Reality Panic

I’m scrambling to prep for my next trip (ie, to Korea for KGC and G*). So, I sadly don’t have much time to go into any great depth. But, overall, the second run of the Montreal International Game Summit was pretty kick ass!

The first year had 500+ attendees and I’m guessing the Summit broke 800 for this year. In part, the jump can be attributable to the impressive roster of speakers they were able to bring into Montreal for the Summit (eg, Warren Spector, Neil Young, Eric Zimmerman, Doug Church, etc, etc). All the sessions I attended were well done, and I was particularly pleased to see that some of the none-mainstream sessions were well attended (eg, ARGs, real world games, serious games, etc). As a minus, I heard from a few techies that the programming sessions were too abstract and didn’t provide much take-away (clearly something to work on for next year).

As the closing session, I ran a Zimmerman-style game design challenge on the theme of sex in games. It was an inspiring and wilding amusing climax to the Summit. Despite Heather Kelley’s winning design for a game to teach female sexual response, my personal favorite was Frank Lantz’s Spore mod, “Sporgy”. (If anyone has a link to a summary of the session, please pass it along so I can update…)

Finally, here are some quick shots I took during the Summit (hmm, perhaps I should stop using the no-flash mode)…

Summit director Jean-Pierre Faucher (Alliance NumeriQC) kicks things off during the opening reception.

Just before the opening keynote, Eric Zimmerman (gameLab) roots through his tote bag; Frank Lantz (area/code) scopes the program.

A healthy crowd made it in for the 8:30am start (!).

Warren Spector (Junction Point) left no stone unturned in delivering his “best of times / worst of times” keynote.

Hmm, can’t remember exactly what Neil Young (EA LA) was referring to at this point in his “can games make us cry” keynote, but his whole speech was trumped by an attendee holding up a doodle from his 3-year-old son and proclaiming “who gives a crap about big budgets, this makes me fucking cry”…

Frank Lantz gave a very compelling session on “real world” games like PacManhattan.

Mark DeLoura (Sony) and Scott Foe (Nokia) at the VIP cocktail.

A somewhat less “present” Doug Church (EA LA) also at the cocktail.

Eric and Warren debating the merits of Scandinavian ludological taxonomies…

Nintendo’s Hideki Konno (one rank below Miyamoto san) discussing how the hardware innovations of the DS enabled the accessible style of play they wanted for Nintendogs.

Eric gets the audience to their feet… To play a round of “massively multiplayer rock-paper-scissors” during his keynote.

Bart Simon (Concordia) and Don Daglow (Stormfront Studios) anxious to get to the sex…

Ever the showman, Eric gets the audience involved for the demo of his “games making babies” meta-design for the Game Design Challenge.

Frank watching Heather Kelley (Ubisoft) demo her “Lapis” sexual response concept.

The Design Challenge and closing party were held at the Society for Arts & Technology, which had some interesting art installations, well, installed, for the crowd.

Vander Caballero (EA Montreal) and Alfredo Chaves (4-Elements) getting some tips from the victorious Heather…

Eric, Frank and Clint Hocking (Ubisoft) strike a pose at the closing party.

Also in town, the Arcadia Festival started the day after the Summit. Arcadia was more of a gamer/consumer event, partially inspired by big expos like E3 and TGS. I popped in on Saturday morning with my nearly-3-year-old son Gabriel. Funnily enough, soon after we got there he said “Daddy it’s too loud, I want to go home”. Now I don’t feel so old when I complain about the noise at E3 ;)