IGS Video: The 'Innovation In Indie Games' Panel

Author: by Staff

The IGS organizers are continuing to put online key video lectures this year's Independent Games Summit, which took place at Game Developers Conference 2007 last March as part of the yearly Independent Games Festival. The seventh 2007 Independent Games Summit lecture is a key panel from the event - 'Innovation in Indie Games', featuring Kyle Gabler from the Experimental Gameplay Project (World Of Goo); Jenova Chen, ThatGameCompany (fl0w/fl0wer, pictured); Jon Mak, Queasy Games (Everyday Shooter); Jon Blow, Number-None (Braid); and moderator - Steve Swink, Flashbang Studios (IGS/IGF organizer). The session starts with a short Powerpoint presentation from each panelist, and continues into in-depth discussions of whether 'innovation' actually fundamentally matters, or whether it's gimmickry for gimmickry's sake, with plenty of entertaining debate. Here's a direct Google Video link for the lecture, plus a higher-res downloadable .MP4 version and an embedded version: Here's the original session description: "Join the luminary creators of the Experimental Gameplay Project at CMU, IGF-winning Braid, and the brilliant Everyday Shooter as they dissect innovation in indie games. How do we generate Earth-shattering ideas that will change the face of gaming? Can small teams innovate? Is 'innovation' really what we want?" (Other IGS 2007 videos posted so far are Matt Wegner on physics, alongside the Gastronaut founders on 'Small Arms' for XBLA, the Telltale folks on Sam & Max/episodic gaming, Gamelab's Eric Zimmerman on 'The Casual Cash Cow', and Braid's Jon Blow on indie prototyping, as well as Russell Carroll on 'indie marketing'.)