Lecture at the London IGDA chapter

London, England

The London chapter of the IGDA asked me to come up and give them a lecture at their June meeting, and they chose an oldie: "Innovation: Games that Changed the Industry," which I originally gave at the 1999 Game Developers' Conference. I updated it a little to include some new games that I believe have had a significant impact on the way that developers think -- most particularly, Grand Theft Auto III and Ultima Online.

The other speaker there was Tameem Antoniades, who runs Ninja Theory in Cambridge (formerly, Just Add Monsters). He showed a lot of the great pitch video he assembled in order to get funding for
Heavenly Sword, the title he's currently working on. Truly spectacular stuff. In the course of his talk he came out with a particularly good, if slightly bitter, bon mot: "Nothing you show them is good enough, and then when you show them something that's good enough, they don't believe
you can do it."

My thanks to the steering committee for inviting me, and I look forward to speaking there again sometime!

A New Farthest North: Two Days With ELVI in Finland

Oulu, Finland

About a year and a half ago I gave a workshop on narrative game design in Karlsruhe, Germany. One of the more enthusiastic participants was a guy named Pasi Pirttiaho, a Finn with the most perfect idiomatic English I've heard outside Britain or America. Pasi and I stayed in touch, and a few weeks ago he invited me to apply to be an expert evaluator at on a new project of his in Oulu, Finland: the Environment for Lucrative Virtual Interaction. I'm just back from my first trip. I spent two days evaluating a number of ideas by local students and others who are thinking of setting up game projects and seeking funding. They ranged from the eminently practical to the outrageously ambitious, as such things always do. I gave them the benefit of what wisdom I possess. Sorry I can't talk about them more, though; they're all under non-disclosure agreements.

Oulu is the farthest north I've been so far, at 65 degrees 1 minute of latitude, beating the old record of 62 56 set by Kramfors, Sweden. I actually flew there on the summer solstice itself, and entertained some hopes of seeing the midnight sun. However, Oulu is still not above the arctic circle, and that's where you have to go to see it. Also, it was overcast, so even if I had gone farther north, I don't think I would have had any luck. As it was, it certainly stayed light all night, and the hotel had very thick curtains to keep it out. The picture below was taken at about 10:30 PM.