I've finished listening to the talk. I know this stuff isn't meant for the average player to view, let alone dissect but I found it very interesting for the most part. There are a few things I want to comment on that I don't really see the logic behind, maybe someone can clarify for me.
The "we" thing, that is to say when Cliffy talks about the game he does so from a third person perspective to make it appear inclusive of the team. This is certainly an honorable thing, but for me I some times find it a frustration, not only because it appears more rote and less transparent, but also because I've seen it often when the person in question was ultimately nothing to do with the project they're referring to. For example (and this isn't criticizing him specifically, it's just an example I remember) I remember Ryan Payton talking in the same third person about Koji-Pro's respective opinion about games he wasn't involved with, for example "We look back at MGS2 and there's a lot we aren't happy with", or "When we made that we...".
The personality thing was kind of strange too, he was talking about how being a well known face of gaming is beneficial (and no question he is amongst the best known game designers in the world at this point, at least to a Western audience) but what about someone like Denis Dyack who is detested online and his game didn't do very well at all. I can't see how him getting his opinions out to the public benefited him, his company or his game. Cliffy happens to be a young, good looking enthusiastic guy, for those people a more PR role might be desirable, but I don't think that's any where near applicable as blanket advice to creators. It's funny too because he then followed that by talking about he's never met a Rockstar employee, that's a publisher who specifically avoids putting a face to the studio, you might get thirty seconds of Sam Houser talking about a new console, but that's basically it, and they're called Rockstar, but despite that they choose to make the products be the frontmen of the company, and ultimately if we're talking about sales, are considerably more successful than Epic.
I thought the part about keeping a player hooked was the most interesting though. I should preface by saying outside of playing Gears co-op, I am not really a fan of Epic's titles, but regardless I think the things he talked about I've found very true of the games I'm more keen on. The play session thing, I too don't like to commit to a long film unless I'm in the right move, but can easily find myself burning thru seasons of TV shows because of the optional breaking points. And although I don't like to think of easter eggs as audience and press manipulation devices, they're one of the things that makes certain games a lot more compelling. I think Portal did this incredibly well. You could remove any reference to Half-Life in that game and it'd still be amazing, but it was that stuff that made it truly fascinating, seeing the charts with Black Masa sales figures, or finding the keyboards with the highlighted letters pertaining to character names etc. Even though there ultimately wasn't all that much of that stuff, it made me wonder what else could be there if you dig deeper.
I want to say it's cool Gamespot hosted this and presumably Epic and Cliffy let them do so, because although this stuff is for developers, it's an interesting insight for anyone who cares about games I think.
