Reality Panic

Every winter I look forward to popping over to Toronto for the annual GameON:Finance conference. While I’m somewhat biased since I’ve been on the advisory board since the first year, the purely business niche allows for a program that is laser focused and super valuable. It is quite amazing how productive you can be when the right 200 people are in the room, versus thousands wandering a big expo hall…

Village Gamer put up some great notes to recap day 1 and day 2 of the conference. Surprisingly, my mini lecture on Lean Startup concepts came across as quite foreign to most folks in the room. In part makes me think the event should transition to a more “action” oriented approach, like we see with many of the startup festivals and bootcamp type events: direct mentoring, pitch practicing, sitting directly with investors, Idol style competition, etc.

I only took a few quick photos:

Albert Lai (in viking headdress to promote his new studio Big Viking Games) discussed the amazing opportunities for game studios.

 

Alex Sakiz (Gamerizon) mines TV for lessons on mobile vs AAA business models.

 

Philippe Morin (Red Barrels) enjoys a pint with viking fan and conference producer Patricia McCutcheon.

 

Marc Jackson (Seahorn Capital), Nathan Vella (Capy Games) and event producer Jackie Brown up to no good during post dinner drinks…

 

Marc’s panel explored alternate forms of funding like accelerator programs, crowdfunding, digital marketing commitments, etc.

 

Post conference karaoke with the musical stylings of Ryan Henson Creighton (Untold Entertainment).

 

Trevor Fencott amused by Don Henderson’s questionable vibrato.

Ugh, my reading this past year was way down. Despite all the long flights (hmm, I think I was mostly catching up on sleep), I was nowhere close to my preferred pace of two books per month, barely managing to get in one read per month.

Here’s what I did manage to read:

• Adapt - Why Success Always Starts with Failure
• Evil Plans - Having Fun on the Road to World Domination
• Mastering the VC Game - A Venture Capital Insider Reveals How to Get from Start-up to IPO on YOUR Terms
• Maverick - The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace
• Poke the Box - When was the last time you did something for the first time?
• The Art of the Start - The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything
• The Democratic Enterprise - Liberating Your Business with Freedom, Flexibility and Commitment
• The Element - How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything
• The Great Reset - How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity
• The Lean Startup - How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
• The Three Laws of Performance - Rewriting the Future of Your Organization and Your Life
• Where Good Ideas Come From - The Natural History of Innovation

Given my efforts to start up an indie game incubator and raise some venture capital, you can notice the startup/VC trend in the reading list. The classic Art of the Start is an especially good book to, uh, start with. And, Lean Startup is amazingly good, and not just about starting a company but really much more broadly about “validated learning” in an iterative process under conditions of uncertainty. Nice to see it is already catching on in game dev circles.

Maverick was oddly inspiring: a much older book on a democratic workplace in Brazil, where factory workers decide on their own hours and pay. And, Where Good Ideas Come From was especially informative and fun to read. I’m just finishing up Adapt, which plays in nice to my usual “fail to succeed” lectures, but it is much more real-world (eg, Iraq war, banking crash, etc) than management process type stuff I was expecting.

Of the bunch, Democratic Enterprise was pretty meh. Some good info, but just too densely written and super boring. Conversely, was very happy with Element after being inspired by Ken Robinson’s beautiful (and funny!) TED Talk on the need to nurture creativity. And, thanks to Susan Gold for Poke the Box, a fun little book that I now need to hand off to someone else…

OK, this year was just a ridiculous level of travel. More and more of my consulting work is abroad, and the conference speaking invites just keep coming (luckily, I will often overlap conference with client work with university lectures or IGDA chapter visits, etc). There were some really killer transits like the Finland+Sweden>>>Vancouver trip! Or, the 24hr+ trips back from Korea and India. BTW, I don’t get jetlag much anymore - things have gotten pretty binary for me: I’m either on or off.

Anyway, here’s where I went and roughly what I did (with links to notes/photos when available) over the past year:

• Orlando, FL (client work)
• Toronto, ON (GameON: Finance)
• Toronto + Waterloo, ON (GRAND committee meeting + Waterloo U. lecture)
• Burlington, VT (Champlain visit)
• San Francisco, CA (Game Developers Conference)
• Boston, MA (Penny Arcade Expo East)
• Berlin, Germany (Game Culture Circle talkshow and HTW U. lecture)
• Toronto, ON (Insight game business conference)
• Rome, Italy (ImMediaTe Cross Media Summit)
• Malta (Gamezing award ceremony)
• Heidelberg, Germany (Innovation Forum)
• Toronto, ON (entertainment law conference)
• Ottawa, ON (client work)
• Burlington, VT (Champlain senior show speech)
• Helsinki + Tampere, Finland (IGDA-Finland + Games & Innovation Research Seminar)
• Malmo, Sweden (Nordic Game Conference)
• Vancouver, BC (GRAND Annual Conference)
• Buenos Aires, Argentina (MICA)
• Paris + Lyon, France (Futur en Seine)
• Barcelona, Spain (GameLab)
• Montreal, QC (International Startup Festival)
• Quebec City, QC (super mini vacation)
• Mallorca, Spain (European Game Executives Summit)
• Bogota, Colombia (AniGames Expo)
• Montreal, QC (Story+Games Symposium)
• San Francisco, CA (Swissnex game design exhibition launch)
• Toronto, ON (client work with Colombia)
• Montreal, QC (Montreal International Game Summit)
• Seoul + Busan, South Korea (G-Star)
• Mumbai + Pune, India (Supinfomania)
• Toronto, ON (client work)

One of the biggest challenges with international travel is language. With a trip to Korea every few years, for example, there is not a lot of pressure/guilt for not picking up the language. But, with fives outings this year that were Spanish, I was feeling inadequate. Though, my French skills do help decipher the general gist of conversations and pick through a dinner menu ;)

Wow, India is kinda bonkers. On the one hand, there is complete chaos and disarray (insane traffic being just one example) and at the same time, there is this zen-like harmony. It’s an assault on your sense and opens your mind…

I was mainly in Pune (a neighboring city of Mumbai) for the Supinfomania festival hosted by the DSK Supinfocom Game school. I spoke during the conference on failure and experimentation as the needed approach to success, and then ran a full-day workshop for students on innovation processes. Then I spent a day chilling in Mumbai itself.

My head is still spinning trying to make sense of it all. From the slums nestled between 5-star hotels, utterly insane traffic that takes you 2 hours to travel 15km, to the embryonic state of the game industry in the country with the President of India coming in to inaugurate a games and animation school! Also, everything was constantly evolving, especially the schedule… It was dizzying. And, OMG, so much food!

One of the key insights was a struggle away from British-rule induced style of education, that largely beat out any form of actual inquiry, curiosity or learning how to learn. How can you innovate and evolve in a context where people are trained to do as they are told and not to ask questions?

OK, I need to go catch up on sleep… Meanwhile, here are some photos from the trip:

Snazzy crystal shard chandelier in the lobby of the Hyatt in Pune.

 

The DSK Supinfocom campus.

 

Cool junkyard scavenged sculptures.

 

DSK Supinfocom also has a school of industrial design.

 

Sculpture as part of the animation program.

 

One of the student team’s “fish tank” offices for their final year game project.

 

Enjoying local traffic in Pune.

 

Local mogul DS Kulkarni (founder of the Supinfocom school in India) elaborates on his vision alongside delegates from France.

 

One of the many cultural performances during the lunch breaks.

 

Raphael Colantonio and Marco Capraro describe the founding and many near-successes of Arkane Studios.

 

Back lawn of Kulkarni’s hill-side mansion set for dinner reception.

 

The really nice pool.

 

Oh, and matching waterfall to go with the breakfast nook.

 

Waterfall from other angle, and side of house.

 

Head of the game school, Alexis Madinier sets the stage for what’s to come.

 

Students plugging away at the “marshmallow challenge” during my workshop.

 

Spaghetti tower going up.

 

The professors ended up building the tallest structure.

 

Packed in the back of the jeep, heading to lunch.

 

Cool sandstone sculpture in lobby of Marriott in Mumbai.

 

Famous Prithvi Theatre.

 

Walking the relatively calm street side stalls.

 

An over-the-wall shot of Amitabh Bachchan’s bungalo (he’s a super famous Bollywood actor.

 

Insightful billboard.

 

Another good billboard.

 

Hare Krishna temple.

 

Cool statue at the Hare Krishna temple.

 

Another temple… BTW, that’s an ancient Indian symbol, mainly representing good fortune…

 

Night time beach shot looking out to the Arabian Sea from the hip Aurus lounge/restaurant.

This was my second time visiting Korea for their mega G* game expo, the first time being back in 2005. Six years feels like a century in the fast-paced game industry, but already Korea was way ahead of the curve in terms of online business models. The same is true to this day, but some of the major players are falling into the same AAA console trap most Western companies are struggling to get out of.

The highly competitive arms race for client-based free-to-play MMOs is so fierce that rather than leveraging minimum viable product metric driven “lean” models, they are regressing to large (150+ dev staff) and extended (3+ years) developments. Less, but bigger, franchise oriented projects. Sound familiar? Korea’s got the biz side of things nailed. If they don’t evolve to maintain lean production approaches, they are going to be in big trouble within a couple of years.

Another major trend is global expansion. Historically, Korean studios have leveraged partners with regional publishing/distribution capacity. Now, many of the majors are in the process of setting up their own publishing network outside of Asia to maintain tighter control and keep all the profits.

Oh, and G* was way bigger this year than the already big event six years ago. And, mega international, with companies across ~50 different countries participating. I was actually there on behalf of the Canadian Embassy, working to increase game business relations between Korea and Canada… Interesting factoid: There is a huge amount of business being done between Germany and Korea due to the German focus on PC gaming.

Here are a few photos from the trip:

View from hotel in Seoul (stayed one day for meetings before heading over to Busan).

 

View from hotel in Busan: the night lights of the Soemyeon area.

 

The mayor of Busan, gives a welcome speech at the opening reception.

 

Throngs of gamers crowd BEXCO to get in on some G* action.

 

On the expo floor, everywhere was jammed up, especially when booth babes were performing!

 

One of the Korean treasures, the next iteration of Lineage coming soon…

 

As always, awesome concept art from Guild Wars 2.

 

Booths were quite elaborate, this traditional wooden building from big publisher/developer Mgame.

 

As expected, Blizzard had a large presence.

 

Other non-Koreans were on display as well, like Red 5’s Firefall, and World of Tanks around the corner.

 

Nice to see featured indies/start-ups getting some love in the Rising Stars section right at the center of the expo floor.

 

Board/card gaming area.

 

Suzanna Samstag presenting at the co-located serious games conference.

 

James Hursthouse presents his Vancouver-based studio, Roadhouse Interactive, during the Canadian Game Seminar.

 

Epic’s Jay Wilbur with hearty cheers during their networking event.

 

Beach/bridge/skyline view heading towards the main G* party night.

 

This Tron-like laser lightshow dude performed at several of the parties.

 

Typical on-the-ground view of Busan at night.

 

Late night snack: silk worms (left) and snails (right). Yum!

I’m biased of course, but what another awesome Montreal International Game Summit! You know something is working right when speakers say they feel a little extra pressure to be awesome because of all the other awesome talks and smart people they are encountering during the event.

The two keynotes to start each day were especially great, and amazingly contrasting. One by Richard Lemarchand coming from the AAA world of Uncharted and the other by the fiercely indie Jason Rohrer. Both of those talks, and many of the sessions during the conference touched on culture, both on the impact of workplace culture in what we create, but also how what we do is culture and how that impacts others.

Social activities were fun as usual, with an especially swank VIP reception at the W Hotel. And the inaugural Canadian Game Development Talent Awards ran pretty smoothly.

Here are some quick photos:

Philippe Morin (Red Barrels) and Menveer Heir (BioWare) join Richard Lemarchand (Naughty Dog) for dynamic exploration of the Uncharted world.

 

Part of the “brain dump”, Patrice Desilets (THQ) covers the best and worst of taking a year off.

 

Manveer Heir (BioWare) on the design of ethical systems.

 

Dorian Kiekan discusses studio culture at BioWare, starting with “the doctors”…

 

Manveer Heir (BioWare), Richard Rouse (Ubisoft) and Patric Redding (Ubisoft) lounging at the W during the VIP reception.

 

How about starting your day with this challenge?!

 

Jason Rohrer wants us to push artistic boundaries by redefining challenge in games.

 

The ever charming Alain Tascan (Sava Transmedia) delivers the biz keynote with thoughts on being indie in Montreal.

 

Raph van Lierop (HELM Studio) sporting an impressive beard and discussing the death (and rebirth) of AAA.

 

David Anfossi (Eidos) delivers a thorough postmorten on the rebirth of Deus Ex.

 

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot talks about their future plans.

 

The Deus Ex: Human Revolution team heading into the Talent Awards ceremony.

 

Aaron Bouthillier (Klei) wins for Animator of the Year.

 

Remi Racine (Behaviour Interactive) gets inducted to the Hall of Fame.