It's pretty hard to start debriefing about the Montreal International Game Summit... I had the opportunity to talk to some great people, see some great sessions, and so have quite a bit of new thoughts you can imagine. I really wanted to go through each session here, day by day, and give my two cents but really I think I'm going to be a bit more vague then I was originally intending and just go through my two days in Montreal...
I think I have to start with talking about my epic journey to MIGS, no I'm not referring to the packed yellow school bus ride up there, I'm actually talking about the next morning. Mike Fowler and I (dressed to look good, not necessarily for warmth) were following some of our classmates to MIGS when they decided that they were going to take the Metro. Yet we didn't have any Canadian money and so we thought we couldn't buy tickets (later we found that there are ATMs down in the subway stations). So they gave us a couple of simple directions and we were off. And so we walked... and walked... and walked... and inevitably got a little lost. It was a pretty cold and windy morning in Montreal, and when we thought it couldn't get much worse... it started to snow... This wasn't exactly how I was planning on spending my first morning at MIGS, with a little luck, and a lot of backtracking, we did find our way to MIGS and in time for the first key note.
Warren Spector's key note was most definitely an inspiration! After starting on the UN project, and with working on CIMIT I can't help but be intrigued and ultimately end up working games with moral meaning and inevitably games for social change. With Spector advocating that games need meaning, it was just such a great way to start this conference for me.
I was very excited about the next session that I went to with Jason Mitchel from Valve, who gave a talk about "Connecting game play to Visuals," which is something I'm working intimately with on our Senior production game. Any lecture that starts with the Presenter opening with "Ravenous Zombies," you know your in the right place =) I most certainly got some interesting ideas out of this conversation on how to increase the tension of the level that I'm currently working on, and I hoping these are things that I can hopefully implement. Mitchel touched upon two games from Valve, "Team Fortress 2" and "Left 4 Dead." I was pretty interested in hearing more about the unique style of TF2, and after hearing their artist influence I now know why I found this style so appealing. One of their major artistic influences came from Normal Rockwell, who was really my first favorite artist, an odd choice maybe but ugh! Love his work! To think that people are using these sorts of influences in the world of video games is just so cool! Left 4 Dead seems to be a pretty awesome game as well, as much as scary games do just that to me, I think I may have to check it out!
I followed Jason Mitchel into a panel discussion afterwards about "Alternative Stylization," which was really a neat sort of thing to be involved with. In the panel we were able to really get into some conversations with industry professionals about what exactly do they think about key topics and design decisions. Really my take away from this one was an interesting part of the conversation in which it was argued that with less detail in character design, the more association the player can make with their avatar. Which is awesome, not only because I believe in this but also I've been advocating this point for our artistic direction in our UN Concept!
After a... unique oriental lunch with items that I'm still unsure about, I sat in on a lecture given by Laura Fryer, A Microsoft Executive Producer who's most title was Gears of War 2. I couldn't help but love this talk as well, beyond her wonderful "puppy" slides, some of the key points she gave about team management are things that I've implemented since I was a Peer Mentor Sophomore year. Leslie Averil would be proud! Really, without using this term, Fryer discussed the importants of Servant Leadership! Ugh! Which I totally agree with, as the leader you need to be the "catalyst" for the rest of the group. I couldn't help but envy her a little... More and more I'm seeing that I'm very much interested in Producer/Creative Director positions, which are extremely difficult to come by.
The next couple of sessions were equally as interesting, Chris Doran's "Engineering mood and Atmosphere with Light" (which definitely gave me some more ideas for our Senior Game), David Lightbown's "Under the Surface," and Randy Smith's Games are Art, and What to do about it." Smith's talk was pretty animated and fun, and I definitely like the direction of what it seems that a lot of industry professionals are headed.
After dinner, at a place with more things on the menu that I recognized, a bunch of us hit up the Microsoft-Ubisoft Party. This was pretty awesome, but a really hard environment to actually meet people in. It was a pretty small bar, packed with people, loud music, and dark lighting... not really conducive to networking to say the least. Yet I was able to have a pretty great one-on-one conversation with Laura Fryer who gave the key note earlier that day. It was so interesting to hear more of her perspective of not only her job but her work in general and how she got to where she is today. She also gave me some pointers about my talk for the next day, the key one being to NOT vision the audience naked... Unfortunately she didn't have any business cards to give me, so I kind of struck out there as I'd really enjoy talking to her further about her position. I was able to meet a few others that night, one specifically from Mystic Entertainment which may prove to be extremely interesting.
After a long walk, on what still seems to be a bum ankle from our "adventure" from that morning, we returned to our hostel... my comfy half-bed, and I crashed for the evening, knowing that tomorrow would be my turn to speak.
The next morning Mike and I woke up early to hit up a Tim Horton's for breakfast, which was considerably better than my quarter of a muffin and half a hot chocolate I bummed off of a friend the day before for breakfast. Let me just say that this first key note was AWESOME! Cheryl Olson and Lawrence Kutner (from Mass. General Hospital) have been doing research on the possible negative effects of video games, and what impact really does it have on the user. Dr. Kutner made some great correlations between Paperback novels, to Gangster Movies, to Comic Books, to Television Violence, and how much the public all thought they would corrupt the youth and how this sort of stereotyped view is no different today for video games. They gave some pretty hard evidence showing that players, even young players, make the distinction between the real world and the virtual one. Knowing that some of these simulated actions aren't necessarily ones that should be performed in real life. I found this to be great, but at the same time concerning... are we arguing that Video Games have no effect? So I approached them afterwards and asked what they thought about Serious Games and Games for Social Change? Is it possible to make a positive difference even though we argue that games aren't making negative impacts? Is this hypocritical? No, after a pretty interesting and brief conversation Dr. Kutner responded that he very much believed in the impact that Serious games have the potential of having, and that if anything they can be more effective on the user experience then violent media might be suggested. I'm not going to lie, I forget some of his supporting evidence but it was still inspiring nonetheless.
Afterwards I attended Ben Mattes' "Evolution of a Unique Artistic Direction," where he proposed the question "Does a game need to look real in order for it to be beautiful?" Mattes proposes that it doesn't and walked us through some of the design decisions for the Prince of Persia game... one with an artistic direction I wasn't completely sold on... until I saw a bit more. I truly think this may be the new wave of innovative video game creation, we've proved that we can almost match photo-realism, we can pump an engine with shaders, and yet ironically it's not eye catching to our audience. Our audiences is looking to escape to a surreal world (at times), and if we can give them just that... well we have something truly special. Ironically enough after this and a session with Reid Schneider on the "Army of Two Post Mortem," (both of which given by producers) couldn't help but reinforce my feeling of how right a position like being a producer might be for me in the future.
I didn't get much of a lunch this time, for I was meeting with Brian, Heather Conover, and Ann to discuss our presentation to be given later that day. Ironically enough some of my nerves had begun to shake off me, at least mentally anyways... my bowels were telling me a different story haha. I was pretty excited though, and confident because in this arena (while yes we are still very much students in a sense and learning) we were professionals, and I couldn't wait to engage with other professionals about our pretty large... "Problem." After this meeting there was a great key note given by David Braben, talking about how can we plan for the future of video game development. While that was all well and good, I couldn't help but be keenly interested in their rapid prototyping model that his company has been using to develop ideas for working titles. Sounds a lot like things that Lauren and I have thought of since Learning 2007, and to see it implemented seems like a very viable solution maybe for wherever I may work in the future.
I wasn't able to attend any more sessions, as I was tied up in a press interview and then it was time for our presentation. While I was hoping for a larger turnout, yet there was a plethora of interesting designers from many AAA Game Companies. It actually was a pretty awesome session, only because ours was so interactive and the fact that our audience were actually engaged in the discussions we were hoping for. It was also fun to see designers from studios like Ubisoft working with a designer from A2M, or maybe it was EA to be honest I'm not exactly sure but still was awesome nonetheless.
From here was one last key note speaker with Jonathan Blow, who gave a talk on the "Fundamental Conflict in Contemporary Game Design." He had some really interesting points about gaming and the inherent meaning behind certain game mechanics, and most definitely some interesting positions on narration in video games. While I could see where he was coming from, there were a few things that I disagreed with when it comes to narration and video games... yet he's the professional =P
After probably the best pizza I've had in.... well a long time, I went to the Gama 3D party which was organized by our very good friend Heather Kelly (who's been working with us on the UN project if I hadn't mentioned that before). This was a blast! I really sort of laid back atmosphere and some pretty revolutionary games using some interesting tool sets. There was this one awesome block game (which I can't remember at the moment but will be sure to find it and link something more about it here), in which took a pretty simple game of trying to fit a shape to a hole, and utilized head tracking so you could actually look and peer around the block you were rotating to fit. I'm sure this description doesn't do it justice, but it was pretty spectacular. At the party I was able to meet someone who was actually at our session earlier that day named Thomas Anderson, who's an animator at A2M. He was so awesome to talk to, because he runs into the same problem that I've had for a while now... I'm not just interested in art, I have a broad range of interests from design, to producing, and other major aspects of a project. It was really cool to talk to another artist who thought sort of the same way I do. I hoping to talk to him some more, if not to possibly get some help getting a foothold somewhere in the industry, to at least get to know more about what his job is really like and maybe what I should be expecting for the future... if I have future that is. UGH! It's so very scary to be a Senior right now! I don't have much time to worry about this though.
Anyways I have many, many more thoughts on my experiences in Montreal and some thoughts and concerns for me and my future, but for now I think I must end this. This was my experience in Montreal at a glance, and even though I know this was pretty dense... it's been condensed haha.
It's late now though so G'Night All!
From there our group piled back onto our bus and made our way to Ikamya Youth (an afterschool youth organization). There we met Joy and Luyanda, two incredibly interesting people who were running this innovative group. They are sort of the pilot program for other youth programs in the country. There is one specific program that we found to be incredibly interesting called “Media Image and Expression.” From this program “learners” (students) are able to “polish” their computer skills. Joy mentioned that in some respects learners attend the program because the computer lab is a safe place for these kids. Apparently there are a lot of gangs in the area, and recently some of the xenophobic violence have even touched this area. I’d urge people to visit their website, and their blog, through Ikamvayouth.org. I haven’t had a chance yet but I’m sure it’ll be enlightening. We gathered a lot of information from Joy and Luyanda but I’ll just post some remember able quotes (and information) from them here now.
What was hard to think about later was the fact that the reason why so many of these kids were so attached to many of us were because they just don’t really receive much attention elsewhere. Most of their Mothers have died of HIV and in most cases these kids are made to stay with elder family members and such. It is really weird to think about how far different American childhood is to this one township, we’re always told not to talk to strangers let alone play with them, and these kids are not only just wandering the streets alone but warmed up to us quite quickly. It was also sort of hard leaving, getting on the bus afterward I pulled out a bottle of Purel. Many of the other kids around were asking for some and I knew that I needed to as well, but I felt sort of guilty about it… sort of like I was washing my hands of them and returning to my fortunate life… while they go back to return to not much at all.
