Bill Guschwan: A History of Video Game Development

Google Tech Talks
May 14, 2008

ABSTRACT

Video games are a product of software and hardware advances. This presentation will feature the works of Ken Kutaragi of Sony as a major figure in the history of the video game.

Ken Kutaragi invented key parts of the PlayStation after creating the sound chip for the Nintendo NES. Like others in the Japanese computer industry he is interested in the affective experience of people with technology. His latest achievement with Sony was the PlayStation 3 which features his Emotion Engine which is a microchip with 9 coprocessors.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Bill Guschwan graduated from Notre Dame and moved on to Apple with some colleagues. He was on the founding team for Quicktime, where he wrote technical articles and created the first Quicktime sample movie. He was then on the founding team at 3DO, and moved on to Sony where he was the main technical liaison for the PlayStation in the US. He worked for Ken Kutaragi in 1995 in Japan at the Sony headquarters. Currently, he works in the interactive arts and media department at Columbia College, is the resident juggler for the WNBA's Chicago Sky, is a Pilates instructor at Ultimate Fitness in Evanston, and enjoys dancing, drumming and philosophy in his spare time.

Bill will use various PlayStation software and hardware examples to show how the technology advances are directly related to a change in the affective experience of the player. He will also draw parallels in other platforms such as the use of Apple's QuickTime data compression in the Macintosh's Myst, John Carmack's elegant 3d calculation design in the PC's Doom, and Miyamoto's innovative synced sound in the Mario games on the Nintendo.

Finally Bill will speculate on why the PS3, despite superior hardware capable of supporting advanced game design, has been challenged by the XBox and especially the Nintendo Wii.

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[xtat]

ok whos playing the ass tuba in the background

[NexiiM]

Yeah the sound quality makes it quite hard to listen to.

[KINGGUY7X]

FX

[KINGGUY7X]

He looks like michael jackson!LOL

[TinselTownInTheRain]

Your psoas connects your legs to your lower back and has insertions on 4 of your lumbar vertebra and your 12 th thoracic vertebra. With legs at 120 degrees the insertion of the Psoas on the 12th thoracic vertebra is engaged and this engagement intersects with the diaphragm, which is the major breathing muscle. Thus, your legs will pull on your diaphragm and cause optimal breath. If you accept Homer's concept of Thumos as soul-breath, and you use Kinect, you can use Xbox to synthesize your soul.

[TinselTownInTheRain]

As for Pilates, I discuss how the whole body can be coordinated to facilitate breath. In the 100 Pilates position, you use your SternoCleidoMastoid to expand your ribcage. I was trying to progess Kutaragi's emotion synthesizer to a concept of soul synthesizer. I engage Homer's use of Thumos in the Iliad, and focus on Onians definition of the warm breath air as breath-soul. Pilates is about connecting the mind and body and he is afterall connected to the Greek heritage.

[TinselTownInTheRain]

Hi,

This is Bill Guschwan. The last minutes of the Google talk was added after I did an ACM talk. The point of it is to talk about how to access emotions using your body as a controller ala Microsoft Kinect. The first studies of emotion showed that gesture was a simple form of emotion and I reference Giambattista Vico for that.

[mrgimp420]

What the fuck happened at the end with Pilates?  WTF?

[ncn8ochaser]

@greedyfoot I'm not calling you, trust me! I like your way of thinking, I just don't understand it. What do you mean by "And gaming as spirituality, odd, weird even. Leg lifts while breathing, so spiritual."? I haven't watched the video yet but I'm just curious as to what you mean. It sounds interesting.

[robbhendrickson]

the connection is that the lecture is about the evolution of the "wow" factor in videogames that began w/ graphics and sound -- massive parallel co-processing will soon allow those 2 aspects to be indistinguishable from reality -- hence accessing emotions is the next "wow" target -- bill is proposing that pilates and meridian concepts suggest that the game should force players into body positions that elicit specific emotions.

[maverickgoose123]

lol what a weirdo fron 40:00 onward

[jpkushin]

How interesting anecdotes about Kutaragi and the PS1 devolve into new age mumbo jumbo is beyond me.