Wheel of Games Journal

Everyone who regularly deals with games may be well informed about this matter, but actually the public is pretty hard to convince: computer and video games are definitely a part of culture, just as movies and books are. Stephan Reichart proved this point right at the inaugural address of the Quo Vadis Developer Conference 2010.

While the inhabitants of Berlin were happily dwelling in the sun at the Alexanderplatz, members of the German games industry disappeared inside the modern building of the BCC (berliner congress center) to illuminate, reflect and present the games department from the 27th to 29th of April. Students and media representatives as well as developers, publisher and popular industry veterans were bustling about in several lecture rooms.
This mix already became obvious at the opening event on Tuesday afternoon, since we did not only listen to the words of the host Aruba Events and the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, but also to the political perspective given by Senator Harald Wolf. The following panel discussion “Games Industry between Hype and Crisis – Corporate Group Strategies” did not only bring well-known publishers/developers like Gamigo and Bigpoint to the stage, but also representatives of large consolidated companies as Constantin Film, MTV and the German Telekom. After their discussion about the relevance of games in larger companies, the public and Germany as business location, Simon Krätschmer and Daniel Budimann – who are popular for their MTV show “Game One” – rocked the stage and presented their personal game highlights of the year in their typically lax manner.

Wednesday, the first full conference day, was just as varied and offered several options starting at 10am: this resulted in the common Quo Vadis problem of having to decide where to go at which time. The conference offers up to five talks, panels and workshops simultaneously, so you have to develop some preferences. This year’s probably most common topics were online, mobile and social games – all talks at least briefly mentioned the phenomena of Facebook or Casual Games.

Even though many talks were well attended and accompanied by audience questions, Chris Taylor’s keynote was probably the most significant event for many visitors on Wednesday afternoon. Titled „Pitfalls when trying to run an independent game studio“, the talk explained Taylor’s ‘must-knows’ when founding a development studio. Chris Taylor, popular for game designs such as on Dungeon Siege, Demigod or Supreme Commander, was competent and humorous at the same time and managed to draw quite a few chuckles. For example, as he suddenly screamed “Where are you going, Bob?” as his friend and colleague Bob Wallace was about to leave the room before the session had ended. But Taylor did not only educate and entertain during his keynote, he also could be seen talking to students and other interested parties throughout the whole conference.

Talking about students: it has become quite obvious that Quo Vadis is not only for industry veterans, since the many students were easily identified by their yellow entry tickets. The future game designers, programmers and artists mainly gathered in the lower level of the bcc, playfully labeled as „mine“. They presented their university projects like The Deadline or Night of Joeanne, winners of the German Computer Game Price, at small booths. Furthermore, the „Young Creatives“ program also offered some interesting talks given by students of the Mediadesign University and the Games Academy, which were well attended. Besides presenting their own projects, curious students were also informed about job offers of established companies like Yager, Radon Labs, Wooga and many more.

Interchange is one of the key words at Quo Vadis, which becomes obvious when visiting one of the many interesting panels, for example the keynote on “Triple-A Development in Germany – Chances & Possibilities” or the discussion featuring representatives of both the movie and game industries, which already took place on Wednesday. Amongst others, Volker Engel, who received an Oscar for visual effects on Independence Day in 1997, showed impressions of his work at Roland Emmerich’s “2012”. It appears that cross media becomes more and more relevant to the games industry, although the panel showed that the film industry has not completely grasped the importance of video games yet and there’s still lots of work to do.

As in preceding years, Quo Vadis was a great place to socialize in a soothing atmosphere, be informed about the latest trends and process the manifold impressions of the day at parties every evening. On Thursday evening, the developer conference closed its gates and directly connected to another gaming event of the German Game Days, which would offer some potential for discussion afterwards: the German Video Game Award.

For everyone who’s interested in the games industry the developer conference 2011 is a must-see, since the Quo Vadis was again able to answer the question contained in its name – “Where are you going?” – for the industry and will surely do so again next year.