Who Develops the Developers?: An Interview With Meggan Scavio, Part 2
3/23/2009 9:07 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 3
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Part 1 of this interview.
Crispy Gamer: The conference has a whole thread of sessions dealing with the current economic climate. Can you predict how popular these are going to be?
Meggan Scavio: I can't predict how popular anything's going to be. I imagine that a few of these will draw attention.
"...He likes to use GDC as a sort of launchpad for his ideas ... He's still excited about development and he comes to GDC to share that excitement."
Let's talk about the
Matthew LaMerle session. Will contracts be signed? Will deals be made? Or is that beside the point?
Scavio: If you're asking if someone like him gets business out of a session, I think it's a two-way street, and I don't mind providing that for our attendees. If you can come into a GDC session and get a deal out of it, awesome! I read a story from a few years ago about how, after winning their IGF awards for
Darwinia earlier in the day, the guys from Introversion got their deal later that night at a GDC party.
Crispy Gamer: Speaking of Introversion, the Independent Games Festival plays an important part in calling attention to smaller developers and their work. Do you feel like we're at the point where we should stop talking about indie games as a mushrooming phenomenon, and talk about them as an additional leg to the industry? Do indie developers and their games need to break out of a certain perception?
Scavio: I don't know if they want to break out of this perception. There's something to be said for being indie. At the Independent Games Summit, there'll be a rant about "What Does Indie Mean?" To a lot of people, it's a particular art form, and they don't want to be considered anything but indie.
Crispy Gamer: It's a very punk-rock, DIY attitude...
Scavio: [Laughs] It's so punk! That's a good way to say it. You'll see the Mega64 guys' take on it in a video that'll play during the IGF Awards.
Crispy Gamer: One of the reasons that the indie folks probably hold onto their identities so fiercely is because of how global games are now. There's a series of sessions that deal with globalization. Do you feel like developers will readily acknowledge cultural differences?
Scavio: I think that they're going to have to. There are learnings both ways. I've been reading all of the
Resident Evil 5 reviews, and that's the Japanese culture not really understanding the Western culture and how we're going to relate to that sort of content. The Japanese probably need a bit from the Westerners, and the Chinese are completely different from everybody. We do a GDC China, and they're ready to launch an Independent Games Summit and their own IGF.
Crispy Gamer: That's amazing to think about, what the independent games coming out China must look like...
Scavio: Yeah! And they said, "We're gonna do it!" I think the stuff that comes out that will be fascinating. You can do anything with this art form.
Crispy Gamer: It's funny you put it that way, because it seems like the "Are games art?" argument seems to be dying out.
