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[color="#000000"][font="Arial"][size="2"]One of the reasons that I chose to only have one day worth of summits this year is that, last year, the Independent Games Summit and the Serious Games Summit both had their share of highlight but were, largely, not particularly interesting to listen to. It feels like some of the independent speakers show up, have heart, and have a great message that they want to communicate to the crowd. Other IGS speakers, however, despite being very talented developers with great personalities, either don't have much of a message to convey or aren't all-too-great speakers. So, this year I chose to just condense some Social and Online Games Summit, Independent Games Summit, and Serious Games Summit sessions into a single day of things that I really wanted to see. [/font][/color]
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[color="#000000"][font="Arial"][size="2"]And that's what I did! Of course, everything took a bit of time to get rolling since I'm still, largely, operating on my normal central time-acclimated schedule so I was up and awake at a prompt 5:15am local time. Which meant that it was time for breakfast:[/font][/color]
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[/font][font="Arial"] [/font][color="#000000"][font="Arial"][size="2"]I ran into various people all morning but, since it was morning, you do people teh kindness of not letting conversations linger as people require caffeine. And some of us needed a second Red Bull. Some of us being me. Anyway. The first session I attended was at the Independent Games Summit and was given by Jamie Cheng of Klei Entertainment talking about "The Journey to Creating Shank". Next was the incomparable Derek Yu who talked about transitioning from the beloved freeware Spelunky to Spelunky XBLA (it looks amazing, for your edification on the matter). [/font][/color]
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[color="#000000"][font="Arial"][size="2"]Next up I followed some friends to the Social and Online Game Design summit for what was probably my favorite session of the day: "A Debate: Are Social Games Legitimate?". The panel was moderated by Margaret Robinson and featured one of my favorite speakers about social games, Ian Bogost (who made Cow Clicker) along with a few other panelists. The panel didn't make it particularly deep into the topic, but there were some entertaining (and some interesting) conversations back-and-forth between, what at least appeared to be, a fairly opinion-diverse set of panelists. What I enjoyed most about this panel were the reactions the social game developers had to Ian Bogost's fairly pointed questions (accusations, in some cases) as to the ethics of social game development and, as the social game developers rightly responded, the ethics of game development as a whole. Also one of the panelists had a particular fondness for cupcakes, citing on numerous occasions that he thought it was "pretty cool" that he could send a digital cupcake to his mom and that could "get a conversation going sometimes." Cupcakes. [/font][/color]
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[color="#000000"][font="Arial"][size="2"]It was unfortunate that most of the panelists seemed as prepared for debate as Bogost was, as mostly anecdotal evidence seemed to be relied upon for points.[/font][/color]
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[color="#000000"][font="Arial"][size="2"]What followed the social games debate panel was a nice, lengthy, gorgeous little faux-picnic near the convention center with a variety of friends from around the game industry. Including Florida. Poor, poor Florida. [/font][/color]
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[/font][font="Arial"] [/font][color="#000000"][font="Arial"][size="2"]The summit-filled afternoon picked back up with an amazingly well-presented and well-discussed talk by the ever-impressive Jane McGonigal on "gamefulness." McGonigal leveled a variety of criticisms as the whole wave of "gamification" that has occurred within the game industry, but not ruled out the idea as a whole. She simply aims to redefine the goals of "gamification" into something more like "gameful"(ification). One of the best quotes of the entire presentation was "The opposite of play is not work, it's depression." McGonigal's view of game design and the goals of play do not particluarly align with those of mine, but I do enjoy hearing her espouse her very numerous and well-researched thoughts on the subjects. I was somewhat disheartened that the session had no time for audience questions, as one of my principle complaints with the whole notion of "gamification" is that it seems to have the goal of making mundane tasks (and, in a lot of cases, even non-mundane tasks) more "fun" by "gamifying them."[/font][/color]
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[color="#000000"][font="Arial"][size="2"]The example that Jane McGonigal gave of gamification/gameful-ification was that the New York Public Library approached "gamification experts" with the goal of getting young people to read more, as due to the internet and wikipedia they were finding that not many young people went to the library anymore. The goal of gamification in this case would be to provide extrinsic incentives to youth in order to get them to go to the library and read more and so on. Ignoring the high-level fact that this is simply strange, the more important point is that gamifying or gameful-ifying this problem simply fixes the symptome (kids not going to the library) rather than the actual problem (kids not reading as much nor having reason to go to the library). And, this example aside, gamifying seems to ignore that what makes games and play fun is that they have an ebb-and-flow with reality and "real life"; that separation is what makes each work so well. [/font][/color]
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[color="#000000"][font="Arial"][size="2"]The rest of the day's sessions were at the Independent Game Summit, starting with Andy Schatz's "How to Win the IGF in 15 Weeks or Less." What worked in this session was not Schatz's considerable personality, but the heart with which he spoke and the way he bound his personal life into the development of Monaco. Aside from showing a histogram of his own bank account throughout his time as an independent developer, Schatz also showed a variety of Facebook updates starting with one which was obviously done in a poor mood and ending with one of exuberance as he finishes up the IGF build of Monaco. The session also closed with an impromptu play-through of a level of Monaco by volunteers from the audience (and the game looks rad).[/font][/color]
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[/font][font="Arial"] [/font][color="#000000"][font="Arial"][size="2"]And, finally, the last session of the Independent Games Summit was the Rapid-Fire Indies microtalk session which had five-minute presentations from speakers like Chris Hecker, Notch (of Minecraft fame), Kyle Pulver, Anna Anthropy, and other speakers. The session, on the whole, was a little disappointing due to a variety of sessions on somewhat common topics like game jams, the use of "indie" as a label, and piracy. Beginning the microtalk session with someone like Chris Hecker talking also seemed like a strange move; he had a great topic, his usual abundance of energy, and packed a pretty crazy amount of information into a single five-minute presentation.[/font][/color]
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[color="#000000"][font="Arial"][size="2"]The day slowly ended from there, but here's a picture of Michel McBride-Charpentier vs. Jorge Albor in a game of Metagame; the debate card placed was "Which game has a more intense subculture?" And the debate was between Minecraft and Dance Dance Revolution. And somehow Michel lost with [/font][/color][color="#000000"][font="Arial"][size="2"]Minecraft[/font][/color][color="#000000"][font="Arial"][size="2"], so that's pretty astounding.[/font][/color]
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[/font][font="Arial"] [/font][color="#000000"][font="Arial"][size="2"]Also Vagrant story is now on the Playstation Store in PSOne Classics. Get it posthaste. [/font][/color]
