Producer/Project Manager

Last Friday was a fantastic and eventful day. It was my first business conference in video games.

I was skeptical when I first signed up for the event. After all, paying $175 to meet people sounds like quite a lot. But looking back, I don’t have a single regret. It was worth every penny.

The conference was held at the impressive Microsoft NERD Center from 7am to 5pm. It featured 8 panels structured in four separate time blocks, with two concurrent sessions during each block. Between each panel there were lots of opportunities for networking, talks, snacks, drinks and project presentations. A lot of those talks (in and out the panels) focused on social gaming, Facebook, and free-to-play. Not so surprising therefore that one of the panels was entitled, “The Next Big Thing.”

I took advantage of attending as many panels as I could. Two that I particularly enjoyed were “Radical Approaches to Game Marketing” and the “Mass Effect: The State of Gaming in Massachusetts,” which emphasized the development of the industry locally in Massachusetts.

During the lunch break I had the chance to meet the Co-General Manager and Vice President of Bioware Austin, Gordon Walton. It was very humbling to be close to someone who supervised over 200 projects and who is currently working in one of the biggest video game production studios ever.
During his speech Gordon said quite a lot of interesting and funny things that you can find on twitter (with a simple #mitbig search). Some examples: “My motivation is all about screwing with people’s heads,” “The worst feeling is your player divorcing your game. Once that bridge is burned… You never go back to your ex… for good.” So if you have the patience to spend a little time with twitter, go for it, it’s worth it.

The two last panels I attended were: “Game Communities for Fun and Profit” and “The Next Big Thing”. We heard a lot about Social Gaming and Cross Platform projects. This seems to be the common goal of all video games produced over the last decade: Build a community of player in order to have steady revenue.

Right after the first panel I had the chance to exchange business cards with Christian Meyer from Game Social Networks who was one of the panel members of Game Communities for Fun and Profit.”

The conference concluded with a reception on the 10th floor of the New England Games SIG building. Jon Radoff, CEO of Disruptive Beam, delivered an excellent speech to the Boston game development community to kick off the cocktail. An interesting fact is that the Microsoft NERD center is one of the only places where drink selections range from beer to chocolate milk: This is apparently what it takes to please the professional entrepreneur (and his inner geek).

In conclusion, I’ll say that it was $175 well invested; I just wish I had the gift of ubiquity to be at all the panels. And even if I am a rookie in the art of networking it was a pleasure to be part of the MIT BiG event.

Thanks a lot to the BiG organizers and Microsoft for getting this thing off the ground. You can find some conference pictures on their Facebook page . I had a great time and am looking forward to their next event!