The Harvey and Warren Show

by Jason Della Rocca (June 2003)

On a beutiful Monday evening, close to two hundred brave developers made their way to the chapter meeting. I jest because, Montreal chapter attendance suffers to some degree when it is either really cold or really hot outside. Oh well. In part, this is why we take the summer off...

For this gathering, we had two invited guests. First up, game agent Warren Currell of Sherpa Games talked about pitching a game to publishers. More specifically, he covered some of the key points and findings from the IGDA's Game Submission Guide. As the project leader for this Business Committee deliverable, and a game agent, Warren is well versed on the subject and pointed out that less than 12% of submitted/pitched games ever make it past the first evaluation phase! Also, telling developers to focus on their demo, a high-level sell sheet and the team bios.

After Warren's biz talk, Harvey Smith of Ion Storm covered a myriad of topics. From his personal experience in the industry, to game design approaches and his insights from working on Deus Ex. Further, he mentioned how much he loved the city of Montreal and the vibe of the game dev community here! Rather than trying to summarize his presentation, everyone is encouraged to read the following, related, materials:

• The Future of Game Design: Moving Beyond Deus Ex and Other Dated Paradigms
• GDC 2002 Web Lecture: Systemic Level Design for Emergent Gameplay
• Systemic Level Design
• Orthogonal Unit Differentiation
• Postmortem: Ion Storm's Deus Ex
• Building Object Systems - Features, Tradeoffs, and Pitfalls
• Toward Massively Responsive Conversations
• Designing Enemies With Distinct Functions

Lots of content to digest, but worth the effort, especially for the game/level designers out there. Finally, Harvey also touched on the importance of a strong/unified company culture.

Once all the talking was done, everyone headed to the arcade-bar for drinks and socializing.

Big thanks to our sponsors

• Butterfly.net
• Alliance NumeriQC

And, of course, thanks to our volunteers who helped out: Eric Ballandras (LOR-Tech) and Gareth Morgan (Softimage).

June Gathering Pictorial

...here are just a few shots I took during the June gathering of the Montreal Chapter. (all persons are identified from left to right)

Warren Currell (Sherpa Games) talks business, and presents some of the key points in the IGDA's Game Submission Guide.

Montreal developers and industry folks listen attentively...

Harvey Smith (Ion Storm) speaks of his love for Montreal and the design insights he's gained working on Deus Ex.

Nicolas Rioux (Ubi Soft), Virgil (Virtools) and the award-winning Clint Hocking (Ubi Soft) chat after the presentations.

Ubi Softers Danny Oros, Jean-Francois Dugas, Hugo Desmeules and Eric Le digest Harvey's musings on orthogonal unit differentiation (along with digesting a few beers).

Special guests of the night, Harvey and Warren. Thanks for coming!