2007 Independent Games Summit Gets Minter Keynote

Author: by Staff

Jeff Minter, a 25-year game veteran and indie gaming legend, will keynote the first annual Independent Games Summit hosted by the CMP Game Group (also creators of Gamasutra.com) March 5-6, as part of the 2007 Game Developers Conference at San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center. In his keynote, indie veteran and Llamasoft founder Minter (Tempest 2000, Attack Of The Mutant Camels) will discuss his personal history in the business, his design philosophy, and his current projects, including Space Giraffe for Xbox 360 Live Arcade, in an extremely rare North American appearance for the elusive programmer. The IGS is a two-day event dedicated to the art and science of development practices, distribution strategies, and innovative ideas in the independent gaming community, and includes lectures from major indie figures from Three Rings, Reflexive Entertainment, Telltale Games, The Behemoth, Introversion, Valve, ThatGameCompany, NinjaBee, Gamelab, and many more. Some more of the most highly anticipated IGS sessions include: - Innovation in Indie Games, an exploration of creativity by the developers of the Experimental Gameplay Project at CMU, IGF-winning Braid, and Everyday Shooter, among others. - Fostering an Experimental Student Project: How Cloud Got Made, a look back at lessons learned on the production process and finding the balance between professional game development and student resources, from the creators of PS3 game fl0w. - Postmortem: Gastronaut Studios' Small Arms, an experiential study of the frenetic Xbox Live Arcade multiplayer shooter and insight into indie games on consoles Jamil Moledina, Executive Director, GDC, said of the announcement: "Independent games, like casual and online games, have become an essential element of mainstream game development. For the past eight years, the Independent Games Festival has been, like the indie film movement, a source of true daring and a jumping board for reinvigorating large-scale commercial development. Now with the growing importance of digital distribution of indie and casual games on consoles, it is imperative for us to build on the IGF experience and incubate an independent games focus at GDC." Top-level sessions ranging across such broad subject matter as content development, student contributions and accessibility are open to all registrants. There are two new conference passes designed specifically for the IGS. The IGS Expo Pass opens the doors to the summit sessions, the expo, five intro-level sessions and GDC networking events, and the IGS Classic Pass grants access to the two-day summit, as well as all GDC lectures, panels, roundtables and keynotes. More than 12,500 game industry professionals will convene during GDC, the world's largest games industry-only event dedicated to the advancement of resources, tools and technologies used to create interactive entertainment. The GDC features more than 300 lectures, panels, tutorials and round-table discussions on a comprehensive selection of game development topics taught by leading industry experts.