NextGen Player Does MIGS 2009

By Andrew Shin

Alas, the 2009 Montreal International Game Summit conference has come and gone. Yours truly was in Montreal to attend and cover this year's MIGS and it was worth every moment. There was a great line up of speakers at the event that included Yoichi Wada providing the keynote address to kick off the conference. It was an absolute pleasure to hear Wadasan speak in person and listen to his thoughts and views regarding game creation.


Some of the other speakers that I got to enjoy included Patrick Plourde of Ubisoft Montreal. As the lead game designer on Assassins's Creed 2, Patrick shared his approach and insights on designing the game. It was a challenging feat with a tight and aggressive development schedule to produce a game with 230+ features and an overall gaming experience that would offer up much more than the original Assassin's Creed.

Then there was Scott Rogers, Creative Director at THQ. His lecture, titled "Everything I Learned About Level Design, I Learned From Disneyland", was very unique and thoroughly entertaining. It was quite fascinating to hear how Scott deciphered Disney's approach to telling stories and translated that into effective and impactful level designs for games.


Additionally, this year's MIGS was great exposure for NextGen Player as we were a media partner and as such we had our logo in the event's official programme as well as during the opening presentation address.

I can definitely say that we're looking forward to next year's conference and again being a media partner. If you haven't attended before, I highly recommend making plans to attend next year as it's a great opportunity to hear from some of the industries brightest minds and also to network and even source career opportunities.