This is a partial transcript of the “Casual Games and Community” session. I’ve only included the quotes I considered interesting and/or amusing.

Moderator: Adeo Ressi, Founder and CEO for Game Trust
Panelists: Greg Mills, Director of Premium Games for AOL; Chris Early, Studio Manager for Microsoft Casual Games Group; Andrew Pedersen, Vice President and Executive Producer for Pogo (EA)

On knowing what the customer wants:

Andrew: Customers often don’t actually know what they really want when first exposed to a new experience. Pogo badges didn’t focus test well at all. Now, badges are so popular that we rolled out “premium badge albums” that you can purchase. Users are snapping them up like crazy. We’ve sold over 750K premium badge albums.

Chris: Everybody thought that the “gamer score” in Xbox Live would be a good thing, but nobody thought it would be a strong driver. But we’ve seen that people live by that score — they look to buy games that will significantly increase it.

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This breakout session was led by Chris Avellone (the brain behind Planescape Torment, which remains my favorite game ever.) Chris encouraged attendees to speak openly about their successes, failures, and concerns; the result was an interesting survey of the demons troubling many game writers. Producers, take note.

For starters, not a single person spoke up when Chris asked them to describe a success. But plenty of people were willing to toss out failures and frustrations.

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I’m only now getting the chance to process the notes that I wrote at AGC. Here’s a partial transcript of the “Writing Comedy” session (there’s another, also incomplete report at Gamasutra.) I’ve highlighted in red a few quotes that I found interesting and/or amusing.

Moderator: Rich Bryant, writer for Spin City (the TV show)
Panelists: Matt Soell, writer for Stubbs the Zombie; Tom Abernathy, writer for Destroy All Humans!.

Tom: Over the last 15 years, game humor went from the “one guy in a garage” kind of humor to, for better and worse. more sophisticated humor, as we in games have begun to compare our medium to film and TV. I.e. we’re not just writing fart jokes now, although farting was the basis of an entire design mechanic in Stubbs.

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I really enjoyed the Austin Game Conference this year. There’s something hugely satisfying about attending a conference with absolutely no job responsibilities hanging over your head.  :-)

Many thanks to those of you who turned out for the digital distribution panel, despite the fact that it took place on Friday late afternoon. I was expecting a handful of people to show, but the room was nearly full. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any transcripts of the session online; if anyone is aware of one, please let me know where to find it!

BTW, I have to say that the highlight of the conference (for me) was definitely sitting next to Warren Spector on this panel. He’s an amazingly modest, thoughtful guy. And he kept making me laugh throughout the session.  :-)