IMGDC 2007
April 16th, 2007 | by admin |The first (hopefully annual) Indie Massively multi-player Games Development conference transpired on April 14th through the 15th 2007.
This very under-publicized conference (at least to me) was held in beautiful Minneapolis, Minnesota. Beautiful the weather, beautiful the people, and beautiful the conference.
Day one’s keynote was GG’s CEO Josh Williams who reinforced the importance of the Indie game maker in today’s market and society. I was actually NOT at that keynote because I had a late night that Friday (I’m telling you, beautiful night life) but I heard it was heavy on the Indie and light on the MMO
I did however make it for the sessions. The layout was simple: two tracks, business and design. Two formats, class and roundtable.
That day was spent learning the basics of business plans and round-tabling about the role of a producer in an Indie game development company. We also learned of Georgia Tech’s Celia Pearce current work on “mermaids” as wells as a good talk on in-game advertising (a concept I was the only one to raise their hands as patently rejecting their use in my game but I was not so sure of that by the end of the talk!).
Saturday night was the usual drunken orgy of debauchery and sticky mistakes that happen after most conference… full of the types of events that you hope will stay back with the conference, but never do, never do. Ok, it was bit more toned down. Ok, actually, I didn’t make it to the after-party at “1st Avenue” since I would be there for blonde redhead the next day but I hear it was fun. So it “could” have been scandalous, right? I mean you can’t pack that much passion into four walls of sound and not have something happen, but hey what do I know, I wasn’t there.
In any case day two was the money. 9am: Dr. Richard Bartle. Did not miss that one, would not miss it for the biggest baddest hangover/walk of shame I could have had that morning (could have, not saying I had either). This one was heavy on the Indie, heavy on the MMO.
Dr. Bartle was positively gushy about the prospects of Indie MMOs at the present. He made an effective case for this by citing the last Indie MMO conference… one that I had NEVER heard of: 1989’s Adventure conference in Bartle’s own home of Sussex, England. He drew distinct comparisons between the factors around the explosion of commercial and Indie MUDs at the end of the 80’s and what is going on now with MMOs, especially or perhaps exclusively with Indie MMO. He went on to say that most of the people at that conference went on to do great things. He expected the same out of our group and went on to say that of the maybe 100 people there, two would stand out as leaders of the field in this field and go on and do great things (though I don’t remember if they were “great things” in a Voldemort kinda way though). He admitted to not knowing WHICH two but basing his prediction what happened with Adventure 89 attendees.
The highlight of the later sessions was again Dr. Bartle and his Slaughterhouse roundtable. In it, Dr. Bartle challenged us to “slay the sacred cows” of Virtual Worlds or to keep them in, but always question why you took that decision. I think we managed to talk of at least 5 cows to slay which is a good way to hone Vonnegut’s passing earlier that week. On the cow of “space”: Should Virtual Worlds be discrete or continuous? 2D or 3D? What about maps? Is space needed for a Virtual World? And these are just the calves of one slain cow! A great discussion was had about the meaning of space, persistence, identity and other fundamentals of Virtual Worlds. The other standout for me that evening was Eric Rheas discussion of cash flow. Using his efforts and company as a foundation, he went on to give practical advice on getting multiple cash revenue streams around your company/product as Indies. The tangent discussion of remote teams and business models was very informative for all as well.
The conference was sponsored by Multiverse and organized by Jonathon Stevens of local Last Straw productions. As the former are currently making a full MMO platform (currently at Beta 2) and the later does Virtual World consulting, they had a lot to say and offer to the discussion at hands. They were not pushy of their technology or services at all. Rafhael Cedeno’s talk about scalability and your business plan effectively turned into a Q&A about the Multiverse engine but also about general MMO concepts and Rafh was the first to want to discuss other MMO solutions (such as Bigworld or Keneva) as a way to motivate discussion. Rafh and Ron Meiners were present and helpful during the whole conference and did a great job of representing Multiverse at the event while Jonathon was just a blur of activity that you “think” you see out the corner of your eye, but you can’t be sure. I sure hope he has a few days rest coming up!
It was a personally invigorating conference. I have never been prouder of what I’m doing right now thanks to Dr. Bartle’s keynote. I can’t really say that about any other conference except perhaps my first Serious Games Summit. A feeling of “these are my people!”, that you are not alone, and that people are coming together to form community and support networks. As any first conference, there were the typical gremlins of tech problems and miscommunication. But the crowd was so into the conference that these minor annoyances did nothing to deter the lively communication and cross pollination of ideas in the hallways during the conference or during lunch at Jimmy Johns or wherever two attendees met!
Will there be another? This topic came up as Dr. Bartle and I were walking out of the Convention Center after the last talk of the last day. It was an unusually beautiful day and walking out into the sun temporarily blinded me. Upon recovery, I offered my opinion that since Multiverse was sponsoring and they are only in Beta, they still have release coming; so I’m sure there will be AT LEAST one more. Can’t wat!
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