Reality Panic

Just got back from my third straight trip to the state of Pennsylvania (the first was the Penn State conference + Philly IGDA Chapter meeting + IGDA admin office stuff, the second was the IGDA board strategy retreat). This third time was as an invited guest to SIGGRAPH’s 2009 strategy/planning weekend in Pittsburg. Ya, those guys really plan ahead!

While in town, I took the opportunity to hook up with Heather Kelley, who has been a “visiting” professor at Carnegie Mellon over the past semester. It was a crazy art show week in Pittsburgh and Heather took me around to a few shows and related events. Also, I gave a lecture at the 8-Bit Poet Collective (a student group at CMU promoting indie game development).

Here are some photos from the trip:

Drew Davidson (CMU ETC) welcomes the SIGGRAPH committee members to the Entertainment Technology Center.

ETC student project Quasi.

The “lobby” area to the ETC.

Must be a lot of Star Wars nerds at the ETC…

University of Pittsburgh’s “tower of knowledge”, the tallest university building in the world (or so I was told by the taxi driver).

Playing some dodgeball after the 8-Bit Poet meeting.

Checked out the I-am-a-Heather art show at Future Tenant. Heather Kelley had an interactive/game piece.

A larger scale piece at the Pittsburgh Biennial art show.

More standard photos on a wall art at the Biennial.

Heather rides the rocket chair!

Just got back from a busy week in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, including:

• attending and moderating a session during “Playing to Win: The Business and Social Frontiers of Videogames” at Penn State University
• having dinner with new board chair Jen MacLean to discuss org strategy
• visiting the IGDA admin office in New Jersey to work on various operational stuffs, including a finance session with IGDA treasurer Tobi Saulnier
• dinner with the IGDA-Philly chapter coordinators
• attending and speaking at the IGDA-Philly chapter meeting

On the whole, a very productive, albeit exhausting week. Especially given late night college-style partying that took place during the Penn conference… But, I digress.

The Playing to Win conference was a good first effort, and really got going with a bang. The first several sessions focused on the “social” element of the conference sub-title, and featured some high-powered speakers. Though, after that initial set of sessions, many of the following panels lacked the same focus and firepower - though, there was certainly many nuggets of goodness interspersed. Would be excellent to see them focus solely on these “social” elements in the future.

Also, it was a real pleasure to finally meet GamePolitics’ Dennis McCauley, who was there to speak from the gamer’s perspective.

Presenting at the IGDA-Philly night a few days later was a treat, as I always appreciate the opportunity to sample different chapter cultures and styles. The meeting was well run and there was a good ~50 person crowd on hand. My lecture was a rehash of the “at least 10 reasons the game industry doesn’t suck” lecture I’ve done a few times before.

Anyway, here are some photos from the trip:

David Bickham (Center on Media and Child Health) gives a somewhat balanced opening keynote.

An amped up Clay Calvert (Penn State) gives a legal rundown on anti-game legislation failures.

Dennis McCauley (GamePolitics.com) presents the consumer perspective.

Adam Thierer (Center for Digital Media Freedom, The Progress & Freedom Foundation) discusses the role of parents.

Stevan Mitchell (ESA) covering the ESA’s roadmap for fighting piracy.

Amusingly, a “genuine software?” warning popped up during Stevan’s talk (it was a conference system, not his).

Jen McNamara (Breakaway Games) presents Pulse! as an example of the power of games for serious applications.

Brian Smith (Penn State) talks about fantasy sports leagues, a wildly successful form of digital games.

Jen MacLean (38 Studios) does a wonderful job of wrapping together all the disparate threads of the conference into her closing keynote.

John Demos (Three Rings Design), Jen MacLean (38 Studios) and Jason Coleman (Big Huge Games) out for some college-style partying in State College, PA!

The surprisingly good cover band, Spider Kelly, in action.

IGDA-Philly coordinator Daniel Hettrick munching some pre-meeting pizza with Steve Lane (U. of Penn).

Daniel kicks off the meeting.

Corvus Elrod (Zakelro Story Studio) gives a session on self-promotion.

Tom Bennett (Drexel University) and Vance Souders (Firewater Games) chowing down after the chapter meeting.

Alex Horn (Comcast) and Colin Campbell (Big Huge Games) at the post meeting watering whole.

A week of hardcore GDC action can really break you. Man, do I feel old. And, I’m very jealous of the IGDA student scholars who seemed to be out every night until 4am, but in lecture sessions for 9am! Though, I must say that this GDC did feel more intense than in past years. Perhaps the focus on the summits got more people over to GDC sooner in the week than usual. All I know is that my plane landed at noon on Sunday, and my first meeting was at 1pm - and the action didn’t let up until Saturday.

Overall, it was another great GDC. Though, sadly, I didn’t make it to as many actual conference sessions as I would have liked. There’s just always so much going on… Unfortunately, I did make it to the Microsoft “keynote”, which was one big brainwashing pitch. Even though some of the specific announcements were cool/worthwhile (like the XNA community portal), it all felt so forced and manufactured. GDC should stop calling these sessions keynotes and just label them as platform announcement hours or whatever. The Ray Kurzweil session is more along the lines of an actual real keynote…

Also, this was a special year for me personally in receiving the inaugural Ambassador Award. At the ceremony, I was fortunate enough to sit with Ralph Baer, though, you could tell he was a little dismayed with the heavy-metal gag video that opened the ceremony…

To save myself from rambling, I’ll use these photos to jog my GDC08 memories.

Gordon Walton (BioWare Austin) and Aaron Thibault (Gearbox Software) participate in the IGDA’s first ever Government+Association Summit.

Asante Bradford (Georgia Department of Economic Development) presents a case blast on the new Georgia Entertainment Industry Investment Act.

IGDA chapter and SIG leaders out for dinner after some behind-the-scenes workshops.

The 2008 IGDA Student Scholarship recipients.

The scholars take a tour of the snazzy Three Rings Design offices.

“Lite” reading in the Three Rings toilet stall.

Ian Baverstock (Kuju) welcomes delegates to the UK luncheon - one of many such government driven events at GDC.

Poster session during the IGDA’s Education Summit.

Petri Purho (Kloonigames) presents an IGF student postmortem during the Education Summit. His game, Crayon Physis Deluxe went on to win the Seumas McNally Grand Prize.

IGDA Party: The small line up for the IGDA members-only party. The ~10-minute wait time was way better than last year’s 1-hour+!

IGDA Party: We packed over 2000 members into the Westin ballroom.

IGDA Party: Patric Palm (Hansoft), Drew Johnston (Microsoft) and Mike Cornford (IGDA scholar).

IGDA Party: James Everett, Heather Kelley and ?.

IGDA Party: Brenda Brathwaite rewards members (?, Catherine Herdlick and Greg Trefry of Gamelab, Sofia Battegazzore and Gonzalo Frasca of Powerful Robot) with free drink tickets for a successful game pitch (ie, putting together a winning hand in the Writers SIG social card game).

IGDA Party: Jesse Schell (CMU), Tobi Saulnier (1st Playable) and Justin Berenbaum (EmSense) make their way into the party.

IGDA Party: Tracy Kobeda Brown (PMS Clan - Ticorah / CMU ETC) and Jill Duffy (CMP) connect.

IGDA Party: Bill Fulton (Ronin User Experience), Gaurav Mathur (Factor5) and Marty O’Donnell (Bungie).

IGDA Party: Can’t be a real party without Scott’s in kilts: ? and Paul Rylance of Wyte Dragon.

IGDA Party: ?, ?, Luna Cruz (Anino Games), ?, ? and Gabby Dizon (Flipside Games).

IGDA Party: Brian Robbins (Fuel Industries) and Bob Bates.

The ever popular discussion on games, violence, censorship, etc, hosted by the IGDA.

John Schapert delivers the Microsoft “keynote”.

Backstage during the Choice Awards rehearsal.

StrategyLegends: Brian Reynolds (Big Huge Games) and Sid Meier (Firaxis).

Heather Kelley, Jenova Chen (thatgamecompany) and Phil Fish liquor up before the ceremony starts.

Phil Fish collects his IGF award for excellence in visual arts in Fez.

Realm Lovejoy and Kim Swift grab the Best Game Design award for Portal.

Ralph Baer gets a standing ovation for his Pioneer Award. Best line: “I’m still cranking out stuff”.

Joe McDonagh and Ken Levine caught without a written speech for winning the Best Writing award with BioShock.

Bob Bates, myself and Ralph Baer post-ceremony.

A make-shift barber shop at the Sony party. Now I’ve really seen everything…

Q-Tip entertains at the Sony party. But, was mostly just noise preventing good networking…

The Moscone West escalator: A good problem for AI pathfinding/flocking researchers ;)

Clint Hocking (Ubisoft) delivers an awesome/beautiful lecture on immersion. Wow!

Steampunk is always hip: Cosplayers promoting Recoil: Retrograd at the Nordic pavilion.

Laura Fryer (Microsoft) and Noel Llopis (Power of Two Games) checking out the IGF games.

Pleo. Weirdly cool.

Steve Meretzky (Blue Fang Games) dons his winning rabbit ears after the Game Design Challenge. Alexey Pajitnov, Brenda Brathwaite and Eric Zimmerman partake in the silliness.

Tough Crowd: Jade Raymond tries to give a lecture during Ubisoft’s party.

Daneil James (center) welcomes Kellee Santiago (thatgamecompany) and Brian Robbins (Fuel Industries) to Three Rings for the after-after party.

Dr. Babsi Lippe (Avaloop) welcomes women to the IGDA booth for the annual Women’s Group Gathering.

Packed house for the annual rant session. Inspiring stuff!

Jon Mak’s performative non-verbal rant.

Our attempt at a katamari, which seemed to be quite popular (@Joystiq, @IGN, @YouTube). It never got big enough to actually stick a person to it (which was the original plan/hope).

Post-Party: Jane Pinckard (F9) and Robin Hunicke (EA) at the annual day-after GDC party…

Post-Party: Poor R.O.B. looking a little lonely :(

Post-Party: Jon Blow, simply wiped out from a busy week at GDC working to change the world…

Amazingly, I had not been to Toronto in over 10 years (despite it being a major/close city to Montreal). Anyway, was happy to head back to speak at the GameOn:Finance conference, organized by the provincial digital media trade body Interactive Ontario.

Luckily, I was also able to coordinate a visit to IGDA-Toronto for their January meeting. I gave a presentation on positive trends in the industry, followed by brief sessions on One Laptop Per Child and TO Jam. (Check out Jason MacIsaac’s report for a more detailed summary.) I was impressed by the ~70 person turn-out and happy to experience the good developer community vibe in Toronto.

Overall, the GameOn:Finance conference was a well done niche event that did well to keep things focused on the dollars and cents of the game industry. Appropriately held in a refurbished bank, there were plenty of moneymen in the room, along with start up studios looking for advice.

Eric Zimmerman gave the opening keynote on the first night, and was engaging as always. Most of the sessions were good, though the overemphasis on the panel format did become exhausting after a while. The case study format was also a nice inclusion - sadly, not everyone prepared a classic “case”, instead opting to give their corporate biography. Anyway, was a good start and with a little tighter control over content/format things should be even better next year.

In terms of tourist fun, I was able to hit “The Spirit of Budo: The History of Japan’s Martial Arts” exhibition at the Japan Foundation before the conference action got started. Ya know, those in-room local highlights tourist magazines do come in handy every now and again…

Some photos from the quick trip:

The 70+ participants for the IGDA-Toronto meeting.

TO Jam produced game in action.

Trevor Fencott (Bedlam Games), Paul Forest (Ganz) and Alan Van Arden (Bedlam Games) at the bar.

Mike Fletcher shows off his prototype OLPC by running…

…a ported version of Doom. Just what kids in developing countries need…

A suite of samurai armor at the Budo exhibit.

A stylishly adorned katana.

Crazy samurai warlord helmet with stag antlers.

Interactive Ontario bossman, Ian Kelso, kicks off the conference.

Eric Zimmerman (Gamelab) delivers the opening keynote.

The five trends that Eric explored…

…and then had participants vote on for probability, goodness, desirability, etc.

Nathon Gunn provides a case study on Bitcasters’ financing.

Best slide bullet ever: Nathon reveals his secret to success…

Warren Currell (Sherpa Games) leads the informative “Right Money” panel, made up of Margaret Wallace (Rebel Monkey), Tom Frencel (Capybara Games), Trevor Fencott (Bedlam Games) and Randy Thompson (Argon Venture Partners).

Josh Druckman (Dark Matter) questions Asi Burak (ImpactGames) on “dark horse” strategies.

Asi with a boat load (literally) of sushi during post conference dinner.

Didn’t quite make it out as much as last year (nice to have a decrease in travel for once), but did take two longer-than-usual trips (ie, 10+ days) to Japan and SF+Australia. On the whole, still seems like I’m out more than I should be…

Anyway, here’s the listing of cities (and related events/reports+photos) I was in over the past twelve months:

• San Francisco, CA (Game Developers Conference)
• Albany, NY (RPI Game Festival & Symposium)
• Vancouver, BC (Vancouver International Game Summit)
• Malmo, Sweden (Nordic Game Conference)
• Santa Monica, CA (E3 Media & Business Summit)
• Brighton, UK (Develop Conference)
• Chicago, IL (ASAE Annual Meeting)
• Tokyo, Japan (Tokyo Game Show, DiGRA, CoFesta, CEDEC)
• Chicago, IL (IGDA board strategy retreat)
• San Francisco, CA (IGDA Leadership Forum)
• Perth/Melbourne, Australia (Game Connect: Asia Pacific, IGDA-Perth)
• Montreal, QC (Montreal International Game Summit)

And, with a trip to Toronto in mid-January for GameON: Finance and GDC earlier than usual in mid-February, looks like 2008 is going to get off to a hectic start.

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).