こんにちは。私は奈良先端科学技術大学院大学のインタラクティブメディア設計学研究室のMax（マックス）と申します。2015年にIGDAスカラーとして選ばれて、CEEDCに招待して頂きました。私の研究は革新的なユーザーインタフェースで、特に3Dアーティストのための仮想現実と拡張現実のユーザーインタフェースに焦点を当てています。そのためCEDECで日本のゲーム業界を見て、たくさんのアーティストの方たちと話すことができて嬉しかったです。
今年のCEDECスカラーには外国人留学生は私以外にいなかったです。ですので、視点の異なる他のスカラーの方々と話せたことはとても面白かったです。
最初の日（水曜日）には東京のゲーム開発会社を三つ訪問させて頂きました。プレゼンを見て、従業員の方々に会って質問を聞くことができました。私は高校を卒業したばかりのころに短い期間ドイツのゲーム会社でインターンシップをしましたので、ドイツと日本のゲーム会社の違いや共通点を見れたことはとても面白かったです。伝統的な日本の会社のイメージとは違いました。三つの会社は全て中小企業で、Nintendoのような巨大な会社とは比較できません。就職活動中の学生には人脈を作ったり、面接の練習として良いチャンスだと思いました。私にとっては開発のツールについての話しが面白かったです。
CEDECは3日間で、プレゼンとデモがつまっていました。従って、どちらを見るのかを選ぶことは大変でした。例えば、私自身はバーチャルリアリティのことについて興味があるのでソニーのProject Morpheusについて出来る限り情報を集めたかったのですが、プレゼンもデモも全て金曜日に行われていました。
CEDECのプレゼンはほとんど日本語だったので、専門的な話題は時々難しかったです。幸いなことに発表者の方々は皆親切で質問を分かりやすい様に解説してくれて、質問に対してはっきり答えてくれました。
プレゼン以外にもブースとデモがたくさんありました。一番人気は間違いなくOculus RiftとProject Morpheusでした。両方とも来年発売するバーチャルリアリティのHMDで、お客さんに体験させていました。デモは大人気で、待つ時間を短くするためチケット制度が実施されていました。自分はそれでも少なくとも30分待ちました。両方のデモはとても印象的で、どちらのほうが良いか、私はバーチャルリアリティの経験がありましたが、中々選べなかったです。最後的にコンテンツに依存すると思いました。
但し、デモには違いが二つがありました。一つ目は、ソニーのデモではMoveという3D入力装置がありましたが、Oculus Riftにはありませんでした。その一方でOculus RiftのブースではQ&Aテーブルがあり、来場者は質問をできましたが、ソニーにはそのような機会はありませんでした。
昼ご飯ではゲーム業界の人（アーティストやエンジニアや研究者）とお喋りさせて頂きました。少し残念なことに、場所が騒がしいせいで、聞き取れなかった場面もありました。それでも色々なことが勉強になりました。
木曜日の夜には「Game Developers Night」というパーティーに招待して頂きました。新しい人脈を作るにはとても良いチャンスでした。また、たまたま大阪から来ていた友達にも会いました。
CEDECに参加できて、この素晴らしい経験は将来の研究のために凄く役に立つと思います。IGDA日本の皆さん、とりわけ小野憲史さんに深く御礼を申しあげたいと思います。
CEDEC Scholarship Participant Report 06: Maximilian Krichenbauer( Nara Institute of Science and Technology)
My Name is Maximilian (Max) Krichenbauer, and I am PhD student at the Interactive Media Design Lab of Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST). In August 2015 I was lucky to be selected for the IDGA scholarship to attend CEDEC 2015 in Yokohama.
My research area is user interfaces and I focus on virtual reality and augmented reality user interfaces for 3D artists. So this was a great chance for me to get a glimpse into the Japanese game development industry and talk to many artists about their work.
I was the only foreigner among the scholarship students in this year, and the only graduate student. So naturally our focus was different, which made it even more interesting to talk to them.
The first day was spent visiting three game development studios in Tokyo. We heard short presentations about their work, were able to ask some questions and meet the staff. In my home country I once did an internship in a game development company after graduating from high school, so seeing the differences, but also the similarities was very informative. Of course, all three studios were rather small, so this experience might not extend to big companies like Nintendo. Sadly, I am not currently job hunting, because this would have been a great opportunity to make a good impression and prepare for a later interview at these companies. Instead, I was more interested in learning about their means of production.
CEDEC itself consisted of three days, packet tightly with presentations and demonstrations, which often made id difficult to decide how to best spend the time. For example: as a VR enthusiast I was keen on learning as much as possible about Sony’s Project Morpheus, but all talks and Demos where on Friday in parallel, so I had to make tough decisions how to best spend my time.
Almost all of the talks given at CEDEC are in Japanese, which was sometimes challenging when the topic was very technical in nature, but I was still able to learn a lot. Also, all of the speakers where very kind when I asked questions or met them after their talk to discuss some points in more detail.
It tried to make good connections and hope to meet many of these people again in the future.
There were also many exhibition booths and demos from many important companies. The most important ones where undoubtedly Oculus Rift and Sony’s Project Morpheus who allowed visitors to test their VR headsets. The public interest in these demos was so great that they even had to give out tickets to visitors in order to keep order and make the waiting time bearable. Still, you had to wait about 30 minutes until you could experience the future of VR gaming.
Both demos where highly impressive and even with my experience in AR and VR research it was not possible to decide a clear “winner”. I guess in the end it will be decided by the content which system you will want to get. There where however two major differences in the demos provided by both companies: Oculus did not show their “Touch” 3D user input device, while Sony allowed visitors to test Morpheus in combination with their “Move” controllers, which was highly impressive. On the other hand, Sony did not provide a way to talk to representatives or ask questions about the system, while Oculus had a Q&A table and took their time to talk at lengths with everyone who wanted.
Every day at lunch time we were joined by an experienced game developer or researcher to have a friendly chat over tea and cakes. To be totally honest I often had a hard time understanding everything that was said due to the noisy environment and the colloquial nature of the chat. Still I was able to gain some insights which might have been difficult to get from just listening to presentations.
On Thursday evening we were even invited to the “game developers night”, an exclusive party for people from the game development community which was a great chance for networking and open discussions. Coincidentally I also met friends from Osaka there.
In general, CEDEC was a very valuable experience for me and no doubt helped me greatly to advance my future research and career. I would like to thank IDGA once again for giving me this unique chance.