Conference Overview

A typical lunch keynote at LOGIN with excellent food. Click for full gallery

This year's online gaming conference LOGIN was held once again at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront hotel, which is right on the shore of Puget Sound a hop skip and a jump away from downtown Seattle. LOGIN has been around for three years, however it's been through a few names in its time. Originally called OGDC for Online Game Developers Conference, they were smacked down by CMP (now Think Services) for incorporating the "GDC" trademark into their conference name. That may ring some bells - we'll get to that in just a moment. The following year, they named themselves ION and once again faced litigation, this time from some random dude claiming to own the trademark for "ION". While the name LOGIN hasn't given them any issues this time around (and will hopefully be the name next year, although the running joke among recurring attendees is "what will it be called next year?") they were partners with Howell Expo, which organizes the China Game Developers Conference. Yea - CGDC. So the litigation hit them again in a rather roundabout way.

Still, for all the changes that the conference identity has gone through, its content and focus as an event has always been of top notch, and none of the attendees have ever particularly cared what it was called, so long as it delivered with quality sessions, bountiful networking opportunities, and copious amounts of yummalicious food. And it did. Many of the comments I heard from other attendees I spoke to during the conference were in praise of those three attributes.

The Sessions

This year they had an opening session the day before the conference really got started, where all the speakers got to come on stage for a minute or so and pitch their talk to the assembled conference attendees. I liked the idea, but it didn't seem that well executed and some speakers didn't seem to fully grasp the concept while others just weren't able to make it that early to take the stage themselves. That's not to say it still wasn't useful. I listened to the pitches and rated all the talks I thought sounded interesting. It did help me a little bit in deciding where I wanted to go sometimes. It would have benefited though from more speaker participation and understanding, and a hard cutoff limit to keep the ramblers at bay.

Another new session this year was the debates. Each day had a debate focused around a topic that would have two sides, a For and Against, duking it out with each other over the course of an hour. The idea wasn't really to come to any sort of conclusion or crown one side victorious over another, but to take a topic and break down its various viewpoints from developers close to the subject matter at hand. How did it go? I'm sorry to say I didn't attend any. Perhaps from a pure editorial perspective I should have at least sat in on one, but all were scheduled against sessions that actually interested me. In retrospect, I could have missed the session I sat in on Wednesday.

The Networking

LOGIN also has a nice 30 minute buffer between sessions throughout the day, which makes the whole event slow down to a nice leisurely pace. It also means you can hold a meaningful conversation with someone between sessions. Or multiple people, even.

Parties are a required part of any conference, and LOGIN always delivers. This year they had an opening reception, an official conference party (unfortunately not as swank as last years party at the Seattle Aquarium, though Joe the Magician helped make up for it) and the Seattle IGDA chapter also held an after-conference event on the last day.

Every morning, a networking breakfast is held for those willing and/or able to crawl out of bed at 7:30am. I did it once this year and once last year. Lissa somehow managed to do it twice. Each breakfast is handled speed-dating style, and every few minutes you're sent to another table via some means - like my breakfast used playing cards and people were shuffled around based on odd/even numbers and suits. If you're able to wake up in time, they're worth the effort. And not just for the potential business - which brings us to our last LOGIN attribute...

The Food

If you've been to GDC, you know well the infamous boxed lunches. They aren't bad, but they're nothing great either. MIGS has a cafeteria on-site and they give you lunch vouchers, but it's still cafeteria food. Austin GDC has a ton of great food outside the conference and in Austin proper (BBQ FTW!), but you still have to leave the conference center. Same for IGC East up in Boston.

LOGIN is different. Last year, they served sushi one day. This year one of the lunch offerings was wood-grilled salmon. We're talking full-on gourmet meals here. Breakfast has a full helping of pastries, bagels, french toast, eggs, etc. The parties all have decent finger food, the networking party had huge shrimp and crab legs.

Glorious food! Bountiful food!

My Nitpicks

There was no conference wireless, which crippled my hopes of live tweeting sessions again. The second day I discovered that the Marriott hotel access point actually offered free wireless access, but it was very spotty down in the ballroom level, which was below the hotel lobby. A dedicated conference access point was available, but not enabled for us this year. It was rather ironic to me that an online games conference wasn't online.

There was no soda. It made me wish I were a fan of water, iced tea or coffee. Luckily the hotel lobby cafe had a nicely-stocked fridge.

Next Year

actually I wonder if I would actually survive attending and then covering three conferences in a row.

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