Montreal Game Summit

BY: JEFF MURRAY  |  General Rambling, Conferences, Game Industry

Apparently, World of Warcraft is an evil and corrupt game, game developers make better parents and those are just some of the topics covered at the Montreal Game Summit 2007 (MIGS 07).

We arrived at the Palais Des Congres in Montreal, at around 8am. The inside of the building reminded me of Dawn of the Dead without the zombies. Mall music eerily tick-tocked away as we made our way through the baron landscape of shiny tiles and shop windows.

Thanks to numerous monitors with giant ‘M’s on them and the creepy old guy from all those old horror movies shouting ‘Game developers! You’re all doomed!’, we were able to find the conference easily. Perhaps the hoards of company t-shirt wearing, company bag-wielding scruffs flooding in behind us were the zombies? Some of them looked like they hadn’t slept for a while, at least. Moving inside, we registered and grabbed the goody bags. Note that the best thing in the bag was a pen from EA that lights up – ideal for working late nights in a dark cupboard. Ahem.

First session of the day was a keynote from Yoshiaki Koizumi; Project Leader of EAD Tokyo Software Designing Group, Nintendo. It was the usual impressive Nintendo style with guest ‘Wii Miis’ of Koizumi and Miyamoto. Again in typical Nintendo style, the talk was translated and littered with anecdotes of how significant design decisions came about along with some little snippets of tech.

Koizumi led up to some surface level talk of Super Mario Galaxy and we all left the presentation with that Nintendo-approved nice, warm and slightly fuzzy feeling to start the day with.

My favorite day 1 talk was Jonathon Blow’s session titled ‘Design reboot’. Blow calls for a scrapping of traditional game design (the top down, by-the-book design style) and calls for the introduction of more experimental methods. Blow referred to Portal as an example of a game that started out as a concept and became one of the most well produced games of 2007.

Portal is what can happen when the experience becomes the focus rather than the usual ‘game design shopping list’. It’s based upon an innovative concept but as Blow points out “it isn’t actually the innovation that people love about the game”, it is the experience. His comments on World of Warcraft caused the most controversey, as Blow stated;

“We don’t see it as unethical because we refuse to stop and think about the magnitude of what we are doing. You can smoke, have fast food, and play World of Warcraft sometimes – when you talk about these things at a societal level, it becomes a societal problem.” 

Blow soon continued on his assault on the game mechanics of MMOs with;

“The meaning of life in WoW is you’re some schmo that doesn’t have anything better to do than sit around pressing a button and killing imaginary monsters,” he explained. “It doesn’t matter if you’re smart or how adept you are, it’s just how much time you sink in. You don’t need to do anything exceptional, you just need to run the treadmill like everyone else.”

Experimental game design may well be the key to injecting some much needed life into the industry. Jonathan’s talk inspires me to remind everyone that I would like to see more tools available for user-generated content so that the innovators, potential future game designers and creators could express themselves through gaming in whatever ways they want to. I want more tools available to schools to encourage kids to build games. Indulge me as I quote myself and champion:

“Just as punk rock said anyone with a guitar can play music, I want anyone with a keyboard to be able to make games.”

That night, I didn’t sleep well at all. This was probably due to the number of coffees I guzzled - something of a necessary evil when trying to avoid becoming horizontal during some of the more, shall we say, low-key seminars. My wake up call was a stark reminder of simple caffeine science. Today, I am the lead zombie at the mall.

 Chilling conclusion coming soon …