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 ;)
Was back in Ottawa to speak at the opening Generator event. Generator is the game/digital media cluster support group under the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI) umbrella.
My presentation was focused on economic/cluster dynamics, related to my consulting efforts. Another lecture, by the director of PlayReplay (game marketing specialist), covered the evolving nature of the business, along with the impact of digital distribution, and how it is/will shift the balance of power to developers.
That last point incited a good deal of discussion among the audience, with a key point being that developers want to develop - and not worry about all the business dirty work. Meaning, many devs are simply not interested in taking back power, if that means they gotta worry about marketing and distribution and customer service, etc, etc. Let alone stuff like cashflow management, funding, and not getting screwed on contracts, etc.
Interestingly enough, we are starting to see the rise of new “small game” specialists that will handle that for you. From PlayReplay’s guerrilla marketing/PR services, to traditional AAA game agents now servicing the casual/social/download space, or specific advice on funding and business support from industry veterans. The services are out there, and you’d be wise to leverage them so you can focus on the dev part of the equation.
Amazingly, so many devs are either outright hesitant to get help, or are concerned about trust issues with using a consultant (or often, more realistically, they just don’t have the money for it). One bit of advice I give to start-up studios is to hire a biz kid straight out of school. Find someone who just got a business/finance/management/MBA style degree, who is super keen on games and get them to come on board to take charge of all the business bits. They may be a complete game industry rookie, but even just their textbook knowledge of business will be a massive help! Bonus: They won’t be completely jaded about the games business… yet.
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.
