Mon 3 Dec 2007
The fourth edition of the Montreal International Game Summit capped a busy November of conferencing (with the IGDA Leadership Forum and Game Connect Asia Pacific early and mid-month).
While the event didn’t quite have the same growth as in last years (ie, from a raw attendee headcount point of view), MIGS is maturing as a significant conference on the hectic game industry events schedule. A few things lead me to say this:
- Growing non-local attendee base. In particular, there was a 20+ developers/publisher/media delegation in from Japan. Also, anecdotally, I was bumping into more developers from out of town saying that the conference looked solid so they came…
- Awesome wicked (non-recycled) keynote lectures.
- More lectures dealing with serious issues (eg, game criticism, censorship, etc) and niche topics (eg, games for toddlers, R&D knowledge transfer with academia).
- Addition of a “business lounge” for developer<>publisher matchmaking.
Anyway, overall was a great conference, with many inspiring and thought provoking sessions. The Blow and Hecker keynotes were of particular brilliance.
My one criticism is that the name badges were not conducive to quick name glancing, hence did not promote easy networking. Oh, and the weather was pretty uninviting given the late November timing of MIGS this year. Oh well.
Here are some quick snaps from the event (with a ton more “official” shots at flickr):
Kiyoshi Shin (IGDA-Japan), Michiyo Pattillo (Famitsu USA) and Otsuka Hideyuki (Famitsu) enjoying drinks at the pre-MIGS reception for the Japanese delegation.
Kellee Santiago (thatgamecompany) eating with fellow out-of-towners from Flashbang Studios in Arizona: Steve Swink, Ben Braman and Matthew Wegner.
Nintendo’s Koizumi Yoshiaki gave an insightful opening keynote, and was full of detail and take-aways - even the Japanese journalists were amazed…
Panel discussing next-gen content: Clint Hocking (Ubisoft), Thomas Wilson (Beenox), Patrick Fortier (A2M), Ollie Sykes (EA) and moderator David Lightbown (A2M)
Ben Sawyer (Digital Mill) rants on the crappiness of games for young children.
Jon Blow delivers inspiration!
Argh! Eidos Montreal is such a tease :(
Groovy VIP cocktail reception.
VIPs: Jon Blow and Randy Smith (EA).
Jack Thompson on the big screen during the IGDA-Montreal screening of Playing Columbine.
Melissa Fuller and Joel Kornek, survivors of the 2006 Dawson school shooting.
Ben Sawyer (Digital Mill) with Ian Bogost (Persuasive Games) during the IGDA-Montreal social.
Dave Perry talks about his rather busy “year off”…
Erin Hoffman on why developers make good parents, which oddly spent a lot of time on the violence issue…
One of Darius Kazemi’s cool player-metrics demos.
At lunch on day2 with James Everrett (Say Design) and Phil Wilson (Realtime Worlds), producer of the most awesomenest game, Crackdown!
Hecker’s blistered feet at the keynote podium.
Danny Ledonne (Emberwilde Productions) discusses Super Columbine Massacre RPG!
Jane Pinckard rushed by Ben Braman (Flashbang Studios) after her electric performance on the closing journalists panel.
Not all the Gamma 256 games were quite as blocky as this one…
Randy Smith (EA) performs during the closing festivities.
The Kokoromi troupe: Damien De Fede (Red Fly), Heather Kelley (A2M), Phil Fish and Cindy Poremba (Concordia University).
December 3rd, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Conference was great this year, lots of excellent talks, plenty of brain poking. I want a t-shirt that says “I’ve been Heckered”, and Jonathan nicely summed up why WoW doesn’t do it for me. David Perry bounced all over the place during his keynote and still managed to deliver some useful takeaways.
Oh, and Damien is at Red Fly in Austin now :)
December 3rd, 2007 at 10:12 pm
I had a really great time at MIGS. I am definitely going to attend next year, and I’m going to try and get a whole Boston contingent to come along. It’s without a doubt the best professional game development conference within a reasonable driving distance of Boston.
December 5th, 2007 at 6:25 am
I missed out on a lot but still enjoyed what I saw and was surprised/impressed at the scale (the event gets very little promotion in the UK). Disapointing follow up coverage online though - I was hoping to listen to MP3s of all those talks I missed. :-(
Would like to experience the whole event next year - will remember gloves, hat & scarf next time too! :|
“most awesomenest game!” - aww shucks, thanks Jason. And much respect from Billy T, Crackdown Design Lead, who still can’t find all those orbs! ;-)
December 5th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Oh man did those name badges suck. Mine ripped off the little hook on the 2nd day, and the size 8 font for the names didn’t help at all. What happened to the plastic sleeves we had last year?
Other than that, it was a solid conference and there was lots to be learned. And Gamma was cool.
December 6th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
GDC was an incredible event to get to attend, especial as a volunteer. Really opened my eyes to the gamming world “behind the curtain.” Got my brain ticking about a whole lot of other things as well. I’m not sure how you found out about my blog on liquidriders.com [I hope cause you’re a snowboarder too], but thax for confirming my quote.
December 12th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
[…] Jason Della Rocca’s coverage of MIGS […]
December 13th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Oh my !
December 18th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
The speakers were fantastic and it’s a growing event. I completely agree that the name badges weren’t conducive to networking and I felt that there wasn’t enough emphasis on networking by the organisors - saying that, though, it *is* a growing event and it was a thought provoking and interesting conference I’d love to attend again. Jonothan Blow, John Perry and Erin Hoffman were absolutely fantastic and my colleagues and I chatted in-depth all the way home!
December 31st, 2007 at 12:06 am
[…] Montreal, QC (Montreal International Game Summit) […]
February 3rd, 2008 at 11:03 am
By virtue of how great MIGS was this year, I actually managed to blog an event before the next big one is over. =P
The quality of the talks was outstanding. I can only hope that GDC ‘08 will have as much thought-provoking discussions and pull-no-punches commentary.
I appreciate you making this a very photo-oriented post. Lots of good memories and memory-aids.
I also hope we can get more Boston people up to MIGS next year. There’s lot of exciting stuff happening on the east coast these days and we’ve gotta represent. =)
My other thoughts from the event:
http://designerscroll.blogspot.com/2007/11/migs-2007-challenge-to-expand-our.html