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.
Wow! I’m honored, I’m humbled. I stand on the shoulders of giants (and awesome past recipients to the precursor Community Contribution Award)!
Also, being cropped into the same image with Ralph Baer is beyond words…
Though, I was hoping I didn’t have to get up on stage again. Now I’ve got to come up with a poignant acceptance speech (will be tough to top Greg’s), get a new shirt, groom and all that ;)
With so many good games out this year, 2007 was rough for reading. Far below my 2-books/month target, I only managed to get in 16 total titles this year (vs 26 in ‘06 and 22 in ‘05). Oh well.
Anyway, here’s what I read over the past twelve months:
- Wikinomics - How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
- Time Exploring the Unexplained - The World’s Greatest Marvels, Mysteries and Myths
- The Future of Work - How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life
- Generation Kill - Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War
- Manufacturing Consent - The Political Economy of the Mass Media
- Peripheral Vision - Detecting the Weak Signals That Will Make or Break Your Company
- Personal Finance For Canadians For Dummies
- The Ultimate Question - Driving Good Profits and True Growth
- The Ghost Map - The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
- Presenting to Win - The Art of Telling Your Story
- The Decision To Join - How Individuals Determine Value and Why They Choose To Belong
- Japan’s Business Renaissance - How the World’s Greatest Economy Revived, Renewed, and Reinvented Itself
- The Imagination Challenge - Strategy Foresight and Innovation in the Global Economy
- Microtrends - The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes
- Professional Practices in Association Management - The Essential Resource for Effective Management of Nonprofit Organizations
- Mavericks at Work - Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win
Also, I just started reading The 4-Hour Workweek, but I’ll likely not finish it until the new year…
In particular, Wikinomics and The Future of Work provided massive insight into future work/business structures and meta level hints at the sweeping changes to come in how companies are structured and people get stuff done.Generation Kill and The Ghost Map, both historical recountings, were real page turners - even though I don’t generally read that style of book.
There’s also a few self-help books in there and stuff specifically related to my work managing the IGDA (most of it pretty dry/didactic, but massively helpful nonetheless).
Manufacturing Consent was a dense read, but man, Chomsky is whip smart. I’d like to read more of hist stuff…
Finally, The Ultimate Question was profound in expressing the need to have metrics for customer loyalty/satisfaction. Meaning, measuring profit alone doesn’t necessarily mean your customers are happy. Lots of powerful stuff in that one.
Anyway, enough about books, I’m off to assassinate Robert de Sable…
By chance, I consumed the following bits pretty much back-to-back (my brain is still churning…):
UGC * IP = culture remixed!
Back at the Montreal Game Summit, Ben Sawyer did a great lecture - ok, more like a rant - on games for kids and how crap they are. In this case, he meant very young kids: 6 years and under. In short, he was lamenting how it is hard for him and his son to have a fun/shared experience playing video games.
As a father of two young kids, I can certainly relate…
What really struck me from the audience Q&A after Ben’s lecture is the degree to which games for kids are expected to be educational (ie, “edutainment” that teaches ABCs, basic math, etc). Ben was very clear that he was just looking to have fun with his kids. If there was any teaching he was interested in, it was more of the intangible/intrinsic “gaming literacy” style…
Still, audience members just would not stop going on about how hard it is to design gameplay mechanics around early childhood curriculum, etc.
Why is it that parents can buy Lego without the expectation that kids will learn their ABCs from it? Or, build a sandbox without hoping better math skills will result? These forms of play/fun are understood to provide value in and of themselves.
The growth of the gaming parent demographic will likely bring about needed changes; when we can look to kids games as purely fun/shared experiences (without the supposed validation of increasing ABC skills). Meanwhile, I’ll just have to endure the pain of watching my son struggle with simple stuff like driving around a race track in 3D…
Update: Gamasutra recently featured an article by veteran design Scott Nixon titled “Piggybacking: Gaming Across the Generation Gap”. It’s a concept that Ben mentioned during his Montreal lecture, but didn’t have a chance to get into much…
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).
