So today I almost completely missed Dave Perry's keynote, which I would have killed myself for because I told him the day before that I would be there to cover it. I had my alarm on my phone set for 7:15 and yet I didn't became aware that it was going off until an hour later. Up until that point I simply don't remember hearing it. I've done it before. So I quick threw together my stuff and headed out, luckily the convention center is only like a brisk 10 minute walk from my hotel, but boy was it cold as hell in the morning!! I made it without freezing into a block of ice though and was able to still get a good seat for Dave's talk.
Dave's talk was about how he decided to take a year off from game development, when in reality he spent that year working on a handful of projects, like his website and forums, traveling around Asia to learn about the game development culture over there, starting a consultant business as well as a service for game investment, starting Project Top Secret, and along the way picking up numerous MMO projects to bring over to the US. Some year off!! I suppose he never directly did any development, but he certainly didn't rent a house in Maui and spent every day in a hammock on the beach (sounds good to me - and don't think he couldn't afford it). So it was an interesting adventure he took us along for in his talk, lots of laughs. After the lecture one of GDnet's forum members approached me to say hello, which was nice.
After Dave's talk and running into Wade Tinney from Large Animal Games and Davey Jackson from GarageGames, I was off to the brand new EIDOS studio that just opened in the city. Ironically enough, a correspondent from Gamasutra had also scheduled a tour for that time, which the press managers feared might be a problem but I told them it certainly wasn't. So we both went together, lead by one of the press managers from the conference. There we were introduced to Stephane D'Astous, the studio's General Manager, and he gave us the grand tour of the place, which didn't consist of sitting us down in a far-off meeting room and briefing us with a slideshow. Oh no, they took us back through the entire team area, from the Q&A section to management and development. Not much was up on the walls regarding Deus Ex 3 obvioulsy, but you could see people modeling buildings and texture artists working on UV maps. We got to step inside the room housing their massive server farm, saw the break area, the lockers/showers, and ended up in the large conference room where they (in addition to Stephane, Producer David Anfossi) showed us the Deus Ex 3 teaser on their huge projection screen before settling down to answer our numerous questions.
Then they wrapped up with the coolest press swag I've gotten all at once to date. Not only is that a very nice backpack, but an EIDOS t-shirt and fleece (very soft and comfy!), hat (kinda cheap with mesh - I hate mesh) and badge holder lanyard. The real cream of the crop however is the pen at the bottom, which as you can see unscrews to become a USB key. But wait! It gets better because not only is that a 512MB USB key (the box shows there's a 1GB version too but hey, can't complain) but there's a small button opposite the clip that activates the laser pointer at the rear of the pen. Yes! A pen/USB key/laser pointer!! Convergence FTW!! An interesting note is that I've never owned a USB key before, which even I find surprising. I was just thinking prior to coming out here that I should really buy one - glad I waited so long!
So after the studio tour it was back for lunch, where I sat at a random table and had a nice chat with a local student looking to switch careers and get in the games industry. After lunch it was off to Chris Hecker's keynote speech. Now, I had completelyforgottenhowfastchrisheckerspeaks, which is why I'm so glad I have it recorded so I can decipher it in the comfort of my own home. The gist of Chris' talk though was about structure (computer programs) and style (human thought) in solving hard problems - problems at the intersection of design, technology and aesthetics - and how combining the best of both worlds works well. Luckily the Sony Audio Studio that comes with the voice recorder lets me slow down audio, so I'm sure once I listen to Chris again I'll be able to explain what that actually means. Sweet.
Danny Ledonne took the stage after Chris, and he just stood up there and talked about how he came about making the game, the impact it's had on him and other people, why he decided to keep the game online rather than retract it and submit an apology, how the game has evolved in our culture over the years, what he's doing now, and what we as developers should be doing to support this controversy. I'm sure it's a speech Danny has had to recite time and time again, with minor variances here and there based on time and audience, since he went through it all very fluently. During Q&A he expressed his opions very nakedly and gave some great insight such as "if half the US played violent video games, then the other half would be dead", when looking at games causing violence.
Yes, Don Daglow in real life is a floating head and hands, so shut up [smile]. I didn't tell him to wear black when there's nothing behind to contrast against him. Anyways, his talk extended the one that he gave at the IGDA Leadership Forum, to the extent that some of the images and slides he used in that presentation were included in this one. Don gave an overview of the console wars, from the inception to the possible conclusion years into the future, calling it the "30 Years War" after the one that took place in Europe hundreds of years ago. He also talked about trends that developed over the course of console development that point down the direction that the console war is heading. Don is a very animated speaker, acting out lots of things and walking all around the platform. He talked quietly but slow, pacing out the lecture without any serious pauses or any "ahs" and "uhms".
After Don's talk I had to skip out for a bit so I missed the Journalism Panel, where developers got to grill various game journalists and reviewers as they so often do to us developers. I left my voice recorder with one of the press managers though so I do have it - whether I can decipher what's going on is another story, but I will try.
On my way back to attend the Gama 256 event I ran into Tom Buscaglia Sr. (The Game Attorney), apparently he was there to have business and legal meetings with people. I always enjoy chatting with Tom, he's such a character, so I hung out with him as he went off to buy cigars before we both ended up at the Gama 256 party, held at the same location as last nite's IGDA party.
Gama 256 was a game design event where participants were constrained to 256x256 in screen resolution and to develop a game people could just come by, pick up and immediately play. I don't know if this was also a requirement, but apparently every entry was done with XNA, or at least I assume so since they all used an Xbox 360 controller. One game you had to kill zombies by grinding them up, which produced obscene amounts of red pixels equaling blood that would drain down the level and pool up in low areas that you could swim through. The need for this becomes apparent when you use the blood to reach areas you couldn't normally reach just from jumping off the ground, instead you swim out and jump from the blood. Then another game used the simple puzzle mechanic of flipping the small square level on its side various ways to align peices and allow your character to reach a goal. A third game was simply you as a largish block of pixels running around the small screen space trying to avoid two other blocks while a time counts up, but the numbers are so huge they get in the way of discerning the blocks since everything is so pixelated. Very neat stuff. I played all but one, but the one I didn't play I easily caught the gist of by watching.
So that's MIGS 2007. It was a good time, I liked the conference a lot and it's always nice to see people I don't otherwise get to see in person except at events like these. I'm still disappointed at missing the first half of Day One, especially the Nintendo keynote, but Gamasutra has coverage of that. Looking forward to hopefully being able to attend next year!
Good write up.