SGS D.C. Reflections

I had some mixed feelings walking out of the summit. Overall, it was a positive experience, but there were some small things that did seem a bit...strange. Starting with some of the negatives:

• Not a lot of time/areas for networking. Lunch was 1.5 hours, but there didn't seem to be any effort to try and get special interest groups together for discussion (unlike the GDC summit in early '04).
• Somewhat related to the above, the room setups were a bit awkward for what our whole conference was about. Games are very social and interactive forms of entertainment, but the rooms (except the ballroom) were all prepared in a traditional, non-interactive classroom style. Instead of round tables where you can talk and discuss things with your colleagues, we had rows of theater-style seating. This might have had something to do with attendance though...
• The sessions, which were mostly good, could have been organized a bit better. I learned very fast to ignore the classifications of 'intermediate', 'beginner', etc. very early. Instead of these classifications, why not try "Government, K-12, Higher Education, Developer,...". Some presentations were definitely more academic in nature, some more hands-on, some primarily dealing with government issues, etc. A system like this might make it a bit easier for people to decide where they want to go.

Moving on to some of the positives...

• The conference was soldout weeks beforehand! I couldn't believe how many people were in the ballroom for the keynote on the first morning. This is a great sign for our future in this space.
• Overall a great group of presenters. There seems to be some repeat presenters at these types of events, but that's ok if they are good presenters. Ed Heinbockel, of Visual Purple, always has some interesting things to say. I need to get in touch with him to talk more about his experiences with instructional designers on game related projects.
• Seemed to be a relatively even split between male/female attendants. Maybe 60-40 males, but that might even be pushing it a bit far.

Before heading down to D.C., I was explaining what exactly serious games are to a couple colleagues. After I was done, one colleague mentioned "No one over the age of 35 should be at that conference", while the other one said "Only people who still play video games should be in that [serious games] field". Now I don't necessarily agree 100% with these opinions, it does bring up an interesting point of reflection: not one presenter asked the audience "who plays games?" I don't consider this a pre-requisite to be in this space, but it is something I'm curious to know. From the presentations I attended and after talking to some people, I'd guess about 60-65% of those in attendance still at least play 1 or 2 PC/console games on occasion (or frequently). That leaves 35-40% of people in attendance who *don't* play any electronic games. I do think if you're going to play in this space (from any standpoint: developer, researcher, contractor, funder, etc.) you should at least be staying current with the games out there, and playing a PC/console game from time to time. Maybe even just play some flash or web games. It bothers me a little when talking with someone about 'serious game' projects, and it becomes obvious that the last video game they played was Pac-man or Space Invaders. If you're really going to make a 'serious game' project work, you must have some knowledge of the current state of video games, how complex they are, and the characteristics of games today that make them so successful.

Based on the audience at the Summit, it also appeared that the content of presentations was dumbed down a bit. Some presentations had a very basic, almost elementary feel. Some folks I spoke to who attended the GDC summit were a bit disappointed that presentations seemed to re-hash what was discussed in San Jose, vs. presenting new information. As much as I was hoping this wouldn't be the case, it did seem somewhat appropriate based on the audience. Again, I got the feeling there were a lot of 'noobs' at the conference, who are getting their first taste of this space. For instance, some quotes I heard:
"What is IM?"
"Are these games LAN-based" (questions asked about games developed in Flash)
"Can people play these games on the web?" (again, question about flash games)
"What is XML?"
I'm not trying to poke fun at anyone here, just to try and illustrate some of the things I overheard that makes me think the audience was very diverse in DC, and partly the reason for some basic, elementary presentations.