Comet Ent.'s Santa vs. Claus

You can (almost) always tell an animator by their t-shirt, so I figured the young lady in the Supergirl tee waiting for the hotel shuttle at the Baton Rouge airport had to be in town, like me, for the Red Stick festival. The Supergirl fan turned out to be Carmen Llanos from Comet Entertainment, soon joined by her partner Raquel Benitez in a Chinese dragon tee. (Me, I’m wearing my Comic Book Legal Defense Fund shirt with the tough, healthily-chested cat babe pointing her gun right atcha and politely inquiring “who you tellin’ to shut up!?!”) Last year Carmen and Raquel were here with their Santa vs. Claus feature, the screening of which I missed due to an early departure. This year I’m staying to the very end, which means I’ll get to see their new one, Around the World for Free, which they tell me started as a TV pilot, became a feature and will spin itself off into a TV series after all.

MIPTV is always a draw, but how has the economy affected this marketplace?

Wow, was it easier to get from meeting to meeting this past MIPTV. Considerably smaller in scale both booth wise and in attendance, it was a noticeably quieter MIPTV. “Yeah, well, this is what it looks like when several trillion dollars disappears overnight…” a seasoned market-goer told me. While there is no denying that the world is in the midst of a major fiscal re-order, a lot of the people at MIP weren’t necessarily crying the panicked, frantic song they were at last fall’s MIPCOM. The sky is no longer falling, business is just slow…really slow. “I am only here for a few days and only meeting with the people that I might actually do business with,” I heard over and over. I also heard, across the board, in every meeting, the words, “new media” and “diversify.” New media is the given, with not only producers unveiling elaborate cross-platform ideas with every pitch, but also a number of new players coming to the event and starting some interesting, brain-bending conversations. And “diversify” came into play as players scramble to have as many arrows in their quivers as possible to stay afloat. An animation producer with a new board game? An animation company plunging into live-action? A television producer suddenly pitching a feature? An animation production house moving into online world creation? ‘Why not!’ is the attitude right now. When times are slow, you have to start thinking of other places to sell.

Portofino is just one of three locations for the event.

Opening on April 2nd and closing on April 5th, Cartoons on the Bay debuted in their new, more post-MIPTV friendly location. Now held in the three towns of Rapallo, Santa Margherita Ligure and Portofino, the festival is just one jaw-droppingly stunning ride away from Cannes. Hugging the coast, we went past such varied sights as Monte Carlo and its harbor of yachts, vineyards, old churches and towns clinging to cliffs and tucked in private valleys with sea views. Going, we were in a bus…and that took a few hours… but on my way back to the Nice airport I was in a car and that drive, my friends, was very fast courtesy of a driver. Even including the coffee stop, I think we made record time! The festival is mainly focused in Rapallo with only one location in S. Margherita, a grand old building on a hilltop surrounded by a garden.

Origins returns BioWare to its roots.

There’s no better way to start a day off, then with a panel of well-known press members presenting with attitude! My first stop was “Burned by Friendly Fire: Game Critics Rant.” The ideas represented by the press members in attendance were both refreshing and thoughtful. N’Gai Croal, formerly of Newsweek, opened up with a presentation on the term “Hardcore Gamer” and noted that we had to stop using it and other words like “Casual” to describe styles of play. The reason being, the game industry’s audience adapts to changes in the industry rapidly, and we as developers, journalists, and consultants need to do the same.

David Crane (l) and Steve Cartwright.

I was off to an early start this morning – the good news being the hearty breakfast I wolfed down when I learned more about Adobe’s new Director 11.5 release. Dr. Allen Patridge of Adobe ran the presentation, and he went over some of the things users can expect from the new Director software. He approached this from three angles: Dominate, Accelerate, and Impress.”

Diner Dash's Flo is on the go to consoles.

The first thing on today’s agenda was to head over to the W Hotel to meet with Hudson Entertainment. I got hands on with “Military Madness”, “Diner Dash”, “Water Warfare”, “Help Wanted”, and some other new titles in their portable library. All titles besides "Military Madness" are meant for anyone to play, both hardcore gamers, and families alike.

GDC gets serious about Serious Games.

The Game Developers Conference 2009 featured several specialty categories of videogames with strong potential for new types of creative expression and careers (read: “jobs for animators”). The GDC’s Serious Games Summit was an object lesson on how many areas of the world can be affected by games—and how effective Serious Games can be in teaching, affecting opinion, motivating exercise, and medical healing, to name but a few. A Serious Game is one where entertainment is not the primary objective—though the game still needs to be entertaining, as many developers pointed out, else no one will use it.

Another busy day at GDC.

Today was off to a good start with Khronos’ three press releases this morning during their “Developer University.” They talked briefly about the all-new OpenGL 3.1 with a new streamlined API, and also covered their new OpenSL ES 1.0 API, which is coming close to completely converging with OpenGL – something that would enable a subset that could run anywhere, either on desktop or mobile. They also unveiled their initiative to bring accelerated 3D content to the web. Mozilla spearheads this effort with the support of Google. The goal of the movement is to not only enhance current web applications, but to enable new innovations in web 3d created by any developer. A call-to-arms was made for industry personnel to support and work towards this goal.

Ngmoco founder Neil Young discusses the iPhone's influence.

This year’s GDC is expecting well over 14,000 attendees, at the Muscone Convention Center in San Francisco. This has become the epicenter of world game development, a gathering of game designers, producers, sponsors, and the tech companies that support them. The venue is friendly (formal wear is a clean black T-shirt), with over 2,000 volunteers to help gamers navigate through the huge show.

It's standing room only at GDC.

The Game Developer Conference, also known as GDC, is the end-all be-all event of the year for game developers. You’ll find no fan-boys here! Once a year thousands of developers, students, and press descend upon Moscone Center in San Francisco for a weeklong chance to network, learn, and most importantly, play.