Biggest Bestest Ever!

by Jason Della Rocca (October 2001)

Wow, that was an awesome Montreal Chapter gathering! There is no way I can confirm this, but my guess is that we had well over 200 developers and guests in attendance at the season opening chapter event last Thursday (October 4th, 2001). While I am sure everyone was keen to get back into the chapter groove after our summer hiatus, to a great extent, the overwhelming success was due to our "special guests", who were in town to speak at the local multimedia conference, Multimedia International Market. The guests who actually found their way to our little corner were:

• Matt Toschlog, President, Outrage Entertainment (and IGDA chair)
• Greg Zeschuk, Co-founder & Joint-CEO, BioWare Corp.
• Mark Sylvester, Ambassador & Co-founder, Alias|Wavefront
• Kirk Owen, President and Co-founder, Octagon Entertainment
• Mario Maltezos, Lead Game Designer, Ubi Soft
• Danny Belanger, Lead Designer/Project Leader, Strategy First
• Tony Cox, Lead Software Engineer from the Microsoft Windows Game Technology group

So, not only did these guests stop by for a visit, but both Alias|Wavefront and Octagon Entertainment ponied up for the open bar, which lasted all night! And, SoftImage was gracious to cover the cost of setting the arcade machines to freeplay - quite appropriate given the crowd ;-) Finally, the Alliance NumeriQC provided better munchies than the usual chips n' dip. Big thanks go out to all of them!

An enjoyable evening

All this combined with an exciting crowd made for a very enjoyable evening - not only for the Montreal crowd, but for all those visiting. It is truly heartwarming to hear visitors to the Montreal Chapter comment on how much they enjoyed the evening and the fact that they never realized how vibrant the Montreal game development community is.

Moving on from the chapter gathering, many of us went to the MIM event party hosted by Astral Media. It was pretty full, and quite a lot of fun - especially when the local Tam-Tam drum troupe were on the floor making a racket...

Our very own game dev track

Luckily, all our guests survived the festivities, and made it into Place Bonaventure for the MIM's game design/developer track. All the content was great (sure, we helped organize it) and Harvey's keynote address on immersive simulations and emergent behavior was truly fascinating (I encourage everyone one to read the paper of his lecture). A full rundown of the day's sessions can be found on the MIM's conference at a glance...

Sadly, I must say I was disappointed with the turn-out for the conference. While the chapter event the previous night demonstrated the strength/size of our community, a great deal of developers just didn't bother coming to the conference to hear what the great roster of guests had to say. True, there are costs involved and it occurs on a work day, but how often to you get to learn from the veterans of our industry - once a year at GDC, if you are lucky enough to go!

Why not stay for a while

Don't get me wrong, the MIM game track was not a failure by any means, with between 50-100 attendees per session. I was just hoping the rooms would be full... Ultimately, not only should we be using the opportunity to learn on this particular occasion, but we are demonstrating our desire to do so, encouraging our guests to come back to Montreal, and bring their friends along with them - and maybe, just maybe, want to stay for a while...

October gathering and MIM - Pictorial

...here are some shots I took during the October gathering of the Montreal Chapter, the MIM/Astral party and the MIM conference. (all persons are identified from left to right)

Sylvain Plourde (BAGH), Mark Sylvester (Alias|Wavefront) and another dude scope out the arcade games...

The IGDA chairman, Matt Toschlog (Outrage Entertainment), preferred mincing storm troopers than mingling with "his people" for most of the night ;-)

Greg Zeschuk (BioWare) and wife Nirmal enjoy a beer with Greg James (Matrox)

At center, Sarah Turner (PERA Group) sits at the bar with fellow Brits, all in town for the MIM

Su Skerl (Microids) and Jean Carrieres (Vircom/Cryo) hack at each other in a quick game of Gauntlet Legends

In purple, Mario Maltezos (Ubi Soft) along with other chapter goers have fun with the various pre-videogame games...

Damn, check out the cool wireless detachable laptop keyboard. The blond dude from SoftImage was demoing their latest version of XSI

Martin Lavoie (Proksim) points to someone - sorry I have no clue...

Jodie Vetterl (Discreet), freelance Combustion dude from Toronto, Su Skerl (Microids), Vince Brisebois (Discreet), Stephane Grefford (Microids) and Marie-Cecile Dahan (TVA) make nice at the bar

A circle of "Tam-Tam" drums mesmerize the crowd at the MIM/Astral party!

Harvey Smith (ION Storm Austin) with the ever-so-helpful MIM coordinator Louise Olivier

Harvey Smith (ION Storm Austin) giving his keynote address on the future of game design to open the MIM's game track

Moderator JF William (Fauve) drives panelists Greg Zeschuk (BioWare), Matt Toschlog (Outrage Entertainment), Kate Atherly (Microsoft), JF Tremblay (Sarbakan) and Kirk Owen (Octagon Entertainment) to discuss the business side of the game industry, where the profits are, and how to exploit emerging markets and platforms

Tony Cox (Microsoft) gave a fairly intense lecture on optimizing vertex shaders for DX8

Mark Sylvester (Alias|Wavefront) is really into creating believable digital characters, and spoke passionately on this topic, inspiring all the animators in the crowd to watch Final Fantasy again...

Francois Dominic Laramee moderates the designers' challenge between Mario Maltezos (Ubi Soft), Harvey Smith (ION Storm Austin), Danny Belanger (Strategy First) and Greg Zeschuk (BioWare)