Demo Night II
International Game Developers Association
As the crowd trickled in, attendees were greeted with pizza and refreshments a la Large Animal. Amongst those fashionably early were a few close friends and presenters for the evening. Thanks to the invitation-only nature of the event, name tags were waiting for all 150 people on the RSVP list, which I believe is an increase from the 120 or so that RSVP'd for the first Demo Night last year. So, with a few minor shuffles, a great number of industry professionals displayed their names proudly on their shirts for what turned out to be a strong sequel in the Demo Night series.
Jason Della Rocca, Executive Director of the IGDA, kicked the event off with a few words about the organization's recent restructuring. He then followed the brief introduction with a few minutes of sharing his appreciation for the relatively diverse crowd. From there, the game presentations went smoothly with a few intermissions between the downloadable PC games/cell phone titles, and the two Xbox titles.
[edit] Overview
Each presenter was given 10 minutes to present their game, followed by 5 minutes for some Q & A.
- Brian Wane from SMERC presented MOLECULOUS -- a brainy, downloadable (PC) action puzzle game to be released in March 2005.
- Mark Leibowitz, Partner/Business Director at Blackburst Media, entertained the crowd with multifaceted gameplay of ZAMBEEZEE — a downloadable PC word puzzle game that is only available to the public for beta testing at this time.
- Nick Fortugno, Game Designer at gameLAB gave the audience a crash course in food customer service with DINER DASH — a downloadable PC game that has already been released.
- Nick Smolney, Lead Programmer, Gameloft, cast the spell of nostalgia over the crowd with MIGHT AND MAGIC — a mobile game that is currently available to the public.
- Intermission Announcement: Board Game Night
- Eric Zimmerman, Founder & CEO of gameLAB, took this opportunity to announce that gameLAB hosts a board game night every so often and invited those interested to contact Nick or himself at gameLAB.
- Nick Laing, Producer, Hypnotix literally titillated the male three-quarters of the audience with OUTLAW GOLF 2 — an Xbox and PS2 game which is currently on sale in stores now.
- Intermission Announcement: Retro Dredux
- Katie Salen, Game Designer at gameLAB, announced RETRO REDUX: a 24-hour Game Design Jam, presented by Parsons School of Design in collaboration with Atari. The event is slated to take place on April2-April3. For more information, please contact salenk (at) newschool (dot) edu, and visit the RR thread on the forums.
- Sean Scott and Michael Tatro, Producers at Majesco then closed the evening's presentations with the comic relief of PSYCHONAUTS — an Xbox, PS2, and PC title to be released in April, 2005.
[edit] Conclusion
After all was said and a few things remained undone, Ben Serviss, of www.mygamer.com, interviewed the presenters for a very detailed account of the night. Please read Ben's article for a more detailed description of the presentations listed above.
The event's strongest points are obvious from the great lineup of demos, the professional turnout, and the attention payed to the event by “the media” (read: mygamer.com). Meanwhile, the only downside I can think of was that there was standing space only. I look forward to the day Demo Night gathers enough attention and funding to find a seating solution while maintaining the thriving social and networking atmosphere the Large Animal loft office has already established.
