Reality Panic

Despite this being my 17th straight GDC, and knowing so many familiar faces, this was the first GDC that I felt that I was not there alone. With the Execution Labs teams in tow, there was more than just my personal experience to manage… It was a fun challenge, and the event was productive/valuable as ever.

Otherwise, this GDC was the usual flurry of meetings, sessions, parties, etc. Of special note, the annual rant panel that Eric Zimmerman and I coordinate was especially powerful. Wow. And, for a sponsored session, the “future of mobile” panel I moderated went surprisingly well.

Sadly, way too swamped with post event catch up to write more… Instead here are some photos from GDC week.

Chasing burritos at 2am with Ruben Farrus (Minority Media) and Pol Jeremias (ex-LucasArts).

Screening of the fascinating interactive documentary, 48 Hour Games.

Tim Symons (Nintendo) and Dan Murray (Foundation 9) consuming vast amounts of Chinese food.

Opening F2P Summit session on key trends from 2012.

Cracked up when David Edery stared discussing ideal prototyping team composition.

Is it just me, or you can watch others play/suffer at Super Hexagon for hours?!

Mmm, booze… The Office at Churchill for the Execution Labs investor/partner cocktail.

More XL VIP action.

Keith Katz (Execution Labs) with opening remarks and thanks.

Alain Tascan (Sava Transmedia) helping to promote several XL games.

Big lines to try to Oculus VR glasses. Word on the street was the demo impressed.

Kris Piotrowski (Capy) showing off Super Time Force at the IGF booth.

Henry Smith proudly displaying IGF nominated Spaceteam.

Most random moment of GDC: Cliff and Lauren walked by just as I was starting to stretch. They both got down to stretched and chatted for a bit.

Entering the swanky Sony party. Yummy food!

The way more controversial WarGaming party. Gas masks with bunny ears?

Richard Lemarchand (USC) decides to bounce on beds. Something about a Bruce Sterling short story…

Hero John Vechey (PopCap) fetched $500 worth of Jack-in-the-Box burgers for all of us with midnight munchies, including Ian Adams (Z2), David Edery (Spry Fox), and Nathan Vella (Capy)!

Best rant panel ever. Moving.

During Anna’s rant on quality of life, everyone started standing, those that crunched longer stayed standing…

Keita Takahashi’s game for the Experimental Gameplay Workshop.

Dinner with the Argentinians.

Keith Katz (Execution Labs) describing how to best rub your meat… uh, for ideal flavor and smoking.

Post party at Robin Hunicke’s place. Was fun until the cat prevented me from breathing… :(

The sixth, and what felt like the best, GameON:Finance to date was a valuable mix of informative conference sessions and elbow rubbing with game business bigwigs. I had the pleasure of interviewing industry veteran Lee Jacobson (formerly of Virgin, Midway, Atari, and now doing a metrics startup). It was a wide ranging discussion, though his comments on the demise of THQ and how publishers are bad at killing games got the most attention…

Additionally, I moderated the venture funding panel. It was informative, and brutally honest about the challenges of lining up angel or VC money. Though, the session on alternative financing sources (eg, Kickstarter), and gov support schemes, certainly cheered up the room. Also, just to note that Charles Hudson is a fantastic speaker!

Finally, was great that one of our Execution Labs teams was in the CMF Showcase. Lateef from Miscellaneum did a fine job pitching The Firemasters. Oh, and it was a blast to present at Bento Miso the night before. They are doing great stuff there to support the indie game dev community in Toronto.

For a more detailed summary, check out the write-up at Techvibes.

GameON:Finance was hosted at Toronto’s Reference Library. Shhhh…

Yann Suquet (BUF) on parallels between game and film funding models.

Some truth from EEDAR.

Quick dinner with Rob Caouette (EDC), Jim Ying (Gree) and Jesse Divnich (EEDAR).

Scott Simpson (Playbrains) ready for post dinner festivities.

Charles Hudson (SoftTech VC) on why VCs hate your game company.

Experts on alt forms of finance: Charles Hudson (SoftTech VC), Cindy Au (Kickstarter), Scott Simpson (Playbrains), Jason Bailey (East Side Games), Nathan Vella (Capy/IndieFund).

Lateef Martin (Miscellaneum) presents The Firemasters during the CMF Showcase.

Lateef Martin (Miscellaneum) busts out Beat It during post event karaoke.

Lee Jacobson (Apmetrix) with some silky smooth singing.

Sao Paulo played host to the inaugural Brazil International Game Festival, a first-of-its-kind event in South America. I was fortunate enough to be on the jury, and participate in this critical event. While most in the Western development scene are accustomed to celebrating games and providing opportunities for indies to connect, share, and do business, the Brazilian community jumped at their own chance to do the same.

The Festival took in approx 250 applications, from which 20 finalists were selected across a handful of categories. On a personal level, it was nice to be “forced” to play all the finalists on-site and have face-to-face jury deliberations to select the award recipients. There were some real gems in there, especially the overall best game, Unmechanical, from Talawa Games in Sweden.

There was a great vibe at the event and overall sense of community, as developers, publishers, and related industry folk, mingled and shared. And, there was plenty of opportunity to take in Brazilian culture (though we focused more on the food and nightlife, than museums or landmarks ;)

There is graffiti absolutely everywhere in Sao Paulo, and most of it quite nice/creative!

View from hotel room. The city is indescribably dense and sprawling.

Iain Simons (GameCity) has a hard time selecting beer at the specialty pub.

Hehehe, when I first walked into the restaurant, I actually thought that was melted cheese. Oh well.

Chris Avellone (Obsidian) approves his first caipirinha.

Amazing skyline view from the Skye Bar atop the Unique Hotel.

The rather unique boat-like shape of the Unique Hotel.

Somewhat threatening sign of the Z Carniceria bar (which fittingly was previously a butcher shop).

The even more threatening “cheese” on fries. It was Jim’s choice!

The Secretary of State of Culture, Marcelo Mattos Araujo, opens the Festival.

Chris Avellone (Obsidian) discusses the changing landscape of game publishing.

International publishers give quick “reverse” pitches (ie, “here’s what we’re looking for, and how we do business”). First up, Levi Buchanan (Chillingo). Waiting in the wings: Jim Ying and Amanda Cinfio (Gree), Careen Yapp (Konami), Fred Wester (Paradox).

Tech/platform companies provide overviews. First up, Henrique Schlatter Manfroi (Nokia). Next up: Daniel Trocoli (ClickJogos), Jay Santos (Unity).

No clue what they were joking about, but Careen Yapp (Konami) and Fred Wester (Paradox) didn’t stop laughing for like 30 minutes!

Band “circle” playing beautiful music at the samba club.

The B2B match-making room in full swing.

Part of the BIG exposition area at the Museum for Image & Sound.

Tali Goldstein (Minority Media) getting mobbed after her Papo&Yo post-mortem lecture.

The BIG crew opening the awards ceremony (from right to left): Gustavo Steinberg, Ale Machado, Melina Manasseh, Eliana Russy.

The award winners. Congrats!

Crazy good steak at Sujinho at the post-awards dinner. (Photo credit: Levi Buchanan)

At the Choperia karaoke bar for post-awards celebration. (Photo credit: Iain Simons)

Mmmm, dim sum at Ping Pong. Such good Asian food in Sao Paulo :)

All the way across town in Morumbi for a family BBQ in honor of Tali. Three of us who had not yet left, were generously invited.

Bamboo.

Now THAT is churrasco (aka BBQ). Sooooooo good. Easily the best meal all week.

Myself with Bruno (Tali’s brother), Florian Grolig (Black Pants), Tali Goldstein (Minority Media), and Robin Meijer (Ronimo Games) enjoy the family BBQ.

OK, OK, I’m biased. As a co-founder of the Montreal International Game Summit and current chair of the program committee, I have a hard time not being a fan. Once again, I had a great time at MIGS, now in its ninth iteration, enjoying many lecture sessions, receptions, and meeting great people.

The “future unknown” theme was quite appropriate given the current state of flux of the game industry. Both keynotes played this up well, with Tim Sweeney delving more so on the technical side of things, and then Peter Molyneux talking more about the need for indie to be brave and push things forward.

The business lounge looked to always be hopping, and their first attempt at a “demo zone” to showcase independent studios/projects seemed to be effective - though certainly room to grow.

Tim Sweeney (Epic Games) with the opening keynote.

Vander Caballero (Minority Media) with an inspiring business track keynote…

…that he sketched on his iPad.

Hustle and bustle in the DemoZone.

Three Indie Muskateers: Nels Anderson (Klei), Amir Rao (Supergiant), and Ichiro Lambe (Dejobaan).

Funky audio visualizer/game thing at the Prince of Arcade indie showcase party.

New Orleans brass band The Soul Rebels playing the main party. It was loud.

Peter Molyneux (22cans) gives a tour of his studio via Skype.

Jonathan Jacques-Belletete (Eidos) on the need to embrace external art/aesthetics into games.

Stephanie Bouchard (THQ) on make games more about social manipulation (eg, be the Godfather asking for favor, not the goon breaking kneecaps).

Andy Hess (Apple) enjoys some late night poutine!

The “left overs” party at the oh-so-hip Furco: Keith Katz (Execution Labs), Victoria Petersen (GDC), Jennifer Whitson (TAG/Concordia), Tony Lam (Vanedge), Behrouz Bayat (Gamerizon), Colleen Mickey (GDC) and about 30 more, not pictured…

…and then on to Big in Japan for in depth game economics debates. Seriously.

During the final stages of launching Execution Labs, I was actually in Toronto for the X-Summit transmedia conference. I was there to speak on a panel about alternate forms of financing for transmedia projects. It was somewhat ironic that the venture I was launching the very next day would be not transmedia at all, but 100% focused on games.

Overall was a good event with varied discussion. I found that the diversity of topics and the varying perspectives of folks coming from different sectors (games vs film vs TV vs web vs advertizing, etc) was more interesting at a meta level, than any particular specific detail provided.

Sadly, I missed a bunch of stuff (and didn’t get many photos) as I was stuck in my room doing press interviews.

Father of transmedia, Brian Seth Hurst (The Opportunity Management Company) with the opening keynote on building story worlds.

Jim Laird (Maduri Laird Partners) poses for his Execution Labs mentor profile photo.

The games panel, better known as the bunch of guys from LA: Flint Dille, Lenny Brown, David Bergantino, and Keith Boesky.

Hasn’t quite sunk in. Lunching a new venture is such an involved process, with so much attention to details, it is easy to get lost in the minutia. We kinda knew we were onto something special with Execution Labs, especially given how open/vocal I was about my plans over the past while, and always nice to see the extra validation via the spectacular press coverage.

Now the hard work starts.

Once I get past the launch frenzy, I’ll post some deeper thoughts on what it took to get to this point…