It was a great honor to do the opening keynote for the inaugural GameX Industry Summit in Philly, especially considering it was a combined effort of five north-eastern IGDA chapters. The conference was co-located with the consumer focused GameX Expo, providing for a nice gamer/developer one-two punch.

The quality of speakers/content was high, with fellow keynotes from Clint Hocking (Ubisoft), Chris Foster (Harmonix) and Richard Rouse (Kaos). Though there were definitely a bunch of first time glitches (eg, not having a long enough video cable, straying off schedule, etc), attendees were extremely forgiving. On the whole, there was a sense that folks (mostly students and indies) were deeply appreciative of the event and content.

Of particular interest to my current line of economics/cluster work, the VIP reception had several legislators from the PA house of representatives. They were indeed keen to see the games industry grow in the state, which is always nice to see versus the usual confrontational stance.

Some photos from Philly:


Andrew Grapsas and Coray Seifert (Koas Studios) at the opening reception.

 


Coray lecturing on cinematics in Koas’ Frontlines.

 


Cool. But, an odd choice to be the first booth right at the entrance where moms and dads were walking in with their kids…

 


Never seen that before, except for the baby variety ;)

 


The expo had other fun playful stuff, like robot challenges.

 


…and group DDR.

 


…and LAN tournaments.

 


…and celebrity signings. These are folks from The Guild online sitcom.

 


…and Yahtzee too.

 


…and crazy Jedi fights. Jesse Collins seemingly not quite sure how to fight a double blade.

 


Developers coding away during the 48-hour Philly Game Jam.

 


The sleeping pen, empty for now.

 


Darren Torpey (gamerDNA) and Darius Kazemi (Orbus Gameworks) chow down at the Escapist’s party.

 


OK, listen, it was hard enough to ride it. No way I was gonna be able to take a photo of myself at the same time!

 


Brian O’Halloran (Dante from Clerks) chasing down Yahtzee.

 


The most killingest laser tag team evaar!!!

 


Big Daddy and the Splicers perform.

 


The name badges had a certain charm to them.

 


Richard Rouse (Kaos Studios) provides a nicely visual closing keynote on the difference between inspired and copied works.