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"Are There Any Jews in the Audience?" - IGDA's Demo Night 4
Gamasutra: What did you think of this past Demo Night as a whole? Was it a success? Did it meet expectations? Wade Tinney: I was very happy with the event. Everything ran smoothly. Good turn out, great presentations, comfortable venue. GS: What's your opinion of the games that were presented? WT: Well my goal is always to have a good diversity of games represented and this set was no exception: a multiplayer camera phone game, an adventure game about a moody rabbi, an interactive soap opera, a top-down shooter for the mac, and a downloadable PC game for the mass market. It's always interesting to see the design problems (and solutions) that each of these different types of games presents. GA: Were there any disappointments?
WT: I can't say that anything disappointed me. One thing I'd like to see more of at future demo nights is presentations of non-digital games. GS: How has things changed over the years? How did this past event differ from Demo Night 1? How have the games changed or evolved? Or have they? WT: We held the first three demo nights at the Large Animal office. It was a pretty small space and we'd have a hundred people crammed in there, shoulder to shoulder. We had a microphone rigged up to an old guitar amp for the presenter and big tubs of ice and beer sitting around. It was basically just a party, but with game presentations going on. It was great, but it had it's drawbacks: there was no seating, our office AC couldn't overcome that much body heat, it was often difficult to hear the presenter, the elevator in our building is really dodgy, and so on and so forth. So moving to the conference room at NYU's Woolworth Building facility was a big change. There we had a great AV set up so you could see and hear the demos perfectly, we had chairs for everyone, we had a fully controlled climate, and, perhaps most importantly, we were in a building that was once the tallest in the world (isn't that right?). Part of me did miss that old guitar amp though. GS: What's your view of the New York indie game dev scene? And what part does Demo Night serve? WT: Well, Demo Night is not explicitly aimed at independent developers (we've had large studios present as well), but we're lucky enough to have a number of indie devs in New York City. As an indie developer, It's always tremendously motivating to show your work to your peers, and inspiring to see what they are working on. Demo Night is one forum where that can happen. GS: What does the future hold for Demo Night? What would you like to see happen? WT: I'd like to eventually see it happen a bit more frequently and to showcase an even broader array of games. I love the idea of one event that pulls together both experimental indie games and larger commercial titles, digital and analog, casual and hardcore, and gives them all equal weight. I'd like to experiment with the format a little bit in order to try and draw out common issues among all these projects. I think that the developers of each of these varied game types has something to learn from each of the other developers, whether its on the design, technical, or process side. |
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