Reality Panic

Despite my earlier lamenting on not having the time to play all the awesome games (digital or otherwise) on show at the Penny-Arcade Expo, I cannot help but walk away super enthused and energized.

The level of energy and enthusiasm among the 50k+ participants was palpable - and a joy to see vs. the often frenetic pace of more industry/business oriented events.

Also, gotta say, gamers are just the nicest people (never mind all the hoopla about the effects of violent media). People were polite, helpful, gracious, friendly, etc, etc. And, smiling and giddy despite standing in ten thousand person queues to get in!

While there, I did three different sessions: one panel on violence/politics, another panel on piracy (these were both moderated by GamePolitic’s Dennis McCauley, so expect some notes posted there) and a final lecture which was a rehash of my “reason’s why the industry doesn’t suck” article.

While I can’t say I got a ton of “business” done, it was a worthwhile event and just massively enjoyable.

Anyway, here are some snaps:

Arrive at me hotel, look out the window and there are goats grazing the grass patch on the side of the highway. The sign read “ruminants for rent”. Odd.

Super packed expo area, with reasonable built up booths (ie, no old E3 style roller coasters).

Stopped by to see if Mark was around to chat about credit stuff…

Lots of indie oriented stuff like Xbox’s Community Games, the PAX10, IndieCade, etc

Castle Crashers action figures were a hot item!

Rock Band figured prominently throughout the show.

Folks playing board games on the expo floor. Guessing this was Star Craft.

Cool miniatures and dioramas were on display everywhere.

PAX buddy Wil Wheaton had long lines of adoring fans.

One of many gaming/tournament areas.

A handheld “freeplay” lounge - at about midnight!

The D&D/RPG room. Still humming past midnight.

The tabletop/miniatures play room.

One corner of the “loan a board game” library.

The Penny Arcade duo, Jerry and Mike, address their adoring fans.

The Bethesda team demo Fallout 3. Wow!

Clint Hocking running Far Cry 2 demos at the Ubisoft booth. The level editor was probably the single most impressive thing at the entire show!

Ben Mattes demos Prince of Persia in the main theater. Ben and team will be showing off at IGDA-Montreal as well.

Design guru Michael John (EA) and the indefatigable Scott Foe (Nokia) hanging with other developers at the lobby bar, soaking in the positive energy.

Midway through the Penny-Arcade Expo, and I’m in a bit of a funk. Amongst all the cool games (especially the table-top and board games), and oozing passion of all the gamers and fans, I’m sad that I can’t be the geek I’d like to be.

Between work and family life, I can barely squeeze in a few rounds of Soul Calibur, let alone embark on a D&D campaign or horde miniatures for a Warhammer battle. Never mind how Fallout 3 is taunting me with its 100+ hours of gameplay. I think I’m gonna cry…

Though, last night wandering the gaming halls past midnight (FYI, things run until 3am each day!), lurking/observing all the awesome gaming going on, I did bump into a couple of guys cracking open Samurai. I said, Hey, I know that game, mind if I join you?

It’s quick.

Was good to head back to SIGGRAPH after missing last year’s action. Checking out the latest technical research, getting a glimpse into big Hollywood animation productions and just generally connecting with interesting folks always makes the trip worthwhile.

The dedicated game “pre” event, Sandbox, was a bit of a let down this year. Having built momentum over the past couple of years, it was sad to see things hit a lull - especially given the event was in Los Angeles, home of many vibrant game industry folks. Regardless, I’m very excited for next year, as the Sandbox elements will be more properly integrated with SIGGRAPH itself. They’ve already got their 2009 call for participation up!

As for the main event, well, there is really just way too much to see and do. SIGGRAPH is a big event, with lots of stuff going on. The new/emerging tech area is always a curious space, and contrasts nicely with the commercial expo floor. Ditto for the hands-on nature of the “Studio”, where folks can play with the latest tools and tech.

In terms of contribution, I had the honor of participating in three session:

1. An “in the trenches” panel within Sandbox
2. A “birds of a feather” session, where I basically rehashed my “reason’s why the industry doesn’t suck” article
3. A “special event” panel session in the monster 3000 person keynote auditorium on user-generated content (admittedly, we didn’t come close to filling it up :(

In an attempt to experiment in the user-generated content panel, I got a volunteer from the audience to serve as a fellow panelist, as well as asking for volunteers to “graphically record” our discussion up on stage. While the volunteer panelist from the MS Flight Sim team was a major boost, the artists were not quite as talented as I was hoping for (given the SIGGRAPH art crowd). Here’s what was produced:

Anyway, here are some quick shots from the trip.

Katie Salen delivers an inspiring closing keynote to Sandbox.

A somewhat subdued demo zone during the closing reception for Sandbox.

Drew Davidson (CMU ETC) and Katie Salen checking out some of the game demos.

Ken Perlin (NYU) honored with the much deserved Computer Graphics Achievement Award.

Worth the price of entry: Ed Catmull gives an awesomely transparent talk on how animated movies are made at Pixar - mainly from a team process and company culture point of view.

New Tech Demo: Cool robot stuff in the tech demo area.

New Tech Demo: No clue what this is, but captivating just the same.

New Tech Demo: An interactive pillow display thing.

New Tech Demo: An interactive tabletop display ecosystem thing.

New Tech Demo: Funky digital art.

New Tech Demo: Uh, gotta interact with this to make any sense of it…

The Studio area was always bustling with action.

Chris Hecker (Maxis) gives a sneak peak of his Spore procedural animation lecture during the Papers Fast Forward preview session.

Concept artists drawing live during the Autodesk party.

Seat of truth! Or, some kind of advanced facial mo-cap system.

Catherine Owens gave an inspiring look into the production of U2 3D. Stereoscopic display being one of the major themes of this year’s conference.

Appropriately, all the “3D” content in the pipe requires a nice of array of glasses to match.

Vanilla Ice performs at the Softimage ICE launch party.

The Computer Animation Festival ran all week at the massive Nokia Theater.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars director, Dave Filoni, and ILM visual effects supervisor, John Knoll, came out (along with their storm trooper entourage) to chat about the making of the movie prior to its advance screening for the SIGGRAPH crowd.

(It has been a crazy summer for travel. So, sitting between SIGGRAPH sessions in LA is now the first chance I get to whip up some quick notes on my recent trip to Brighton for the annual UK confab, Develop.)

The Develop folks put on another great event. There’s just something about being next to the beach/sea that just makes things better. I particularly like attending Develop as it is a nice one-shot concentration of UK developers (ie, to catch up with, to nag, to pitch, etc).

Two underlying threads in the UK continue to be the education/talent issue. Which, despite having a dedicated event (Games:Edu) to discuss it in, just didn’t seem to move beyond the usual gripes. The other thread was a palpable antagonism towards Canada (Montreal in particular) due to the lack of similar government support programs in the UK.

Perhaps I’m overly sensitive since I’m from Montreal, but I practically got into a shouting match with one panel. I told them they were wasting their time, that tax breaks are not a silver bullet (nothing is when you are dealing with a complex ecosystem), and that they should be spending their time working on the things they can change (hint, hint, education and talent). Further, I “predicted” that even if the UK government showed up tomorrow with tax breaks, it would have no material impact on the state of the UK game industry!

Anyway, I’ll hopefully post something on that in more detail later. Meanwhile, here are some photos to enjoy.

Ah, nothing like seeing the sea and sail boats out the front door of your conference venue.

Mark Morris (Introversion) inspiring academics that bedroom coding success is still possible.

Ernest Adams talks smack (or rather rants on the things academia should not be doing).

Dawn Beasley (Black Rock) not impressed by Owain Bennallack’s (Develop) nice shirt.

Ed Fear (Develop) orchestrates the pub quiz (my team did horribly).

Damian Isla (Bungie) and Chris Kline (2k Boston) tanking up at the hotel bar.

The BioShock team leads interviewed as the opening keynote session. (Produces one of the best conference quotes I’ve ever seen: “We hire less virgins”).

The Dare to be Digital contest games on display.

The outspoken Chris Barnett (EA Mythic) on controlling creatives.

David Braben (Frontier) discuss the Lost Winds development process on WiiWare.

David Braben and other proud Lost Winds team members during the pre-awards cocktail.

Folks settling in for the Develop awards ceremony.

Jo Cook, George Bain (Sony) and Alison Beasley (Lincoln Beasley) making faces post-awards.

First mid-conference fire drill ever! Poor Matt actually tried to talk over the blaring alarms ;)

Some very loud band during the GamesIndustry.biz party.

Julien Merceron (Eidos) showing off his IGDA members-only t-shirt.

One of the Dare to be Digitial teams, along with mentors Adam Martin (red glasses/white shirt) and Vicky Arundel (Introversion).

For the longest time, I’ve had the following Yoda quote as part of my email signature:

Do or do not. There is no try.

This resonates with me personally, as I prefer to stay away from “try” statements as it usually implies failure from the get go… Anyway.

Found this graph, as featured in the August issue of Wired, quite amusing.