On May 3 & 4, 2007 I attended the first ever Vancouver International Game Summit. Given the size of Vancouver’s games sector, it was only a matter of time before an industry conference occurred. Sponsoring companies included Electronic Arts, Ernst & Young, Disney Interactive Studios, Microsoft, Seven Group Digital Media, Autodesk, BC.Net, ACMSiggraph Vancouver, The National Research Council of Canada, Vancouver Film School, New Media BC, Emily Carr, The IGDA, Annex Pro, Game Recuiter, the Georgia Straight, Casual Games Association, DigiPen, Bioware Corp, the Art Institute of Vancouver, Mog Ware, Rockstar Games, Vivendi Games, Nintendo, and many others.
A Few Days Later
No coherent thoughts yet on this, but some musings and ramblings as I sort out several days of sudden immersion in the discourse of the industry (which is wildly different in some ways from the discourse of academia, but which has much in common in other ways).
Buzzwords for this weekend included: innovation, originality, micropayment schemes, monetization, and a wide assortment of commentary surrounding playoff hockey. The Canucks lost spectacularly on two large projection screens while industry folk mingled, ate, drank, and gamed in the other room. I found myself faced with the choice of facing my social awkwardness head-on by interacting with folk like the chair of the GDC, and the creative directors of every major game studio and school in BC, or sitting in a dark room watching hockey and eating salmon pate alone. I opted to mingle.