated. Whenever she paused, I repeated or clarified the preceding sentence. I had looked up Mandarin words for some of the phrases I used, but had not found good ones for “archetype,” “monomyth,” and so on. Instead I used simple words to define them whenever they appeared.
This all helped a great deal, and I was able to hold the students’ attention through the speech and even got the one student question any of us received at the forum, which set off a rousing debate amongst us pros on how to handle ethical and moral choices in games. I made sure to praise the student’s question and command of English, and even gave him a Holistic Design pen as a reward. That paid off handsomely the next day when the student gave me a way-cool Chinese spinning fabric that I am still trying to master.
After our lunch banquet break, we returned to the forum, but I ended up missing several presentations I really wanted to see. Instead I met with several Institute professors to discuss teaching methods and curriculum. I provided them a copy of the IGDA’s curriculum guidelines and discussed ways to organize student projects, get students asking more questions, and even get professors making games. My translator this time was one of their English teachers and obviously a gamer, so I felt quite comfortable with his ability to get my meaning across.
I returned to the forum just in time to catch the last of Marc Wang’s presentation on procedural generation of blood and bruises in the Supremacy Mixed Martial Arts game. Good stuff! Harvey Lee, the game programs vice dean (yes, he is in charge of vice) gave the last presentation of the day, and he took yet a different tactic. While he spoke in English, all his slides were in Mandarin. He also encouraged the rest of us pros to chime in as he spoke with examples and discussion, so we had a good conversation on all aspects of planning for game development.
Following the evening banquet Stella led a number of us to a massage parlor near the hotel. While Wessman opted for the full-body massage (apparently also known as procedural generation of blood and bruises, based on his after report), the rest of us got foot and back rubs. They put about five of us in one room, gave us our jamming Chinese pajamas (hate that I did not get a photo of us in these), and went to work. Apparently businessmen who have to stay in town overnight often get a massage and then crash out on the bed afterward, only to shower off the next morn and get back to work. Olson and Ken Rosman got caught up in that tradition and went to sleep during the foot rubs. The rest of us mocked them and watched the most whacked out 1960s Hong Kong Austin Powers style movie while we got rubbed. More good stuff!
Blade Olson, an assistant producer at EA, was first up. Blade works with Richard Hilleman, the first producer on the Madden series and now EA’s chief creative officer. Rich spoke at SIEGE last year and is undeniably one of the most forward-thinking people in the industry. Blade works in Rich’s chief creative office, and his presentation focused on EA’s game production process, as exemplified by his recent work on Dead Space 3. Blade’s presentation was strong, and his Powerpoint slides were probably the best of any of ours (Marc Wang had the other really strong one visually). He went slowly, explained his slides in detail, and repeatedly stressed his interest in answering questions.
However, the translator still had difficulties on slides that got into the nitty gritty of game development and was completely lost when Blade talked about EA’s late-night shows - its policy of putting on Letterman-style interviews with different teams about their games, designs and production issues. I am looking forward to EA releasing a full-season DVD of these :-) Again, no student questions. We pros dug into EA’s development process for a while, and the translator tried to keep up, but it was not happening.
With the next speaker, I got to experience the translation issues from the other side. The speaker was Wen-Kai Tai of the Information Engineering Institute of the National Dong Hwa University in Taiwan. He had an excellent presentation on streaming game content and reducing the size of game clients (the software you download to run an on-line game), but the Gamerese and Techspeak were well beyond the translator’s capabilities. How do I know this? He spoke in Mandarin, and the translator had the fun of converting it to English for us. I am thankful that Wen-Kai’s slides were extremely detailed, but I ended up with a ton of questions.
Reducing client size is a major issue for on-line games, as the longer it takes for someone to download the client, the more likely they are to give up. In addition, the more data you store on someone’s computer, the more likely they are to hack it. Much of Wen-Kai’s presentation was in the form of algorithms, especially related to predicting what data the players will need to stream next. This is the kind of game design stuff I love, even if I am not the best at coming up with these algorithms myself. However, even with it being delivered in Mandarin, it was clearly over the heads of most of the students. Wen-Kai ran out of time before he could ask for questions, but I had a ton for him. Spent the bus ride back and much of lunch badgering him about cache-clearing issues, packet loss, and his predictive loading algorithm. I especially like his Anxiety Algorithm.
My presentation, “Storytelling in Games: Toward a New Mythology” followed Wen-Kai’s. I had divided it into three parts: the role of narrative in games, the tools we use, and my theory regarding the new mythology we are building with games. I usually try to make my presentations interactive, asking the audience questions, taking its questions along the way, and modifying what I say based on its responses and body language. Not this time.
I did ask the audience questions, but less than half as many as I had planned. I made all the questions binary, yes/no ones - who wants to make games, who wants to be a game writer, who has played Perfect World, and so on. I quickly learned to repeat each question to make sure the translator got them right.
This is the first time I have ever read a speech. Back in junior high and high school, I won awards for extemporaneous speaking (giving a speech only with notes) and have always preferred that style. Not this time. I read slowly and measuredly, rarely deviating from the prepared remarks I had supplied in advance to be translated. Whenever she paused, I repeated or clarified the preceding sentence. I had looked up Mandarin words for some of the phrases I used, but had not found good ones for “archetype,” “monomyth,” and so on. Instead I used simple words to define them whenever they appeared.
This all helped a great deal, and I was able to hold the students’ attention through the speech and even got the one student question any of us received at the forum, which set off a rousing debate amongst us pros on how to handle ethical and moral choices in games. I made sure to praise the student’s question and command of English, and even gave him a Holistic Design pen as a reward. That paid off handsomely the next day when the student gave me a way-cool Chinese spinning fabric that I am still trying to master.
After our lunch banquet break, we returned to the forum, but I ended up missing several presentations I really wanted to see. Instead I met with several Institute professors to discuss teaching methods and curriculum. I provided them a copy of the IGDA’s curriculum guidelines and discussed ways to organize student projects, get students asking more questions, and even get professors making games. My translator this time was one of their English teachers and obviously a gamer, so I felt quite comfortable with his ability to get my meaning across.
I returned to the forum just in time to catch the last of Marc Wang’s presentation on procedural generation of blood and bruises in the Supremacy Mixed Martial Arts game. Good stuff! Harvey Lee, the game programs vice dean (yes, he is in charge of vice) gave the last presentation of the day, and he took yet a different tactic. While he spoke in English, all his slides were in Mandarin. He also encouraged the rest of us pros to chime in as he spoke with examples and discussion, so we had a good conversation on all aspects of planning for game development.
Following the evening banquet Stella led a number of us to a massage parlor near the hotel. While Wessman opted for the full-body massage (apparently also known as procedural generation of blood and bruises, based on his after report), the rest of us got foot and back rubs. They put about five of us in one room, gave us our jamming Chinese pajamas (hate that I did not get a photo of us in these), and went to work. Apparently businessmen who have to stay in town overnight often get a massage and then crash out on the bed afterward, only to shower off the next morn and get back to work. Olson and Ken Rosman got caught up in that tradition and went to sleep during the foot rubs. The rest of us mocked them and watched the most whacked out 1960s Hong Kong Austin Powers style movie while we got rubbed. More good stuff!