A friend and I drove up to Canada for the MIGS a couple weeks ago (we live in eastern Pennsylvania, which is rarely a perk in the game industry). It’s a two day conference that is very much like the annual Game Developer’s Conference, but on a smaller scale. If you’re not familiar with either conference, the long and short of it is that each day there are multiple sessions featuring guest speakers on various topics related to the industry. There are also several keynotes presented by key industry players, such as Reggie Fils-Aimee of Nintendo.

This year I noticed an increased awareness of animation as an element of games that, in general, needs a lot of improvement. The industry has many talented animators, but creating massive amounts of pre-scripted animation is no longer sufficient to maintain the illusion of life within the highly detailed characters we are seeing in next-gen games. Following that belief, there were multiple sessions/keynotes regarding the development of sophisticated “procedural” animation. In other words, animation that is calculated on-the-fly by the computer to account for the myriad of potential interactions in a game environment filled with believable characters (for example, visibly maintaining balance when avoiding or colliding with each other). There was a strong presentation by Ken Perlin that demonstrated that motion makes us care about and believe in a character, not the high-poly model or high-res texture (though they must work in concert, of course). The presentations I saw confirmed my belief that someday soon we are going to see game characters that behave much more naturally in their environment. Many may not be able to envision why this is so important, but I think once companies start getting it right, there will be no going back to characters cycling their walk animations while pressed face first against a wall.

Other sessions dealt with topics such as creating new IP and genres, indie game development, interactive storytelling, and of course much more. The one other stand-out presentation I saw (and keep in mind there were many I had to miss) was a keynote on prototyping presented by Chris Hecker and Chaim Gingold, who are both working on Will Wright’s Spore. It was a fast-paced hour because there was just so much they wanted to say, and all of it was pertinent and fascinating. Some highlights:

-         If you come up with something on your own that you want to try, go ahead and do it as long as it can be completed in two days (because, they pointed out, if you’re wrong, you can work like hell to catch up to what you were supposed to be doing by the end of the week). If it’s too big to be done in two days, ask your boss!

-         Understand the difference between making something that is cool and making something that is useful to your game.

-         Submit your work as often as possible to gain feedback and not waste time developing a sophisticated dead end.

-         Break your prototypes down into the smallest useful chunks (can you believe these poor guys had to do so for the massive endeavor that is Spore?!).

So that’s a quick encapsulation of my experience at the MIGS. Everyone there was very approachable and willing to share ideas. I also want to add that the people of Montreal were very inviting and were more than willing to speak English to their visitors from the U.S. It’s a great city to visit, and I hope to get back there again.

-Jason