A Montreal Premiere
by Jason Della Rocca (November 2001)
Over the past year, the Montreal Chapter has been gathering at the Cinema Quartier Latin movie complex for monthly social gatherings in the arcade bar. Indeed, for the most part these were mixer style events, providing a much needed opportunity for the multitude of local game developers, hardware/tools vendors and students/newbies to get to know each other. I believe the Chapter has been succeeding, with recent attendances easily in the 100+ range!
However, the demand for more formal GDC-like content and presentations has always been high - which, the social events were not really focused to handle. So, starting with this November, the Chapter will do formal lectures and presentations about every third month (or that's the current plan anyway). Being the first time we were trying this, it was all quite uncertain. But, given the roaring success with 150+ attendees it seems we are onto something cool :)
The Montreal Chapter, with financial support from our sponsors, rented one of the smaller movie theatres in the Cinema complex. Seeing PowerPoint slides being projected onto the mammoth screen was quite enjoyable. Overall, the technical details and such turned out to be quite agreeable - with the Cinema crew helping all along the way.
The evening started with cheers as I welcomed everyone and congratulated them on the fact that October's Montreal Chapter gathering had been the largest in IGDA history (with over 200 attendees and out of town guests). Once the cheers quieted, I then proceeded to scold them all, as barely 20 individuals are actual IGDA members. Tsk, tsk! The first presentation was that of Analog Devices, who discussed their developer relations program and demoed their audio mixing tools - Adam Shelly's revving engine was enjoyed by all. Next was SoftImage 1-hour+ presentation on XSI, real-time shaders and other Soft bits. Eric "Badap!" Goullet did not stop to breath for one second and disseminated an unbelievable amount of XSI info during his presentation. Kudos to Englishman Gareth Morgan for giving his first French presentation after many years at SoftImage. Finally, a crew from Microids gave an insightful postmortem on their recently release tennis game, Tennis Masters Series. In classic Game Developer Magazine style, they did an analysis of what when wrong, what they did right and lessons learned. Stephane Grefford even showed a quick preview of their upcoming Syberia title.
After the presentations, everyone seemingly sprinted to the arcade bar for free beers, provided on behalf of SoftImage and LOR TECH. It was a nice time to get in some customary schmoozing!
Big thanks to our sponsors for the November gathering:
November gathering - Pictorial
...here are some shots I took during the November gathering of the Montreal Chapter. (all persons are identified from left to right)
Full House: The theatre was packed to the limit (115 official seats) with
developers sitting along the stairs and huddled at the back. We'll need
to take one of the bigger rooms next time...
Big Soft: Gareth Morgan of SoftImage is dwarfed by his gargantuan PowerPoint
slides.
Stephane Grefford of Microids starts off the postmortem of their recently
released game, Tennis Masters Series.
Developer whom I can't remember with Dennick Beaudoin (Microids) and Curtis
Monroe (consultant) eager to get at the SoftImage sponsored beer!
Atom Ellis, Adam Shelly and Rachel Mills Garza of Analog Devices up from
California to present their cool audio technologies.
Bryan Milne (SoftImage), Robert Lizee (Digital Fiction), someone's head
and Jean Francois William (Fauves) all having a good time...
Vincent Brisebois (Discreet), Michael (Digital Fiction), Yannick Leblanc
(Fat Lips 3D) and Martin Lizee (Digital Fiction) also having a good time.