Reality Panic

Was a busy week in Montreal! GRAND, the big game/animation research consortium was in town for their annual conference. Lots of amazing research being showcased - both hard/technical stuff, and more soft digital humanities type stuff. Though, admittedly, they still have a ways to go to make their work accessible and communicable to industry/outsiders…

I hosted the game keynote, which was a discussion between Clint Hocking and Caryl Shaw on intuition-driven versus metrics-drive design and development approaches. As a prelude, Concordia’s TAG lab hosted a workshop on how everyone can work together to best support the indie movement (or perhaps now what should be labeled as “garage” instead of indie).

There was also the Canada-wide Hotdocs-hosted screening of Indie Game: The Movie.  The post movie live satellite broadcast interview with the filmmakers and Phil Fish was a nice bonus. Was an enjoyable movie and nice to see it getting so much attention.

Some quick photos from the various activities:

Indie ecosystem workshop at Concordia’s TAG lab.

Went on a quick tour of Funcom across the street, during the lunch break.

Odd to see (tasteful) fashion spreads within a game studio… Funcom is working with FashionWeek.

Robot art as part of the International Digital Arts Biennial.

Poster session + opening reception of GRAND’12.

…with lots of technical research.

This one was dealing with latency in Street Fighter.

Ironically enough, heading out for post-conference dinner, we passed the student tuition protests on St-Catherines.

Valerie Steeves, criminology professor from University of Ottawa gives the opening keynote on kids + online privacy.

Post Indie Game screening chat with Phil Fish and the filmmakers James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot.

10 litres of celebratory beer with Caryl Shaw and Manveer Heir.

Graphics/CompSci legend Ken Perlin delivers his “50 apps in 45minutes” keynote. Ya, he ran over just a few minutes ;)

Back in 2009, I visited Brazil for the first time for SBGames. It was easy to be in awe of the amazing Rio de Janeiro, and I learned a tremendous amount about the emerging Brazilian market. This time, I went to the sprawling city of Sao Paulo for a creative industries conference hosted by SESI (an industrial/social services institution).

It was a fascinating event that spanned across sectors such as fashion, design, film, urban planning, etc. I was on the game panel, and was there to make the case that games simultaneously represent a massive business/economic opportunity AND are a valid medium for artistic expression and culture. Based on getting mauled after the session, seems my points resonated (or at least piqued the curiosity) of the eclectic audience.

Also, spent time with local devs and definitely got the sense of the shift towards mobile/social type models versus just three years ago when devs were convinced they’d make the next Halo level blockbuster and export it to North America and Europe.

Prior to Brazil, I warmed up (quite literally) in Monterrey, Mexico, to run a game biz workshop for the Monterrey Interactive Media & Entertainment Cluster. The focus was very much on taking an iterative approach to discovering product/market fit (inspired by Lean Startup processes). This was my first time in Mexico for work, and was a pleasure to connect with the local talent.

Now, some pictures from the combo trip:

View from my hotel window in Mexico.

Workshop teams working on their MVP definitions.

Visiting the offices of Playful Play and Render while they were doing a belated Easter Egg hunt in the backyard.

The Governor’s Palace Museum.

Inside the Palace’s courtyard.

Around the corner, the church of Sagrado Corazon.

“La Lagartera” sculpture art thingy at the start of the Paseo Santa Lucia river-walk.

Bridge of some historical significance that I can’t recall…

Cool bamboo graffiti along the river-walk.

Iconic building in Monterrey.

Distant view of Cerro de la Silla (Saddle Hill).

Impressive fountain with the decommissioned foundry in the background.

Inside the Fundidora park and science museum.

Looking into the guts of the old foundry.

View of Monterrey from the Mirador del Obispado lookout point.

The Obispado church at the top of the hill.

View from 15th floor of the SESI office in the Jardins area of Sao Paulo.

A talk on sustainable fashion by Annegret Affolderback (Choolips).

Enrique Avogadro discusses the creative clusters in the city of Buenos Ares.

A panel discussion on contemporary art.

Charles Landry discusses the effect of urban planning on creativity and innovation.

The Blade Runner-esque angled SESI building.

Massive comm towers were everywhere!

The Canadian consul welcomes the game community to the Canadian Consulate in Sao Paulo.

Ian Kelso (Canadian Interactive Alliance) chats with local devs wrapped in the Canadian inspired decor.

Out for dinner/drinks with Brazilian game developers :)

Just finished up a whirlwind tour through New York City and Boston. I was helping the Quebec government on a “trade mission” with a handful of local game companies. First up, a stop in NYC for a hosted luncheon and a series of meetings with New York companies. After some closing cocktails we all jumped in a van to drive over to Boston. In theory, a good idea, but our psycho driver made it less than an ideal (or safe) experience!

Once in Boston, we attend the MIT Business in Games conference, which was a nice biz focused event. While all the panels were pretty good, the fireside chat with Take-Two CEO/Chairman Strauss Zelnick stole the show. Call me a fanboy, but he was sharp, articulate, witty, charming, humorous and made several bold statements (including the imminent death of THQ due to poor IP strategy, and that Sony is falling completely flat on the innovation curve). That evening ended with the developer focused “Made in MA” party.

The next day, we did a tour/visit of the Miscroft R&D facility on the MIT campus. We also visited the GAMBIT Game Lab on campus, which is a great project-focused program for students. Finally, off to PAX East, with wall to wall geek awesomeness. Always a blast! Including the breaking into games panel I got to be on… we ripped through so many audience questions. Really felt like we helped many folks (including one dad (and his son) that came up to me after and congratulated us for covering all the lessons/advice in one hour that he’s been trying to give his son over the past several years).

Sadly, I was mostly running from meeting to meeting, etc, so didn’t get to take many photos. Here are the few I snapped:

Bob Ferrari (Bare Tree Media) at left, leads the marketing panel at MIT BiG: J Moses (Bagooba), Christina Licursi (Wolf Greenfield), Wes Philips (EpicGames), Ichiro Lambe (Dejobaan Games), and Ryan Schneider (Insomniac).

Erik Schatzker (Bloomberg TV) interviews Take2 CEO/Chairman, Strauss Zelnick.

Folks mingling at the “Made in MA” industry party.

Seems every event I go to, there’s Game of Thrones something!

Riot had a huge presence with League of Legends.

Fancy table-top game tables. Wow.

The Indie Mega Booth as the most mega booth on the floor, serving as home to over a dozen indies and their projects (include Capy’s Super Time Force, Alexander Bruce’s Antichamber, Owlchemy Labs’ Jack Lumber, etc).

The first not-so-secret showing of Funcom’s The Secret World.

The D&D booth had an impressive booth, including this life-sized drider queen.

Oooh, Jet Set Radio coming to XBLA/PSN this summer. One of my all-time favorite games.

Drool drool. Can’t wait to get my hands on those bazillionders of more guns in Borderlands 2.

Assassin’s Creed 3 got lots of attention. Very deserved.

Martin Rae (AIAS) and Richard Hilleman (EA) present the best of DICE.

About half of the jam-packed room for the breaking-into games panel I was on.

Famous oldskool DJ Pete Tong at the World of Tanks 1-year anniversary party.

This year’s Italian Videogame Developers Conference (IVDC) was embedded within a longstanding animation festival called Cartoons on the Bay. Hosted in the beautiful city of Rapallo (near Portofino along the Italian Riviera), it served as a fun event to connect with local and international developers.

Admittedly, the emphasis was much more on the networking, as the conference program was relatively light - consisting mainly of interviews of various special award winners. Nice, but not exactly groundbreaking learning. I gave a brief lecture on innovation process stuff. There was also a small showcase of indie games. On the whole enjoyable, but was at times still a somewhat awkward fit to have game stuff invading this longstanding festival focused on traditional animation and cartoons…

Here are some photos from the trip (including a pitstop in Milan before heading to the coast):

Impressive entrance to the Galleria Duomo shopping gallery.

The ornate and super white/clean Cathedral of Milan.

One of many pretty blossom trees around town.

Appropriately enough, a Ferrari parked outside the Ferrari Store.

Even the central train station had style.

View of Castello di Rapallo, right outside my hotel room!

Daytime view of Rapallo bay outside my hotel room.

All the restaurants and shops were geared up for the festival. This restaurant featured Mario heavily (eg, on the table covers).

American McGee (Spicy Horse), Warren Spector (Disney) and Matt Hooper (id Software) along with event co-organizers Roberto Genovesi (Rai) and Marco Accordi Rickards (AIOMI).

Matt Hooper (id Software) playing historical shooter Gioventu Ribelle: XX La Breccia at the indie showcase.

Super old city hall.

Nice fresco style buildings.

Old church.

Castello di Rapallo was used as  venue to host a showcase of art from American McGee’s Alice.

…the art from Alice on display.

White-shirted Dan Marshall (Size Five Games) on the indies panel.

The infinity pool we nearly pushed Ian Livingstone into…

Matt Hooper (id Software) checking out cartoons at the special U Giancu restaurant.

Luca Monticelli (AIOMI), Andreas Lange (Computerspiele Museum), Marco Accordi Rickards (AIOMI) and Philippe Dubois (MO5) present the newly forming European Federation of Game Archives, Museums and Preservation Projects (EFGAMP).

Center, Ian Livingstone (Eidos) accepts a special career award from Marco Accordi Rickards (AIOMI) and Roberto Genovesi (Rai).

Warren Spector (Disney) gets interviewed against a beautiful backdrop.

Cosplay action.

Castello Brown on the hill in Portofino.

Idyllic seaside view of Portofino.

A look into the small square/bay of Portofino.

Up on the hill, winding path to the church.

St-George church.

Winding path to the castle…

…sadly, this was as close as I could get (was closed by the time I climbed all the steps ;)

An example of the multi layers/levels/textures in the small town of Portofino.

Sitting in the lounge at SFO waiting for my flight back to Montreal after another hectic GDC. How is it that each year feels more intense than the last?! So many meetings and sessions and socials. Oddly, I walk away feeling like it was another great and productive GDC, even though it is all a big blur right now.

Of note, I had a bunch of good meetings with Valley VCs to discuss investing in my indie game incubator idea. Related, my two roundtables on startup funding via incubators/accelerators drew full crowds for some great dialog. Also, the rant panel felt pretty epic with an underlying theme of pushing ourselves to be more ambitious.

And, once again, GDC had record breaking numbers, and bustling expo floor that I barely got to see. Anyway, here are the few photos I took during the week:

Noah Falstein (Suddenly Social) discusses the long history of connectedness and play.

The bustling GDC Play pavilion, showcasing indie devs.

Jonas Eneroth (ProCloud Media) showing off the old Pippin console playing Marathon - the first game he ever worked on, making levels.

Sooo many parties. A lot of them being hosted by the new guard of social/mobile companies…

The ever popular IGF pavilion.

The inappropriately cavernous room for my roundtable on incubators and accelerators.

Warren Spector (Disney), Tim Schafer (DoubleFine) and Cliff B (Epic) warming up for the IGF/Choice award ceremonies.

Hilary McVicker (Elumenati), Stephane D’Astous (Eidos Montreal) and Constance Steinkuehler (The Whitehouse) at the post awards social.

John Schappert discusses the new Zynga publishing platform.

Frank Lantz proudly looks on as his son James takes a turn during the rant panel.

Tim Ambrogi (Final Form Games) lectures on their continuous prototyping mindset, which he likens to the scientific method. Sounded very similar to the Lean Startup approach…

Johannes Grenzfurthner brought his controversial posters along to Clint Hocking’s post-GDC garden party, full of game designers ;)

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.