It wasn’t planned intentionally so, but the main theme coming out of the recent Montreal International Game Summit was the need to make games more emotionally engaging. Nearly all of the keynotes and many of the regular sessions touched on emotions in some manner - from increasing the fidelity of character movements to pushing for an impulse casual game purchase.

Gamasutra was there to cover several of the sessions in detail… Ditto for Michael Mateas’ live-blogging coverage of the day-1 and day-2 sessions that he attended. Scott Jon Siegel also has a ton of coverage up at Joystiq.

In its third year, the Summit is shaping up nicely as a robust developer focused event, with conference content quality easily on par with GDC. This year, the action on the periphery was quite evident, with hoards of government economic development officials on hand and seemingly many publisher bizdev types meeting behind closed doors. Canadian media funding agency TeleFilm took advantage of the Summit to launch their new “Great Canadian Game Competition” to much enthusiasm.

And, it was an honor to have Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime as a keynote speaker (it was pure corporate propaganda, but it was yummy delightful propaganda), also bringing along several playable Wii’s for everyone to enjoy in the expo area.

Kudos to the Alliance NumeriQC for putting together a great event, and most importantly, allowing the advisory board to drive the content (ie, ensuring relevance and focus). In particular, it was nice that we were able to get in some more niche topics (eg, Laban movement analysis, academic bridge building, voice acting, accessibility, ARGs, sex, etc).

Personally, was great that I didn’t have many on-site duties other than moderating the closing panel of studio heads - which, interesting enough, has sparked some controversy for EA exec Alain Tascan dissing Gears of War for a lack of innovation.

Here are some photos of the fun:


Brenda Brathwaite (SCAD) chats up Tracy Rosenthal-Newsom (Harmonix) on the eve of the Summit.


Jean-Pierre Faucher (Alliance NumeriQC) enjoys a drink with Greg Costikyan (Manifesto Games).


Ken Perlin (NYU) gets some help from Tobi Saulnier (1st Playable) while prepping for his keynote.


Killing Monsters author Gerard Jones discusses culture and violence.


Attendees get hands-on time with the Wii.


Ken Perlin showing off one of many research demos during his keynote.


Maxis master prototypers Chris Hecker and Chaim Gingold…


…with fancy diagrams.


A crew of speakers departing the Palais des Congres and heading towards the VIP party. (Hmm, I think I see Brenda, Nicole Lazzaro, Tobi, James Everett, Randy Smith, Heather Kelley, Gilles Monteil.)


Jane Pinkard (CMP Game Group) in deep thought.


Edith ? (Ubisoft Campus) with Warren Currell (Sherpa Games) at the developers’ party.


They packed in to hear Andrew Eades (Relentless Software) discuss team motivation and quality of life.


Dan Black (Xbox) and Julien Merceron (Eidos) discussing Montreal’s chilly weather.


At the closing party, Heather Kelley and Phil Fish welcome developers to Kokoromi’s first game event, Gamma 01: Audio Feed. Their own experimental art game, Glee, can be seen projected behind them. Tons of extra photos at Flickr.


Chris Crowell (A2M), Genevieve Lord (A2M) and Chris Bateman (International Hobo) enjoy another of the Gamma games.


Fellow researchers Michael Mateas (UC Santa Cruz) and Mary Flanagan (Tiltfactor Lab) at the closing party.