MGS 2006

I just woke up from the best night of sleep I've had in weeks. I attended the Montreal Game Summit afew days ago. I must say I'm really excited to see the direction the industry is heading in. There were alot of talks on the subject of emotion in games. Not only to make believable in-game characters, but also to invoke them in the player (food for thought: It's virtually impossible to invoke the feeling of victory without frustrating the player first). There has been alot of work going on in that direction over the last few years. Having heard him speak for the second time, let me say that Ken Perlin is a giant among men, and I hope he stays where he is for a long time. He has the power to be a very positive influence on alot of people.

That being said, I wasn't particularly star struck by the presenters themselves, but I will have to get used to the feeling of just being surrounded by a bunch of game industry professionals all day, bumping into people I've worked with and studied with. It's also a bit weird to be reading things on gamasutra covering talks where I was sitting in the 3rd row. I must say I used alot of self-restraint listening to high ranking executives from EA and Ubisoft talking about how players want good graphics, knowing that all I had to do was raise my hand to speak my mind.

A game that was talked about alot on the subject of emotions in games is Facade, an interactive experiment that was made by a very small group of people. It's full of bugs, but it's so novel that you can't help but play through it a couple times. The premise is that you're invited over to some old friends' apartment for drinks. You didn't know this going in, but their marriage has been in deep shit for years, and they're breaking up tonight. You're stuck in the middle, watching them argue, able to speak at any time with the keyboard. I still haven't managed to settle their differences, but I've become attached to the characters enough to keep trying.

I also had the chance to check out Excite Truck on Thursday. I must say I think the Wii controller does the job rather well, responding to very subtle motions. I can't wait for this kind of technology to become the standard it deserves to be. The analog stick is really just an extra layer of abstraction that should be on its way out of the spotlight. Motion sensing just might be the answer to the "camera not where I want it to be" problem, but time will tell. I just love Nintendo's strategy of broadening the audience, and I hope they've truly learned their lessons from the past.