Reality Panic

The first time I got to visit New Orleans was for SIGGRAPH 2009. Was so busy with work that I never made it out of the warehouse district (where the convention center is). Last week, I popped in for some client work, and despite only being in town for a single full day, did have some time to finally check out Bourbon Street and wander around a bit.

A few quick thoughts:

• Damn, as a burly Canadian, I’m just not made for that kind of humidity!
• Bourbon Street is insane/overwhelming, but why does it smell so odd, and half the girls look like Kate Bosworth?
• All the food is super crazy delicious!

And, a few quick photos:

The start of Bourbon, at Canal.

And boom, right away, intense police “tools”.

Well, with Transformers roaming the area, I can understand…

A tame day-time snapshot.

St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter.

Yummy shrimp po boy :)

My triumphant return to E3 was an exhausting affair. I skipped the past two years, but with the expo back to its former format (almost) and client work to do, I had a valid reason to bask in the neon glow of the LA Convention Center.

Admittedly, attending E3 in past years (as IGDA guy) was a relaxed situation compared to this year. In four nights and three days, I covered 27 meetings and about a dozen social functions and parties (including a visit to the Canadian Consul’s house) and a lecture at the collocated Game Education Summit. Sadly, this left little time to check out the expo floor itself – probably less than an hour total in both halls. But after a dozen E3s, you start to realize that the game news sites and blogs, etc, do a better job of covering the games/news than you possibly can. So, I just check out all the highlights once I get back ;)

From a personal work-process point of view, this is the first event where I never had to boot up my laptop (to do email, check meeting info, scheduling, etc). I’ve been getting more and more proficient/confident with my Android phone, and it enabled me to do everything that was needed (though, wow, they so have to work on battery life). Also, quick note that only 1 one the 27 meetings got canceled – which is quite impressive for the always frantic E3.

Regarding E3 itself, I have mixed emotions – just as I always have had. One the one hand, it’s great to see all the action in one place, garnering massive amounts of attention and enabling ancillary activities to flourish (lamprey style) around the big show. Plus getting business done, meeting with industry friends, etc, is all good. But, on the other hand, all of the glam and fanfare (booth babes, super star appearances, etc) largely comes across as inauthentic and just a ruse to get (wasted ephemeral) attention. And while the event is not quite as big as it was before the previous implosion, you get the sense that the budgets and marketing spend to “do” E3 is right back where it used to be.

Here’s what caught my eye:

Deputy Consul General of Canada, Marcy Grossman, kicks off the Canadian sponsored networking breakfast.

Super cool life-sized Halo Reach statues/diorama.

Ooh, can’t wait to kill more zombies in Dead Rising 2! This guy clearly wanted to eat my brain.

Always nice to see IndieCade giving indie/experimental games a presence at the big show.

An odd sight, hairstyling game including in-booth make-overs…

Cute go-cart style “holder” for your Wii-mote.

One of the few examples of the exploding free-to-play/social gaming market, tucked away in the SOE booth. With 10million users, FreeRealms currently enjoys more success than the vast majority of the games at E3 will ever hope to achieve…

The acclaimed USC School of Cinematic Arts, host of the 2010 Game Education Summit.

Bill Shribman (WGBH Education Foundation) and Nina Walia (PBS Kids) discuss lessons learned with kids/educational games for iPhone at the Game Education Summit.

EA CEO John Riccitiello gets “attacked” by WWE athlete (and game blogger) Gerard Williams at the Wedbush/EEDAR party.

Fire eaters at the Nexon party. Reminds me of similar performances at the old Sony parties…

My favorite piece in this year’s Into the Pixel collection: “Knight March” by Richard Anderson from ArenaNet’s Guild Wars 2.

Driveway up to the Canadian Consul’s house.

Chris Swain (USC) and Emma Westecott (OCAD) enjoying a cocktail, thanks to Canadian taxpayers ;)

The path to The EP.

Even at such a Hollywood-style party as The EP, the gamers can’t keep from gaming! FYI, Nicola totally whipped my butt.

Epic Mickey got a lot of attention. Kudos to Warren.

As did AC: Brotherhood. I bet the Ubi PR folks got really tired of answering why Patrice left…

Obligatory fast car shot!

Billy Cain (Sneaky Games) belting it out on Rock Band 3.

Folks were raving about Dance Central as a great Kinect game. I didn’t watch long enough to get past giggling over the goofiness of seeing the folks gyrate with less-than-Britney skill ;)

Following on from the previous week’s humanities oriented game studies conference, I went to Ottawa to attend the first gathering of the GRAND research network. Technically a network of centers of excellence, a research program funded by the Canadian government, GRAND is a collaboration between 20+ universities working on projects in the domains of games, graphics, animation and new media.

I was there on behalf of Concordia’s TAG research group, with the goal of helping with the whole industry collaboration and bridge-building side of things — admittedly, an area many academics don’t factor much into their efforts…

Aside from the group project meetings (which focused heavily on how researchers were going to collaborate across the various universities), it was a pleasure to see some great keynote speakers in action - like OCAD’s Sara Diamond and copyright guru Michael Geist.

Will be interesting to see how this “grand” experiment of research collaboration will evolve over the years.

Research posters on display during the opening reception.

GRAND scientific director, Kelly Booth, welcomes everyone to the conference.

Sara Diamond (OCAD) in action.

IP guru Michael Geist recaps what led to the current state of copyright in Canada.

The “Play & Performance” project group coordination meeting.

Joe Marks (Disney R&D) talks about how Disney leverages academic research, in this case to save millions of dollars to automatically handling frame “betweening” for 2D animations.

Always nice to not have to travel to a conference… This year, the Canadian Game Studies Association (CGSA) hosted its annual conference in Montreal, at Concordia University. There was a nice set of diverse sessions, though mostly geared towards the humanities.

I gave a talk on evolving business models, and how digital distribution and the “minimum viable product” (MVP) approach to development is shifting risk. Apparently, I must have fooled a few folks into thinking I was actually smart, as several commended me on presenting a good “paper”. Of course, I mostly wing my talks and never write anything down - I don’t even use PowerPoint, let alone write a paper ;)

Sadly, I only got to attend the first day. Sadder still, there were no game developers in attendance (unless they all showed up on day2)… Considering how vibrant/big the Montreal dev community is, it still demonstrates the massive gap between industry and academia…

Bart Simon (Concordia University) on how gamers are central to understanding games as cultural artifacts.

Schema of fear/horror games from the Ludicine Research Group at the University of Montreal.

Matt White (Memorial University of Newfoundland) on studying game tutorials and gender.

To cap off 4 weeks of back-to-back travel/events, I dropped by Toronto for the inaugural INplay conference. Hosted by Interactive Ontario, the focus of the event was children’s media across all platforms. Video games were part of the agenda, of course, but the speakers and attendees cut across many disparate segments of the media and entertainment universe.

Bob Ferrari of Sanrio Digital and I co-hosted a discussion on the evolution of the game business. A large portion of the session was exploring the shift of games as product mentality to a games as a service orientation. Also, the session produced one of my best quote-tweets to date: “There’s crap, and there’s utter and total crap.”

The day1 closing keynote by the co-creators of Yo Gabba Gabba (a very popular kids show now in its third season), was particularly inspiring. Their story of struggle and putting everything on the line to pursue their vision paralleled many of the success stories of the game industry.

Also of note, every conference attendee got a little stuffy modeled after the event mascot. It was produced by Monster Factory. Easily the most innovative and thematically appropriate piece of conference swag/promo I’ve ever gotten.

Alexander Manu (InnoSpa International Partners) gives a very playful opening keynote on why play is an adult activity.

The mommies’ panel (well, plus one dad): Jen Maier (UrbanMoms.ca), Brad Moon (GeekDad), Cora Brady (Mom Central Canada) and moderator Erica Ehm (YummyMummyClub.ca).

Freelance kids’ tech developer Carla Engelbrecht Fisher explores the impact of child psychology on game design.

The teaser Yo Gabba Gabba viral clip that “started it all”…

Every table was covered with paper and had crayons. Some used it to take impromptu notes. Others used it for more inspired doodling.

Right off the heels of FMX, I popped over to Seattle to attend the 2010 edition of LOGIN. Focused squarely on online/web games. In fact, similar to FMX, the LOGIN folks worked really hard to inject a sense of intimacy and connectedness. And while the sessions at the conference were mostly top-tier quality, the real value (for me anyway) were the long breaks and ample networking opportunities.

Lots of emphasis on monetization models and legal stuf, and of course tech and design issues. And magic! The closing keynote was a magic show instead of the usual lecture.

Some quick pics:

Opening legal session to really get folks fired up first thing in the morning: Sean Kane, Tom Buscaglia, Randy Price (Arenanet), Mona Ibrahim (Imua), Nick Mitchell.

Ori Inbar (ogmento) invokes Jane McGonigal to discuss the future of games and the role of augmented reality.

Louis Castle (Instant Action) delivers the first lunch keynote.

Peter Freese (LOGIN) and Nick Berry (Real Networks) enjoy wine on the terrace during the speakers’ reception.

Leighton Read (Seriosity) and Byron Reeves (Stanford University) discuss their book, Total Engagement, during the day2 lunch keynote.

Conference party at the Seattle Aquarium!

Jon Gagnon eying the squid.

Otters getting fed…

Corvus Elrod inspects the octopus.

Post aquarium caravan looking for the next watering whole.

Closing design panel on the question of hard vs. easy: Jay Minn (The Amazing Society), Isaiah Cartwright (Arenanet), David Edery (Fuzbi), Erin Hoffman (HumaNature Studios), Andrew Leker (Mind Control Software).