The Province of Poutine

     This week I want to talk about MIGS, like I imagine many people in the course are blogging on this week. I want to go over what events I plan on going to and why I'm going to them. Once you see them it will be apparent that I'm avoiding some of the more technical events especially ones involving industry marketing and accounting. 

First thing on the list is Hand-Drawn Animation and Games,being presented by Eric Angelillo early November 10th. Eric is an artist that has worked on a few projects and has a very awesome cartoony art style. His work can be seen here http://www.ericangelillo.com/. I'm personally interested in improving my artistic skills because I've been focusing on programming for so long. Sprite work has been pixel are for a long time now, games that feature vector art are a new craze that a few indie developers have jumped on. I hope things like Ubisoft's 2d art engine are mentioned and things like CupHead are shown.

After that I've decided to go to Intro to Unreal Engine 4 by Zak Parrish, the description sums up why i want to go to this one. "This beginner-level session introduces the toolset and key features of Unreal Engine 4. Attendees will gain a solid understanding of what features of UE4 can best help their games stand out in an increasingly competitive environment. Covered topics include Blueprints, Materials, level construction, and more."- link. Zak is the technical lead Writer of epic games and unreal. Hes pretty well known and this class taught me that learning about an engine from its creator is pretty interesting. Similar to this I also plan to go to the Unity 5 presentation. As much as i understand creating your own engine I feel I handle much better with things like unity. I pick up coding and understanding the workings fairly fast when working with engines. I really want to see what the improvements are and comparing the 2 industry beasts in size, strength and affordability. I actually plan on doing a blog about it sometime after. 

Other than that there are only a few I'd like to reference. The State of PlayStation conference is incredibly interesting to me. I've been a long time customer of Sony, through the ups and downs, and I'd really like to know the direction there going. They are also one of the only large publishers i wouldn't mind working for. They have resonantly gotten a big interest in indie development, there subscription service PlayStation plus has been a way for them to pick out the best of the best indie games and give them to all there users. Level Design and Procedural Generation by Tanya Short, is in the same vain as hand drawn animation, something that has been popularized by indie games that still has endless opportunities. Creating a random game that creates complex movements is a true achievement of game design in my opinion. It helps build immersion but at the same time helps give each player a unique personal experience. I'd love to see some concepts and theories on that topic.

Finally I'd like to go to the Crash Course of The Psychology of Indie Development by Daniel Menard. He is the CEO of Double Stallion games, the company Eric Angelillo works for right now. It seems like most people's plans out of this course is to either look everywhere for jobs or to grab friends met in the course and start indie teams. So having some prep for dealing with true indie development would be nice. I am a big fan of psychology and its theories so I wont be bored through this one. 

I have to say Overall I'm pretty hyped for the whole event, cant wait to see who I meet and what I learn.