The Games Unconference

I've attended last week the "Games Unconference" - a special event which was conceptualized (or to be more accurate un-conceptualized) by Yossi Vardi and un-organized by the IGDA guys here.

This event is similar to a conference in the way that people from the same field (this time gaming) gather together, but unlike it in the way that the content is not set in advance - when you come to the event there's a whiteboard with a blank table of the sessions - and whoever wants to speak about something, just fills out the topic in the relevant cell (when/where).

I myself wasn't planning to speak and didn't prepare anything in advance, but got carried away in this user generated conference, and decided to talk about the gaming market in Korea and share some of my experiences from the Korea trip and KGC. I had a lot of fun - my presentation was composed of the pictures that I had on my laptop from the Korea Game Conference, and I just talked about whatever came to mind...

There were also some interesting games in what you would call in a normal conference "exhibition area". Most of it were concepts and early designs, but there were also more mature products.

For example, take iFighter. This is a very nice concept - a Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat type of games, but the fighters are real people. In a previous conference (Geekcon), the game designer photographed some of the participants in costumes and various poses (kicking, ducking etc.), so most of the fighters were people I know. Of course the graphics is very basic (each pose is one frame) but still it was fun... The backgrounds were also scenes from Israel such as the old city of Jerusalem, and you have Jewish and Arab fighters, so I guess this game is not so helpful for the conflict and its creators never heard the term "Politically Correct"...

Another fun (and still nameless) game allows three players to "jam"... One plays a guitar player, the other a singer and the third is the drummer. Each figure has different sounds, activated with different buttons, and you can also switch to several modes (jazz, rock etc.) - all samples are played together and what you get is most of the time music you wouldn't like to hear, but when you and your friends create it, it's fun... I liked the arcade-like casing in which the game was demonstrated, very cool...

Cam-trax is another cool technology - it allows you to play with hand movements by using a standard web camera. It was demonstrated with a bowling pin - you hold it in your hand, the camera recognizes it, and from that point on, every movement you make is translated into a mouse movement. This can allow Wii-like controls in PCs.

I also saw there a game intended for physical therapy - basically you have a large pad that is equipped with sensors (Similar to Dance Revolution), and on screen you see a turtle appearing in several locations. You have to move accordingly on the pad. The focus here is not on very fast movement but rather on slower ones and as said it is destined to make physical therapy a bit more fun to exercise.

But the game that took the show (at least for me) is SaveAnAlien. These guys started as a facebook app that attracted 250,000 people. Soon enough I guess they realized that making money that way is not that easy, so now they are developing a full web portal (off-facebook). Basically it is a pet virtual world, not unlike Neopets, and it allows you to select an alien and fro mthat point on you should feed it and take care of his other un-earthly needs. The alien also communicates with you via ICQ/AIM and tells you whenever he's hungry...

And of course you can't have a gaming conference without Guitar Hero or Rock Band, so there was a room for that as well... Oh, and if you're wondering what we had for lunch - it was Pizzas...

We also got to see a sneak peak at CosmoClash, a game by Pixtazi. This game will remind you of the good'n'old Star Control game, or to be more accurate, a modernized version of that game. The game is the frontend, but there's also a lot of work in the backend as Pixtazi develops secure protocols for multiplayer games, used in this one.

Anyway it has been really fun, and it is rumored that the next unconference will be held in April and have the theme of mobile, so this should be very interesting as well.

Israel Games Conference 2008 and more

This week has been a very eventful week here in Israel. It started with TheMarker's COMvention. TheMarker is a leading financial paper here and it throws an annual 2 day internet conference.

The conference attracted internet talents from abroad including Craig Newmark, the founder of Craig's List, The known blogger Robert Scoble, Dan Dubno (Digital Dan), who is always fun to watch when he shows off his gadgets and many more.

Overall the conference was good and insightful, and I got the opportunity of catching up with some of my local colleagues after spending a lot of time either in business trips abroad or "caged" in the office...

In between the days of the conference I went to a BBQ at the GarageGeeks. The GarageGeeks are a bunch of cool geeks (weird combo...) that create all sorts of cool things, or more accurately, things that geeks would think are cool... For example I saw at their warehouse a "Guitar Heronoid" which is basically a robot playing guitar hero... Anyway it was fun, these guys throw these events every once in a while, if you have a chance go there.

But the real treat, at least for me, was the GameIS 2008 conference. This is the Israeli annual gaming conference, and it grows every year. This time I saw so many new faces. Aside from technologies and platforms for games, there are also real titles coming out of Israel. Battledawn is a good example of a PBBG game that started as a bootstrap and is now a profitable company without taking even a dime from any VC. The game succeeded in creating a vibrant community around it, and many of the game ideas/assets were contributed by the community, and in fact almost all of the current employees come from its worldwide community...

Another promising game and less casual is Rising Eagle, this is a full 3D multiplayer shooter/strategy game, also coming from an independent Israeli company. Very impressive.

Aside from those we saw a lot of young game developers starting with the 16-years olds that developed Portal: The flash version going through 2 game "deselopers" as they call themselves (designer-developer) from Pilon Games that make flash for ICQ to the duo who made the hilarious low-budget Hebrew quest "Boundless Happiness" about a guy that decides to run for prime minister after getting a 9M bill from social security...

It was a very interesting and fun day, it looks like the industry has made some real progress since last year (I wrote about last year's conference here) and I already can't wait to see what's coming next year...

Since Passover is upon us, I will conclude by wishing happy holidays to all those who celebrate it - see you after the holidays!