GameSetWatch

Aha, so we've been running videos from the previous iteration for a good while, so it's good to reveal the first set of 2008 IGS speakers - and this is just the beginning, watch for more announcements over the next few weeks:

"The organizers of the 2008 Independent Games Summit have announced a first set of speakers, with speakers representing IGF Grand Prize winner Aquaria, World Of Goo, PixelJunk Racers, fl0w/The Night Journey and more in the first batch of announced lectures for the February 2008 event.

The 2008 Independent Games Summit (operated by CMP, as is this site) seeks to highlight the brightest and the best of indie development, with discussions ranging from indie game distribution methods through game design topics, detailed postmortems of independent titles, digital distribution-centric business concepts, and much more.

Once again, the IGS is a sister event to the 2008 Independent Games Festival. Taking place on the Monday and Tuesday of Game Developers Conference 2008, February 18th and 19th, the event follows the successful Independent Games Summit in 2007, for which multiple videos have been posted on Gamasutra in the last few months.

While the final event line-up will showcase many more lectures, the first set of four confirmed talks for the event are as follows:

'Evolving Aquaria' (Alec Holowka and Derek Yu, Bit Blot)
"Indie game creators Alec Holowka and Derek Yu discuss their journey developing the IGF grand prize winning game Aquaria. From first prototype to final release, team Bit Blot share old builds and prototypes, mistakes and successes, design decisions and lessons learned demonstrating how Aquaria was grown, not planned."

'A Tale of Two Kyles' (Kyle Gabler, 2D Boy; Kyle Gray, Electronic Arts)
"Ever wanted to quit your corporate gig and make your own game? What about pitch your game to the head of the company and have it made? Two alumni from the Experimental Gameplay Project compare their experiences in the indie and corporate scene. Kyle Gabler left EA in May 2006 to start his own company (currently creating World Of Goo), while Kyle Gray stayed behind to pitch his own title. Both made their own game. It’s unlimited resources vs. unlimited freedom in this, 'A Tale of Two Kyles.'"

'Postmortem: PixelJunk Series' (Dylan Cuthbert, Q Games)
"Kyoto's Q Games was founded in 2001 by Dylan Cuthbert, a veteran developer who worked with Nintendo on the original version of Starfox. The company is now self-funding and creating PlayStation 3 titles in the PixelJunk series, with Pixeljunk Racers completed and PixelJunk Monsters due out soon. Cuthbert will discuss the process and reality of creating this 'small game' series, inspired by classic '80s Commodore 64 and Spectrum games."

The Indies of Tomorrow (Tracy Fullerton, USC Interactive Media)
"Game studies programs are rapidly becoming hotbeds of indie game development, a place for both students and researchers to innovate and take risks in low budget, high impact projects that explore strange new worlds of game design. The director of the USC Game Innovation Lab, the research unit behind projects like Cloud, flOw and The Night Journey, talks about how to create a culture of rampant experimentation and innovation, and make the games you can’t make anywhere else."

The 2008 Independent Games Summit is available to attend by purchasing a GDC 2008 Summits Pass. In addition, other passes such as the GDC 2008 All Access Pass also allow entry to the Summit. More information on the line-up for the summit will be posted on the official IGS website in the near future."

[GSW-specific note: Because the somewhat over-complex GDC pass structure has been simplified this year, there isn't an Indie Games Summit-specific pass any more, rather a Summit-wide pass. But we're beefing up the professional-focused content to make sure attending the IGS is great value. And we'll make sure IGF finalists have good access to the Summit this year. Also, dollar-challenged indies can still check out the IGF Expo/Awards itself and educational events with the Expo Pass, so that's cool.]

Comments

i must say im beyong dissapointed to see id have to pay almost 700$ to attend the IGS.

what if i dont want to attend all the other summits and tutorials? what if all i care about is the IGS? i cant help but feel that id be paying 400$ for nothing.

i mean, for fuck's sake! this is for the indies! i know i cant pay that kind of money. this is sad.

Posted by: fish | November 9, 2007 10:44 AM

Also replied to this on TIGSource, but for the record:

As mentioned above, dollar-challenged indies can still check out the IGF Expo/Awards itself and educational events with the Expo Pass. ($195). You can also check out the IGF Pavilion and attend educational events on Friday alone with a student pass ($75). So you don't have to miss out on a lot of the non-Summit content.

I do have a lot of sympathy with the problem, and for a pure indie summit, it is expensive. But as you'll see as we roll out the programming, it's really intended somewhat for a professional audience - companies like Torpex, or Q Games, or Telltale. This is at least partly based on the kind of audience we saw last year - who were overwhelmingly on the existing professional side.

I'd like to see another event in the calendar that is major, less expensively priced and caters to smaller indies. But the economics are really rough in terms of putting on events, which is why we haven't seen many yet - the Independent Games Conference in Texas this month is one of those.

Posted by: simonc | November 9, 2007 11:18 AM

We keep meaning to write something about this: basically, why are GDC passes so expensive?

Assuming 16k attendance and an average of $400 spent per person on a pass (i can't find real numbers so i've made these up), that's $6M.

The only large expenses I can think of are venue rental and marketing. The staff are volunteers and the content (speakers) are likewise not paid. Granted, I have NO idea how much it costs to rent a huge convention center, but even at something crazy like $300k/day, it seems like GDC must be a huge money-maker.

And don't get me started about how there are barely any online slides from last year. What's up with that?!

I think you should really push for splitting the IGF off into a separate conference, Simon. It could be "The Simon Carless Indie Extravaganza"!

Also it should totally be in Toronto ;)

Posted by: raigan | November 9, 2007 12:21 PM

I haven't had to pay for a GDC since 1997 or something like that, because I end up doing a talk or something every year.

But if I did have to pay, I would think it was too expensive.

I agree with the $700 being too expensive for the indie game summit, especially. And I am at least moderately "professional". Indies don't make money, for the most part! And when we do, we would rather spend $2800 to improve the sound effects for our next game, than to send 4 guys to a 2-day thing where half the talks will be inappropriate for us.

(And that's not a slam on the IGS, it's just the nature of events... like, if I am a professional game studio who's done a couple of downloadable games through major channels, do I really need Kyle to tell me how to leave school and make games professionally? Or about how to foster innovation at an educational institution?)

Anyway... I do a lot of stuff at the GDC (6 events last hear, all of them highly-rated... who knows this year, but it might be something like that). And when I see the prices and do the kinds of computations Raigan just did, I can't help but think, hey, why isn't the GDC paying *me*? They sure are making a lot of money off me. Do I really want to keep doing this, as opposed to diverting my efforts toward a fledgling conference somewhere that more directly supports the indie and art movements? etc.

I know you don't set the prices or the policy, Simon -- but hey, I had to gripe somewhere, and your site was in the right place at the right time.

Posted by: Jonathan Blow | November 9, 2007 12:53 PM

yeah? well im gonna start my own indie summit! with hookers! and black jack!

infact, forget the black jack.

awww, screw the whole thing.

Posted by: fish | November 9, 2007 12:59 PM

Thanks, guys - all very fair comments, and ones I will be passing along to the goblins at Gringotts who secretly run GDC :)

Posted by: simonc | November 9, 2007 1:46 PM

Kyle and Kyle are amazing. The finding-awesome-indie-games part of my job got very easy for the months when they were putting out Experimental Gameplay Project stuff. In fact, I decided the EGP was genius and would keep me in brilliant games forever. Then Kyle and Kyle left, and I realised it was pretty much all them.

Posted by: Tom | November 9, 2007 3:56 PM

Oh snap, thanks Mr. Blow. It's like you stick a knife in my chest and twist, and then rewind time, untwist pull out, then fast forward time, and stab again. In any case, I'd hope our talk will be a little more involved than that.

Tom, you rock. Free Goo for you!

Posted by: Kyle Gabler | November 9, 2007 4:05 PM