Trends in 3D technologies & the impact on networked games http://netgames2009.lip6.fr/Keynotes.htm#Arnaud

1. Trends in 3D technologies & the impact on networked games Dr. RémiARNAUDscream!point24 Nov, 2009

2. Scream!point 5D technology http://www.youtube.com/user/screampoint

4. User Generated Content

5. Obstacles

6. Catalysts

8. Sales down 19% year-over-year Subscription up 7% year-over-year

9. Electronic Distribution‘free games’ effect # Units $ revenue

10. The virtual goods market in the U.S. is ready to take off. Right now, the U.S. only has 28% of the total market. By 2013, the U.S. will make up 41% of the market with $2.5 billion in sales, according to research from Piper Jaffray.

11. Brings New Brands, Resources To Social Gaming REDWOOD CITY, Calif., November 9, 2009 – Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) today announced it has acquired Playfish™, a leading creator of social network games. The acquisition accelerates EA’s position in social entertainment and strengthens its focus on the transition to digital and social gaming. Playfish will operate within EA Interactive, a division of EA focused on the web and on wireless. EA has acquired Playfish for approximately US$275 million in cash and approximately US$25 million in equity retention arrangements. In addition, the sellers are entitled to additional variable cash consideration, up to a maximum of US$100 million, contingent upon the achievement of certain performance milestones through December 31, 2011. “Social gaming, with its emphasis on friends and community, is seeing tremendous growth and this is the right time to invest to strengthen our participation in this space,” said Barry Cottle, Senior Vice President and General Manager of EA Interactive. “EAi has been successfully leading the charge for EA, and with the addition of proven expertise from Playfish, their broad consumer base and strong game brands, we’re moving ahead aggressively in our plans to lead in the category of cross-platform social entertainment.”

12. Jan’09 – revenues of $50 million

14. Asia’s total annual virtual goods might be >$5 billions 1.8 M users :: Netease’s Fantasy Westward Journey 1.5 M users :: Giant’s Zhengtu Online 1.2 M users :: Tencent’s Dungeon and Fighter 1.0 M users :: Blizzard’s World of Warcarft

15. Symbiosis Virtual Goods would not exist without Networked Games Networked Games are fuelled by Virtual Goods

16. Mods and User Generated Content Continuum of Content 1980’s Personal Computers 2000’s Social Networking 1990’s Video game Dark Ages 2010’s Web Centric 2008 Little Big Planet Spore 1997 Doom Open Source 1992 Stunt Island Machinima 1999 Counter-Strike Half-Life mod 2005 facebook 2006 twitter

17. Game Import COLLADA Render

18. Major Trends Social Networking Users increasingly use the internet for social networking, both at Home and the Enterprise User Generated Content Users gets more and more sophisticated, from sms to full 3D games Cheap broadband connection Sufficient bandwidth for interactive, online 3D experience Real time 3D graphics GPUs provide HW acceleration in most devices, including mobile phones Virtual Economy Real and Virtual economies connected Virtual Goods cost real money

19. Obstacles Virtual currencies regulation 3D and Web integration 3D on mobile Content Authoring Virtual goods ownership

20. 80% of gold farmers are based in China and generate between 200M$ - 1B$ annually

22. Plug-in installation is a huge barrier

23. Flash does not have 3D acceleration

24. Papervision3D Away3D opensourceactionscript software rendering solutions

25. Disconnected expertises

26. 3D experts do not know the web

28. Canvas, HTML5

29. Javascriptextensions to Firefox

30. Immediate mode

31. O3D

32. Javascript, plug-in to IE, Ff, Opera…

34. Battery powered devices can run long with 3D

35. Many incompatible SDKs

36. Android, Apple, Palm SDKs

37. Non standard browser

38. Flash not available

39. Small Screen

40. Content not directly portable

41. Game tailored to device

42. Navispore

44. Content Authoring DCC tools are targeting professional users. Too expensive and complex for end users Game industry not focused on broader authoring needs Dilemma: improving authoring to pursue innovative uses of games vs. improving authoring to streamline making game content?

45. Virtual goods ownership Can’t move virtual goods from one application to another Need a standard ! DRM as existing does not work Need to empower end user, not block them Need to understand modding community Mod over mod over mod Most end users want credit, welcome copy

46. Catalysts CPU and GPU collision Standards Public content repositories Tools for fun

48. Pipeline vs. Parallel

49. Graphics pipeline more predictable

50. CPUs better suited to more random things

51. Programmable GPU “hot”

52. Both have pros and cons

53. Next up?

54. Hybrid chips, compute

55. AMD Fusion

56. Intel Larrabee

57. Nvidia Fermi

58. NvidiaTegra

59. SoC with ARM processorGPU vs. CPU collisionCPUs are moving to serious multi-core architecture and GPUs are being used to do CPU work-CrunchGear August 2008

60. Standards (3D) Content HW accelerated API Compression Distribution MPEG-4 Part 25: A graphics compression framework for XML-based scene graph formats BlagicaJovanova, Marius Preda and Françoise Preteux

61. User Content Repositories

63. Dassault Systèmes :: 3dvia.com http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohdYBp4xfII

64. Figure Asset Pipeline Components Content Repositories Communities & Asset Management Need server side asset pipeline

66. Spore Creature Editor

67. Bastard Step Children:

68. Little Big Planet

69. Spore Adventure Creator

70. Roblox

71. Second Life editor (fun?)

72. SketchUp (fun?)

73. Web based tools for fun

74. Facebook apps