Austin Game Conference Recap

I really enjoyed the Austin Game Conference, even though I came down with a nasty 24-hour bug before I even got to the hotel. No biggie. The conference is attended by roughly 2,000 game developers, writers, programmers, yadda yadda...making for what is truly an "intimate" gathering by normal conference standards. I met a lot of cool people and actually had some room to breathe between sessions. Spent most of my time at the Writer's Conference panels, which were overall very rewarding. Mostly, these sessions served to remind me how many people are currently making a living doing this writing thing. Of course, some of us are "designers" and some of us are "content managers" and so on, but we're all writers. This kind of blurring of roles is probably pretty common in a young industry like the games biz. No one seemed to have the exact same job description as the next guy, and surely everyone's individual career path was unique. This certainly seemed the case based on the conversations I had.

In any event, it is heartening to know that the writing aspect of game development seems to be blooming. Spearheading this movement are really cool companies like BioWare and UbiSoft. Regarding BioWare, some of the guys doing Mass Effect were on hand to give a presentation about digital actors and their highly-touted conversation engine -- Gamasutra did a decent recap here. More importantly, BioWare clearly stresses story as the foundation of a good game (they said as much), backing up their claim by employing over 20 staff writers between their Edmonton and Austin locations. As for UbiSoft, their senior editorial dude gave a very low-key presentation about managing 15-20 games in simultaneous development. As a company that is clearly focused on a high level of production value, it was cool to know that they also require top-notch writing (while still churning out a ton of really high-quality titles).

A panel on writing comedy for games was interesting, but mostly because the speakers were obviously very smart and talented (and funny). The same could be said of the "Inside the Voice Actor's Studio" panelists, but unfortunately, they seemed more concerned with telling witty celebrity anecdotes than providing useful info. Oh, well! Interestingly, one of the best sessions came at the end of the conference, which took the form of a roundtable discussion instead of a panel. (Many of the previous speakers were still around and joined in.) With a more laid-back and conversational tone, this session nicely reinforced my feeling that game writers are now part of a lively and growing -- if not exactly thriving -- field.

In other news, Austin is a really cool town. They have awesome barbecue, and lots of bats live there.