I don't know what convention organizers thought they would accomplish by bringing these men together, but what they got was a few heated arguments and well-placed jabs. Koster in particular had some great lines. At one point he was discussing 'clumsy microtransactions' that left gamers with a bad taste in their mouth. "Hello Lumines. Hello Oblivion. Yeah I'm talking about you." Apparently not a big fan of horse armor.

Once the smoke had cleared and then panel closed, there was no clear winner in the debate of standard subscription versus free-to-play microtransaction supported games. They only point that seemed to be agreed on was that anything that got gamers online was good, and that PC gaming wouldn't die until parents can work from home and children can do their homework with a games console. Productive!

11:08 AM : Play that Funky Music White Boy is playing on the PA, and a small crowd has gathered for the Q&A that was supposed to start 8 minutes ago. Oh, here we go! Jamil and Perry take the stage!

Jamil is talking about how awesome Dave Perry is. I tend to agree. We are pleased an honored! Applause!

First question...are you the tallest developer in the industry? Yes, yes he is. Even taller than Phil Harrison. He gets the same thing I did in high school. Everyone wanted him for sports. I feel his pain.

Perry is talking about the gaming scene in Northern Ireland in the 80's. Programming in basic, self-publishing, creating booklets. Games in plastic bags on a cassette tape. Those were the days.

He programmed on a Sinclair ZX81. You needed imagination to play games back then. The industry was revolutionized when the 16k memory module came out. He's showing picture of old games. I'll show you those a bit later.

Jamil's next question: Was there a peer group you could work with?

They would have little meets. Perry got his start handing out stickers dressed up like a creepy cartoon character at trade shows.

Haha! Early tries at photorealism. Taking photos, scanning them and editing them.

What games and developers inspired you? Ooo, good question.

He looked up to Peter Molyneux, Chris and Tim Stamford from Rare.

What could you earn during the early days of game development?

Early jobs paid nearly nothing. Starting at nothing, but once a game succeeded your salary would quickly increase.

He wrote a platformer for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the PC, Commodore and AMiga in a week back then.

He moved to the US when Virgin Games needed him to make a McDonald's game called Mick & Mack's Global Gladiators for the Genesis. LOL. McDonald's hated it at first. It won game of the year, but the company was mad that you couldn't buy burgers in the game.

Talking about the Richard Branson parachuting manuever into the press conference for Disney's Aladdin game, one of the best Disney games ever incidentally.

Jamil: How did you get into a position that you could create your own games within a big company like Virgin?

Once you hit a few out of the park they'll pretty much do anything you ask them to.

On Messiah: "We expected hardcore gamers to buy a game with a crying baby on the box."

Yay Earthworm Jim! Proof that you don't have to be big to get a lot done. Toys, cartoons, Taco Bell toys, No fire extinguishers though.

Hello Kitty is a good place to go for merchandising ideas.

While pitching Earthworm Jim to MGM Universal, studio head Sid Sheinberg came into the room yelling at people, and then told Perry to pitch. Halfway through the pitch Sheinberg interrupted. "This is confidential.Pigs. Pigs are gonna be big. There's been dogs, there's been cats. Pigs. Continue." He went on to create Babe. A visionary!

How do you get a cartoon for Earthworm Jim without a toy line in place, and vice versa?

He invited the head of the toy company and cartoon company out to dinner, where they looked eachother in the eye and said, "I'll do it if you do it."

"Food is the key to everything."

MDK. The publisher didn't see it. It was the first no they got from a publisher. They had built their whole pitch on the innovative sniper helmet the game featured.

They took the same storyboards they used for the initial pitched and created a video. They loved it so much they wanted a toy line and a tv SHOW.

"If you have a great game idea don't write about it...show it"

On the Matrix. Jamil is asking him why there was no game for the first film.They were working on sacrifice. He met with the Wachowskis and all they had to demonstrate bullet time was a burning barrel. They passed on it.

The ESRB wasn't going to give Enter the Matrix a teen rating due to the kiss between two female characters. Shiny's response?

"It's not two women kissing, it's two computer programs kissing."

The ESRB bought it. Hilarious.

Now they are discussing the Top Secret MMO racing game project. How the community took over. They created forums, a wiki, and just basically took over the whole process. It's exciting because he never knows what they are going to do next.

They've come up with very original ideas. Commentator mode, where one player acts as a color commentary during the races for instance. People would fight for a chance to MC the big races. The idea was nothing a traditional game development team would have come up with.

The design stage is done, and the development phase is beginning. "I don't expect them to go kick Tim Sweeny's ass." I am sure Tim is relieved.

Announcing a deal with Mod Center to deliver free development tools to the Top Secret community. Acclaim will pay for any game engine in the world for whoever wins the Top Secret competition. Wow.

The winner gets an industry standard publishing deal and $100,000 cash as their first royalty. They are giving young developers a chance.

The project will also be an iinteresting viral marketing test, as the community will be telling their friends and so on and so on.

The game will ultimately be free to play. Perry went to the biggest publisher in China to explore the microtransaction / play for free model. Showing slides of his trip.

"The old game model we used to use is archaic." The microtransaction model brings in much more money than the standard $49.99 he used to charge for PC games. "The free to play model works fantastic in the US, even better than China." Combined with in-game advertising it is a really good model for the states.

If a Kojima-level personality from China comes to the US and starts delivering games of that quality from China it will have an amazing impact on the gaming industry here. Disruptive innovation, like the digital camera changing Polaroid's business.

The Wiimote is truly disruptive. Nintendo has disrupted our industry. None of Perry's favorite games or games he is looking for are on the Wii. When the great games come out for the 360 and PS3, people aren't going to be content bowling with their Wiimote.

He is talking about the game Plague that he wanted to make, that would have taken $17 million to create. It made him start to worry about how games are created and sold.In China he found free fully-funded MMO teams. He is developing 6 MMOs now, three of which are unannounced.

Until the PS3 is everywhere he can't see himself creating a big budget game.

Added some pics to the bottom here.

Awww, we are out of time. That was much more entertaining than I thought it would be. Thanks for sticking with me on this, my very first liveblog!

Morhaime launches into the keynote with a look back at the 20th century - my favorite so far. It's the first century with video games. The world is smaller. Technological process continuously increases exponentially. How much has changed in the past 100 years? Morhaime is going to tell us.

1907: Like WoW before you had a mount with no flight paths. That pretty much sums it up. Well that's all well and good, but what is Morhaime here to talk about?

Oh.

Blizzard started in 1991 with $20,000 and two PC's. Back then games were simpler. No CD drives, no big cinematics. Blizzard got started creating PC ports, then moved on to creating SNES and Genesis games. When the 16-bit console market started to decline they shifted focus to PC gaming, creating Warcraft. Blizzard was bought by an educational software company called Davidson Associates in 1994, after which a series of mergers and takeovers ensued, culminating in their being a division of Vivendi today.

Throughout all the changes, the core philosophies have stayed the same:

1. Gameplay first. The most important aspect. If this doesn't get taken care of, nothing else matters. By the way, gaming is a donut.

I myself have long struggled with mastering the donut. I pick them up all the time, but never really feel like I have done it justice when my time is done. I am not sure I understand this analogy. I think what he is saying is the core market is a hole.

2. Build and Protect the Brand

Morhaime says that the Blizzard name is their most important property. People see the Blizzard name and will buy a game based on their name alone.

3. Resist the Pressure to Ship Early

*cough* Vanguard *cough* His message here is don't give into the myriad forces urging you to put your game out early. I suppose this is all fine and good if you are Blizzard, but otherwise that could be a problem. He uses the example The Burning Crusade expansion missing Christmas yet still selling amazing numbers. Well sure - they could have shipped TBC with a requirement that you undergo a full cavity search delivered via angry midget before you could take the game home and they'd have sold millions. Possibly more!

4. Resist the Pressure to do everything at Once

Build up your business slowly. Don't try to make the next World of Warcraft immediately, because if you do they will find you and they will kill you.

Morhaime is now talking about Blizzard's evolution as a global company. It features a chart that explains how their increasingly global focus has affected sales, which I will present here instead of trying to explain.

The more places you sell the game, the more games you sell.

He stresses the importance of being sensitive to local cultures. For instance, don't dress a Chinese panda up in traditional Japanese samurai armor, as Blizzard did with Warcraft III. You don't want the Chinese mad at you. There are a lot more of them than there are of you.

Global Challenges

Here Morhaime details the biggest challenges bringing WoW to the world presented.

5. Estimating Demand

Yeah, they were a bit off on this one. Who knew?

6. HR is Really Important

When WoW took off, Blizzard had to scale up the entire business overnight. "We were not prepared." Suddenly the support team they had in place was woefully inadequate. Be prepared for explosive growth, just in case.

7. Running a MMOPRG is not just game development

It's not just creating a game. It's becoming a global service company, with IT, customer service, and community management.

8 Communicate (or people will make stuff up)

Having a community team is important. With a steady stream of information fed to the customers from people who know what is going on. This keeps the customers happy, and keeps rumors from being spreading.

9.Avoid Financial Incentives

Try to keep your game from presenting money-making opportunities for third parties, like gold farmers, account stealing and reselling, and credit card fraud. Thanks to this philosophy, World of Warcraft is completely free from the scourge of gold farmers. *weeps*

10. Testing

Blizzard tests the hell out of their games. You should too. Internal testing, public betas, test servers, etc.

Putting all of these philosophies into effect led to the Burning Crusade launch. Blizzard upgraded their infrastructure, added extra capacity, and as a result it was one of the smoothest major expansion launches ever, despite midnight launches around the world.

Morhaime closes the keynote with a video of the European BC launch, showing crowds of fans in costume and out, with the WoW theme playing in the background. It is painful to watch. If you are tempted to dress up for a game launch, avoid video cameras at all cost.

Seriously.

And there you have it. Straight from Morhaime's mouth. Now go create a WoW killer. We'll wait here.

On the Games Convention show floor, McWhertor spotted a horsey friends DS game that asked players to use what "to take out swarms of enemies"?