Trends in 3D technologies & the impact on networked games

Dr. Rmi ARNAUD p scream!point 24 Nov, 2009

Scream!point 5D technology

http://www.youtube.com/user/screampoint

Outline
Network Games Economics User Generated Content Obstacles Catalysts Our Future - Gaming in the Cloud?

A year ago video game sales were soaring, and some people thought it might be a "recession-proof" industry. We can't imagine anyone feels that way today. October 09 unit sales were do n 19% according to NPD year o er year. nit ere down ear over ear And if the industry is lucky, it will get flat to single digit growth by for the year.

Sales down 19% year-over-year Subscription S b i ti up 7% year-over-year

Electronic Distribution free games effect

# Units
feee $$

$ revenue
feee $$

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.

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 EAs 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, were moving ahead aggressively in our plans to lead in the category of cross-platform social entertainment.

Jan09 revenues of $50 million

Asia s Asias total annual virtual goods might be >$5 billions

EA Revenue R EA Net income $4 2 billion USD (2009) $4.2 billi -$1.08 billion USD (2009)

1.8 M users :: Neteases Fantasy Westward Journey y y 1.5 M users :: Giants Zhengtu Online 1.2 M users :: Tencents Dungeon and Fighter 1.0 1 0 M users :: Blizzard s World of Warcarft Blizzards

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

Mods and User Generated Content

Continuum of Content

1980s 1980 s Personal Computers

1990s 1990 s Video game Dark Ages

2000s 2000 s Social Networking

2010s 2010 s Web Centric

Modding
1992 Stunt Island Machinima 1997 1999 Doom Counter-Strike Open Source Half-Life mod 2008 Little Big Planet Spore

2005 2006 facebook twitter

Game Import

COLLADA O

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 sophisticated to full 3D games Cheap broadband connection p 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

Obstacles
Virtual currencies regulation 3D and Web integration 3D on mobile Content A th i C t t Authoring Virtual goods ownership

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

3D native in a browser
No HW accelerated 3D without a plug-in p g
Plug-in installation is a huge barrier Flash does not have 3D acceleration Papervision3D Away3D opensource actionscript software rendering solutions p g

Disconnected expertises
3D experts do not know the web Web experts do not know 3D

3D native in a browser

Khronos WebGL working group

Announced SigGraph09 Mozilla:
Canvas, HTML5
Javascript extensions to Firefox p Immediate mode

O3D
Javascript, plug-in to IE, Ff, Opera Retained mode

3D and connected mobile technology: Specific to device in hand

3D is a power-hog Battery powered devices can run long with 3D Many incompatible SDKs
Android, Apple, Android Apple Palm SDKs

Non standard browser

Flash not available

Small Screen
Content not directly portable

Game tailored to device

Navispore Augmented reality (3DVIA)

Augmented Reality

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdQsS8LBxpo

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?

Virtual goods ownership

Cant move virtual goods from one application to another pp
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 credit,

Catalysts
CPU and GPU collision Standards Public content repositories Tools f f T l for fun

GPU vs. CPU Collision:

CPU's add cores to reach GPU's parallelization GPU's add programmability to reach CPU's flexibility
E hh Each have different priorities diff t i iti
Pipeline vs. Parallel Graphics pipeline more predictable CPUs better suited to more random things

Programmable GPU hot Both have pros and cons Next up?
Hybrid chips, compute
AMD Fusion Intel Larrabee Nvidia Fermi N idi T Nvidia Tegra
SoC with ARM processor

Standards (3D)

Content HW accelerated API Compression Distribution

MPEG-4 Part 25: A graphics compression framework for XML-based scene graph formats Blagica Jovanova, Marius Preda and Franoise Preteux

User Content Repositories

Dassault Systmes :: 3dvia.com 3dvia com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohdYBp4xfII

Content Repositories Communities & Asset Management

3Dtool 3D tool +plugins Model Animations Imagetool Image tool +plugins Textures
Sou ce ssets SourceAssets

IntermediateAssets

exporters Interm. Models Interm. Anims

exporters Interm. Textures FastPath Fast Path

Build PlatformA

Build PlatformB

FinalAssets

BuildPath

Need server side asset pipeline

Figure Asset Pipeline Components

Tools for fun

Poster Child:
Spore Creature Editor

Bastard Step Children:

Little Big Planet Spore Adventure Creator Roblox Second Life editor (fun?) SketchUp (fun?)

Web based tools for fun

Facebook apps
Zynga (Mafia Wars,YoVille, FarmVille, etc.) FarmVille etc )

Twitpic / twitter

Our Future - Gaming in the Cloud?

OnLive

Gaikai