I had an absolutely great Develop this year – ignoring getting the worst chips ever in the chip shop next door to the Hilton Brighton Metropole. As well as my coverage for Gamasutra I moderated a session in the first day’s “Evolve” track, After the iPhone Honeymoon:Where Next for Apple’s Mobile? (which went rather well, thanks to speakers such as ngmoco‘s Alan Yu and Tag Games‘ Paul Farley), performed a “Best Worst Game” live on One Life Left, and got stuck in during the Develop Den Opinion Jam arguing against arbitrary moral choices in video games. I only lost out to Ernest Adams, who argued for better writers (which no one could disagree with, surely?)

Develop 2009: David Perry: ‘Gaming Should Be More Convenient’
Develop 2009: Team17’s Brown Talks Challenges Of Self-Publishing Online
Develop 2009: Thatgamecompany’s Chen On How Emotion Can Evolve Games
Develop 2009: Realtime Worlds’ Jones On Players As Content
Develop 2009: SCEE’s Hirani Reveals PS Eye Facial Recognition, Motion Controller Details
Develop 2009: LittleBigPlanet’s Cohesive Chaos

“Following Monday’s press conference announcing a new Ubisoft development studio in Toronto, Gamasutra had a chance to talk to the studio’s new CEO, Yannis Mallat.

Mallat — who is also to continue overseeing Ubisoft Montreal — talked to us about the big plans for a “triple-A” game development studio, with convergence with the local film industry key.”

A decent interview with Yannis Mallat about the very exciting news of a new studio for Ubisoft here in Toronto. I’ve spoken with Mallat before, and with this kind of news I expect to be talking to him a lot more.

“Keita Takahashi, creator of Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy, is more interested in art, life, and his dog, than the work of his creative peers. He’s more interested in going to the museum than going to the Game Developers Conference.

We decided that the best idea might be to inspire him ourselves — and we did that by bringing a packet of markers and a pad of drawing paper, settling down on the floor of the hotel suite Namco Bandai booked for the interview, and start drawing together. “We’re just trying to keep the interview from being boring, since they often are,” we said, by way of explanation.”

The second of the interviews at this year’s GDC that I helped Christian Nutt with, one good reason to read this one is to see the images we sketched with Takahashi. The Q&A is good (if I don’t say so myself) but I think it’s good because of the drawings.

Plus, I feel pretty honoured to say I’ve doodled with the creator of Katamari Damacy!

“At this year’s Game Developers Conference, Gamasutra once again had the chance to speak to Bullfrog and Lionhead co-founder, Populous, Black & White and Fable series designer, and iconoclast Peter Molyneux — on the eve of his presentation at the show.

With Fable II having been released via Lionhead parent company Microsoft late last year for Xbox 360 [NOTE: this interview contains some plot spoilers for the game], and no new project yet announced for his studio, Molyneux was chomping at the bit to discuss his next project — as the below text reveals.”

I helped Christian Nutt on a few more interviews at this year’s GDC (last year I worked with him on one with Ken Levine) and although my discussion in the interview is (unfortunately by its very nature) Fable II spoiler-packed, I think the whole interview is really great – Molyneux is a pleasure to interview.

“‘This is the eighth year in a row we’ve been doing this,’ opened moderator Jonathan Blow (Braid), introducing the Experimental Gameplay Sessions at Game Developers Conference 2009, before claiming that this was the ‘most interesting year yet.’

The reason? A ‘drastic, discontinuous change’ had occurred in the games industry in recent years – an explosion of creativity that had led to ‘the most consistent collection of designs that push the boundaries in the most interesting and thoughtful ways.’ After briefly introducing each, he allowed the designers to speak for themselves.”

In-depth coverage of the wonderful, Jon Blow-curated session that included such greats as a real-time strategy title that encourages you to abuse time travel and a platform game in four dimensions.

The Montreal International Game Summit has been and gone for another year, and my session coverage has all been published on Gamasutra (though as usual, any interviews or other coverage that I’ve done will take longer to arrive.)

I really like MIGS – not only is it fairly close and in a city I rather like, it’s a nice size and generally a friendly and interesting conference to be at. I’ll be honest and say that this year, perhaps, wasn’t quite as brilliant as the previous two (but maybe they were unusually good.) Still, I’m pleased to see the sessions I wrote up were well received. In particular I’d recommend Jonathan Blow’s keynote – there’s certainly a lot to think about there.

MIGS: Spector Calls For ‘Pioneer Spirit,’ ‘Renaissance’ In Tough Times
MIGS: Valve’s Mitchell On Creating Left 4 Dead’s ‘Filmic’ Visual Style
MIGS: Microsoft’s Fryer On Creating a Culture Of Production
MIGS: Imagining A Hero – Ubisoft’s Mattes On Prince of Persia’s Visual Evolution
Braid’s Blow: ‘How To Make Games That Touch People’
In-Depth: The Difficult Birth Of EA’s Army of Two
Analysis: How To Get Creative With Game Music

The Ontario Game Summit and Game On: Finance were a pair of interconnected conferences just held here in Toronto, both of which were largely interested in how to draw more game development to this fair province.

I feel like I should have more to say about them here, but I think the articles I’m just about to link actually do all the talking required!

OGS 2008: Della Rocca On How Sharing, ‘Clusters’ Can Strengthen Biz
OGS 2008: How Angel Investors Can Help Your Game Business
GOF 2008: Edery – Devs Need To Watch Advergaming, Corporate Training
GOF 2008: DFC Claims PS3 Unlikely to Break Even, PC Not Dying
GOF 2008: Is Digital Distribution The VCR Of The Game Biz?

The Lepzig Games Convention is certainly a sight to behold – roughly five full aircraft hangers full of rabid German gamers salivating over not only displays for the latest games but also (I kid you not) the latest in fancy PC cases, mice, and CPU cooling fans. Really. I never had a chance to visit E3 in its most decadent heyday, either, so the sight of roaming “booth babes” at the Leipzig GC was quite remarkable.

Anyway, I didn’t actually spend very much time at the GC at all, instead covering the Game Convention Developer Conference in-depth. Much like my opinion of the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, I really felt this show wasn’t especially good, but unlike the EIF, I’m not to sure there’s much more they could do to make it better.

Perhaps if it moves to Cologne to be part of the new GamesCom it will improve; getting to Leipzig was so irritating (and the town itself so unwelcoming) that I seriously doubt I’ll return if it chooses to stay there (not that it’s particularly likely that it will.)

GCDC: Epic’s Four Strategies For Winning The Industry ‘Arms Race’
GCDC: Epic’s Capps On Designing The ‘New, Better, More’ Gears 2
GCDC: Connors On Telltale’s Episodic Move To Consoles
GCDC: What Determines Developer Acquisition Values?
Crytek’s Yerli On The Road To A Graphics ‘Renaissance’
Meretzky Lets Loose On Stagnant Creativity
Devs And Pubs On Pitching Game Ideas: Be Persistent, Specialize

The Edinburgh Interactive Festival actually only ran from the 10th to the 12th of August, but with the 10th being a Sunday and Gamasutra’s tendency to stretch show coverage out across weeks, I thought I’d wait until now until I posted my coverage. There might still be more to be put up, of course, but in that case I’ll just update this post.

Anyway, this was rather a nice conference to go to because covering the first “Edinburgh International Games Festival” (as it was known then) was my first foray into games journalism. It was perhaps bittersweet, as the conference really hasn’t improved or grown any in the intervening five years.

It’s a strange one, really. If anything, the competition from Develop as an industry event is far too strong for it to really compete unless it really goes all out, but if it did so I think it would miss the most obvious possibility – which is to concentrate on the events which are open to the public.

After all, the festivals in the month of August the Edinburgh is world famous for are all open to the public, and are part of what make holding a games festival in the city at that time attractive, so why don’t they run with that? This year they barely advertised the festival around the city and still managed to draw thousands of people to the public screenings and the Dare Protoplay event, so a properly run event (perhaps run across weeks, with events every evening) could really be something special – unique, even – and much preferable to the current festival.

EIF: Deering Says Only 3 Of 10 Games Recoup Costs
Halo 3 Wins Edge Award For Innovation, Online Integration
EIF: Codemasters’ Cousens On Why Britannia Rules
IGA’s Bartlett: ‘We Are Not Spyware, We Are Not Evil’
EIF: Guitar Hero, Nintendogs Better Educational Tools Than ‘Serious Games’
MUD Co-Creator Bartle Criticizes Gaming And Academia Divide
Nokia’s Foe: Marketing Is Warfare, Consumers Are Bullets
CCP Economist On EVE Online’s ‘Pure Capitalist’ Market

“As the casual game biz gets more complex, and the mainstream game biz examines complexity – where to now? To investigate this growing industry, Gamasutra talks to some of its leading lights: John Welch, CEO of PlayFirst (Diner Dash); Jason Kapalka, CCO of PopCap (Peggle, Bejeweled) and Russell Carroll, director of marketing at developer and (via Reflexive Arcade) casual games distributor Reflexive Entertainment (Wik and the Fable of Souls) for their unique takes on the importance of the casual games industry — where it’s headed and what that means.”

This article has been quite well received, being picked up on sites including Wired, which I found very pleasing.