We're back in the hotel taking a breather after the absolutely hilarious Penny Arcade "Make a Strip" panel. Gabe sounds a whole heck of a lot like Dana Carvey-- it's really striking. What I love the most is, after seeing them, realizing how much of their personality is coming through in their comics. They took a couple suggestions from the audience as they were creating the comic for Monday. (The girl coming out of Mr. Coulton's trailer was originally a brunette.) They also changed Tycho's expression in the third frame from a disapproving look to one of envy/longing. All in all, it was amazing to watch them both work, and they're great presenters. They're naturally funny, and obviously they relate well with their audience.
We also sat in on the "Raising Children with Games" panel, which was interesting, but a little slow. They touched on a couple things that really resonated with me. The biggest of which was making single player games into communal events. My brother and I used to "tag team" single player games, passing the controller back and forth for alternating levels. We also used to just sit and watch each other, especially as we got older and our tastes diverged. I would watch him play Parasite Eve and ask questions to fill in the back story I missed before I sat down. He would watch me play FF7 (even though he played it too) just so he could experience it again without having to press X himself to get through all the dialog. These were great times my brother and I had, and I remember many occasions where we left an NES game that didn't have a save feature running over night so we wouldn't have to start from scratch.
The other thing that the panel touched on was incorporating mechanisms to control or remind people of how long they're playing. The panel, and most of the audience, seemed to think this was something we should "start" doing now, but Jenn and I both already had examples of games that did this in our minds. Guild Wars starts reminding you every hour (after a few hours) that you should take a break, and even 15 years ago EarthBound had a gimmick where the father of the main character, Ness, would call you on your cell phone and ask if maybe you felt like taking a break. That in particular was a great and really effective way of reminding the player of how long they'd been sitting there without fully breaking the fourth wall. It's not a new idea-- it's just that developers have a financial motivation to make their games as appealing as possible FIRST. Realistically, developers want you to play their game forever.
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