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IGDA Montreal - Generations Talk

So last night I did my talk on 'The Next Generation of Gamer' at the IGDA Montreal chapter meeting. It was fun and I was glad to have a little more time to polish and practice it after having done the talk previously at Game Design Expo in Vancouver.

A lot of people asked me and emailed me regarding the slides - or even in some cases just the demographic  data I had pulled together and aggregated. Unfortunately, I'm not going to post the slides just yet. I will be giving the talk again at GDx in Savannah in mid-April so I don't want to post the slides until I have met my obligations to the conference there.

For those interested - expect to see the slides, the text of the presentation, as well as all the data I aggregated in pure form posted on or around the 25th of April. Also - a lot of people asked me specific questions about immersion - as coming to a better understanding of immersion was one of the challenges I pointed to in the talk. For those interested in immersion and my half-formed thoughts on it - I'll point you to the slides and text of the presentation I gave at GDC last year - linked over on the left (also here).

Finally - a shout-out to Matthew Gallant - fellow blogger and occasional commentor here (who probably would be more frequently here if I would more frequently post) - who I also often run into in the comment threads on a lot of other great blogs (linked on the bottom right). Thanks for stopping by to say hi, Matthew... sorry I got dragged away to interviews and we didn't get much of a chance to chat.

iTest

So this is just a test post. Now that I have myself set up on facebook and (should be) linking all my blog posts there, and now that I have the facebook app on my iPhone, I figured I'd see if the typepad app works. Also testing with a photo just to see if it works. I basically never put images in my posts - come to think of it, I am not even sure I know how. So this is also a picture- post test. Whether it works or not I don't imagine I'll be updating my blog from my phone very often as it is not the most pleasant way to type, and without copy/paste, i'm not sure how I would set up a link - or even if it's possible. Anyway - let's see what happens.

Full and Bright

Two smart posts over at Steve Gaynor's blog, Fullbright.

The first is his thoughts on 'storymaking'. I think it's a pretty good overview of the different levels at which the player is making his own story. I have a long comment (not approved as of this posting) that breaks down some of my own thoughts on it. If I have time, I'll write that comment up as a post here in much more detail to try and get at the heart of what I'm saying. In any case, if you're interested in the modes of player-authored story, get over there.

The second is a solid overview of FPS encounter design - in particular as relates to FEAR and FEAR 2. I have not played either of those games, but he generalizes his thoughts on FPS encounter design and offers some clearly stated rules of thumb that I think any FPS level designer should be familiar with. I don't mean to be condescending when I say that the post title is approporiate - it is the 'basics' of FPS encounter design and I don't think experienced designers will learn much, but it's short and clear and concise - so a useful reference even for the old pros, because so many people have now written books hundreds of pages long that can barely get to the points Steve makes in 4 paragraphs.

The Fast and the Curious

/corporate hat on

Fast Company just named Ubisoft as one of the Top 50 Most Innovative Companies (with a shout out to the Anvil engine and to the PoP team on the click-thru). I'm fucking proud of it, so despite that fact that some of you will call me a corporate shill, I'm going to blog about it anyway.

Yves Guillemot has always said that innovation and creativity were important pillars for us, and I must admit I have had the good fortune to be able to benefit from this stance in my creative life. Trying to innovate is something I've always pushed hard for in everything I've done. I know a lot of other people have too. We've invested a lot in innovation over the years and consequently have had to learn to embrace the risks that come with that (and we've also taken our share of the bumps that accompany them) so it feels good to finally get a shout-out for it.

It's especially encouraging given the current economic situation to have a nod like this even as Yves reasserts the importance of creativity and innovation instead of backpedalling to a 'safer' stance as (in my opinion) other more 'reactionary' CEO's might do. It means the light flickering through the smoke over the trenches is actually the sunlight of victory and not more incoming tracer-fire.

Even though such a list is a little arbitrary, it's also cool to see who they've ranked us ahead of and who they've ranked us behind.

So bye-bye Lego and watch out Microsoft and Wal-Mart.

/corporate hat off

Escape from City 17

This is pretty sweet.

Tracking down the creators reveals they are David and Ian Purchase - the Purchase Brothers - who seem to be a Toronto-based directing duo. They appear to be represented by Sons and Daughters agency in Toronto.

You can see their page on the Sons and Daughters site here, where their other commercials are viewable - or at least will be until traffic nukes the site... I expect this thing is going to get a lot of attention.

I wonder if they're auditioning for a medic for Episode 2?

zoom zoom zoom, blah blah blah

Okay, so once again I am absent for a month. Once again I have been prepping presentations and globetrotting and talking about stuff. Last week I was in Vancouver giving the keynote at VFS's Game Design Expo. The talk is about the changing demographics of gamers and game developers. I'm not going to host the slides just yet because I will be giving the talk a few more times in the next few weeks and will likely be making some tweaks to it as I go.

I'll be doing the same talk at the local IGDA Chapter meeting on February 25th, and then I'll be doing it again down at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia at GDx. Never been to Georgia - so I'm looking forward to that.

Anyway - the slides for that talk (and the massive pile of data I aggregated for it) will go up on the blog after I get back from Savannah.

Aside from that I'm prepping my GDC talk about what I will call 'improvisational play'- which will be a 'sequel' to my 2006 talk about Intentionality. I'm also doing the Game Design Workshop again this year, and I'm going to be giving a Pecha Kucha style microtalk in a crazy session put together by Richard Lemarchand.

On top of all of that I am also, of course, working on a game.