FuturePlay 2005 Wrapup
The FuturePlay conference has just finished up and I think the organizers should be very happy with what they put together.
The topics were very wide ranging from topics on academia and industry collaboration to game design and AI. My own panel on the future of Casual Games (slides to be posted soon) seemed to be quite successful as well (even though I was competing with Greg Costikyan first thing in the morning!).
One of the most interesting sessions was the Censorship panel on Friday which included most of the major players in the game censorship debate. It’s not often you can get Henry Jenkins, Dr. Craig A Anderson, and Jason Della Rocca all on the same panel. While two hours wasn’t nearly enough time for everyone to present (although John Lazet managed to get in some theatrics during his portion), the session still managed to cover some interesting issues and discussions. Perhaps the most surprising thing to me was that the session wasn’t better attended, especially when compared to the IP session that preceeded it.
The conference closed with an outstanding talk by Michael Mateas of Façade fame. He talked about the future of AI and his visions for how AI can make for better gameplay. He also outlined the basic ideas they used to develop the AI for Façade. Overall this was an outstanding session and a fitting end to a solid conference.
Update: Slides are now available.
This entry was posted on Saturday, October 15th, 2005 at 4:07 pm and is filed under Conferences, Game Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
October 15th
2005 at 7:36 pm
I definitely agree that FuturePlay was a success. It was too bad you had to run directly against Greg on Saturday, as I was very interested in your talk as well.
It was a pleasure meeting you, and thanks for the feedback as well! (I was with the Ballistic game shown during the conference)
October 17th
2005 at 4:16 pm
I agree with both you and Scott (previous comment): Futureplay was definitely a worthwhile experience. Besides the sessions that have already been mentioned, I also enjoyed the “Sex and Gender in Games” panel. I went in expecting yet another “Girls don’t play games because Lara Croft has big boobs” discussion and what I got was 6 very smart and interesting individuals discussing some topics that I had previously not given much thought (and I got a kick out of Ernest Adams wanting a game that equaled Susan Sarandon’s performance in Bull Durham).
Probably the two sessions I wanted to attend the most were yours and Greg Costikyan’s so it really was a shame that they were scheduled at the same time. In the end I chose the Casual Games session and thought that it was definitely one of the high points of the conference (it even validated waking up at 8 am on a Saturday). I really enjoyed it and I’m glad I got to meet you and briefly talk about random game technology issues like Director and Torque after the presentation.