IGDA Vancouver Chapter Relaunched

[Tami]

On September 13 I had the pleasure of attending the official relaunch of the IGDA Vancouver Chapter. After an extended period of dormancy, it was great to see such a large turnout for the event.

The evening began with a brief outline of the evening's topics by Chapter Co-ordinator David Elton (EA-Black Box) who in turn introduced fellow co-ordinators Susannah Skerl (Art Institute of Vancouver), Jason Lee Elliott (Art Institute of Vancouver) and Chris Davis (Atomic Robot Games).

The topic for the night's meeting was Game Design and the Next Generation of Systems, mainly encompassing controller design, porting, player expectations and online play. Members of the discussion panel were Sean Smillie (BVG-Propaganda Studios), Eric Holmes (Radical Entertainment), John Doyle (EA-Black Box) and Clint Hocking (Ubisoft).

The leading area of discussion was about how complicated game controllers have become and how the complicated key combinations are not inviting to new players. To that end, Nintendo's Wii with its new, intuitive controller could step up as the new "intro-level" gaming console. Sean Smillie remarked that he believed the Wii is a positive move for Nintendo and will easily open the door to new gamers and hence new consumers.

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