The Montreal International Game Summit kicked off earlier today with a brief address by MIGS Director Emmanuel Viau. He spoke briefly about what attendees can expect for this year’s show and how uncertain he future of the video game industry is at the moment.
This was all complimented by strange tales of visits to the Jurassic period via a “Time-lift” which I’m guessing some French-Canadian version of a TARDIS. All jokes aside it was a good opening to the summit.
Once the opening address was completed it was time for the first keynote address which was given by Epic Games co-founder Tim Sweeney. Sweeney spoke of how Epic is driving innovation and improving its technology, specifically the Unreal Engine. It was heavy on the technical language but the overall point was clear, Epic is committed to creating the tools that allow developers to produce the most amazing looking games the industry has ever seen. Some quotable moments included the omission of consoles on a list of gaming platforms which had Sweeney remark “Oops, I forgot consoles.” Sweeney’s speech championed the Free To Play Business model but one slide mused that “The ‘packaged goods’ model is outdated.” Are you taking notes here Zynga?
Our day continued with a brief walk of the show floor where we talked to Infinite Games Publishing about their title MechWarrior Online which is currently in open beta and will see an official launch early in 2013. It’s free to play and is currently available from www.mwomercs.com
Next up Sr. Contributor Tim Ashdown took in a talk by Thiery Adam a producer at Ludia who spoke about lesson learned while developing Jurassic Park Builder for iOS. His presentation covered the importance of risk-centric management as the surest way to deliver value. It was a very useful presentation for anyone in a production management role and again was full of strange dinosaur jokes. Velociraptors are still pretty cool though.
Our day wrapped up with an interview with Roch Ripley a Lawyer with the firm of Gowling, Lafleur, and Henderson out of Vancouver BC, who is one of the authors of Video Game Law: second edition. We got into some of the nitty-gritty of legal issues facing game publishers and developers. Look for the full interview coming soon to cgmagonline.com
That wraps up our coverage of the first day of the Montreal International Game Summit. Come back tomorrow for more coverage.
