Reality Panic

Just doing final prep and packing for the big Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. It’s the 25th iteration of the event, and they’re making a big deal of it with an extra helping of awesome (even too much awesome to handle at times)! This will be the 15th straight GDC I attend. And, I’m excited as always to learn and connect with peers and have fun. Plus I bought some new Nike’s with super cushy “lunarlon” soles, so I’m feeling good. Also, once again, I’m a speaker this year.

Once again, Eric Zimmerman and I are hosting the “rant” panel, titled “No Freaking Respect! Social Game Developers Rant Back”. The theme this year is social game developers getting a chance to bite back. Our ranters this year are: Scott Jon Siegel (Playdom), Chris Hecker (definition six, inc.), Trip Hawkins (Digital Chocolate), Brenda Brathwaite (Lolapps), Ian Bogost (The Georgia Institute of Technology), Brian Reynolds (Zynga), and Steve Meretzky (Playdom).

And, we’ve been getting a lot of attention ahead of the show. With the rant panel being one of the top sessions GDC is recommending to the press/media, and giving it some extra exposure via a Gamasutra highlight, and GamePolitics pointing to it (and labeling myself and Eric as “Rantmasters General”), as well as getting flagged as a social games session to watch for by AOL’s Games.com blog. I have no doubt we’ll deliver on the hype and have a fantastic session!(We’ve got a huge room that fits 1100 people, hope to see you there :)

I was interviewed for GameInformer’s February ‘11 issue for an article titled “Widening The Scope: A Look At Racial Diversity in Video Games”.

My bit was specifically looking at the need to diversify who gets to make games. And, that stemmed from the workforce demographics research released back in 2005 when I was serving the IGDA, which quantified the glaring homogeneity of game developers. (Sad side note that the IGDA has yet to re-run that research.)

As expected, the article has the usual quote about not caring if someone is purple as long as they have the needed talent. In that regard, my thinking is that “being different” is in fact talent - not in the traditional/usual sense, but definitely of merit.

The Medici Effect was a particularly inspiring book in making the case for diversity. Not directly, however, as the book never discussed diversity in the usual political context, but rather discusses how the intersection of two different things (cultures, disciplines, markets, etc) is what brings about truly breakthrough innovation.

The scale and scope of the Global Game Jam is astounding. In its third year, over 6500 participants across 169 jam sites in 44 countries produced nearly 1500 games - all in 48 hours!

For the first time, there was Jam action in Montreal with two sites: one at Ecole de Technologie Superieure and the other at EA Mobile’s offices. I was lucky enough to serve as a judge at the ETS site, where we checked out the 10 games that were produced.

Montreal Tech Watch has a nice recap article, and I snapped a few photos:

Jam teams waiting to be judged.

Getting a demo of Sumi-E, the judges’ “choice”game. Impressive!

Fellow judge, Elie Charest (MiraLupa), checking out Fade, a puzzle game that envelopes you in darkness.