April 2008 - A Meeting to Remember

The first order of business was to crown the Most Innovative and Best Themed games from the first-ever Philly Game Jam. The winners were:
Best Themed Game: TESLA WARS (Team DMD)
- Ian Perera
- Damon Rocco
- Ryan Smith

Most Innovative Game: BRAIN BROS. (Team Drexel)
- Kevin Nyman
- Jordan Santell
- Seth Boltz

Details about the 2008 Philly Game Jam including downloadable versions of some games are available at phillygamejam.com

The next order of business was to give away a number of books donated to the chapter by Pearson Education. The titles raffled off were OpenGL Programming on Mac OS X, OpenGL Programming Guide Sixth Edition, OpenGL SuperBible, GPU Gems 3, and Microsoft XNA Unleashed. Many thanks to Emily Nave from Pearson for providing the books.

We were fortunate enough to have Jason Della Rocca, Executive Director of the IGDA, on board this month. He gave the latest in the series he calls "At Least 10 Reasons Why the Games Industry Doesn't Suck". He went above and beyond his promise and cited 13 reasons actually.

The talk was an insightful and positive rant about recent trends in the industry. Jason's presentation touched on such issues as the incredibly positive social impact of the Child's Play charity set up by Penny Arcade, the evolution of better player metrics such as those provided by Valve's Steam service leading to better game design, numerous commercial success stories such as with KartRider, numerous instances of innovation as with the small Darwinia team at Introversion Software, among many other examples.

More information and some photos of Jason's visit to PA is available on his blog, Reality Panic.

Corvus Elrod, founder of Philadelphia-based Zakelro Story Studio, spoke to the crowd about "The Art of Self Promotion". Not networking per se, but making the necessary preparations so your online and professional persona are ready for when those networking opportunities arise. Takeaways were:

• Blog - Rigidly timebox your blogging activities so you become efficient at it.
• Ideas don't cost much - Write about ideas, concepts, algorithms, etc. you don't mind giving away.
• Practice your message - Be yourself online. In doing so you become better at talking about yourself and your professional strengths.
• Constructive criticism - Some people don't mind posting very controversial statements. If you must criticize, do so constructively. Any nitwit can make a negative statement, but talented people suggest smart alternatives.
• Realize There are Many Paths - There are many ways to make a living in the games industry. Taking advantage of events like IGDA meetings and GDC will help you to learn about niches you may not have been aware of and/or position you for identifying an emerging entrepreneurial opportunity.

There was also an impressive showing of industry folks including our friends from Big Huge Games who drove up from Maryland to take part in the meeting. Locally, we had representatives from Comcast's casual games portal, Chill, as well as gameinvasion.net. Also in attendance were a number of serious game developers from CHI Systems as well as the team from Firewater Games.

One of the great highlights of the evening was officially welcoming Three Rings Designs to the Philadelphia area. Three Rings just finished opening their new office in Old City. (Rumor has it that the Philly office may get a visit from the giant squid in the near future.) Jon Demos, Lead Artist at Three Rings, was on hand to say a few words to the crowd and joined us at the pub later to talk about the industry and the burgeoning game development community in Philly.

It was an adventure to the very end. We stayed at the pub too long and the car got locked in the garage. We had to summon a security detail to the scene for an emergency car extraction so I could drive Jason back to his hotel in Deptford, NJ. Once in the car, the GPS could not find Jason's hotel, so we had a brief tour of lovely downtown Deptford while we zeroed in on the target.

Thankfully the chauffeuring detail went much more smoothly the next morning when I had to drive Jason back to the University of Pennsylvania for some meetings with the faculty. The fire alarms did start going off when we entered the building, but that's another story...

Thanks to all the presenters, volunteers and attendees who continue to make the Philly IGDA a success. Looking forward to next month