Speaking at the East Coast Game Conference this month

I am scheduled to be a speaker at the East Coast Game Conference in Raleigh, NC, April 25 and 26, specific time to be determined.  Topic: Much of Game Design Is Managing (and Causing) Frustration.

This is the fourth year for the ECGC (formerly, Triangle Game Conference).  Attendance is upwards of 1,000, as there are many video game development studios in the Research Triangle Area, e.g. Epic and Red Storm.  http://ecgconf.com

BioWare Senior Creative Director, Paul Barnett, and Zynga East Coast Executive Producer, Paul Stephanouk will be the keybote speakers.  The tracks (groups of talks) at ECGC this year are Academic, Art, Business and Serious Games, Game Design, Programming, Social and Mobile, and "Unreal [the game engine] University".

Video game conferences and tabletop game conventions are fundamentally different (as the names hint).  People gather at conventions principally to play games, and also to buy games and talk with other people about playing games.  Conventions are for game consumers much more than for game professionals.  This is a good description whether there are 100 attendees or 100,000 (Essen Spiel).

Video game conferences are for professionals rather than consumers.  Few video games are played, rather people come to hear about techniques used to make and market video games.  Hence the principal activity at a video game conference is talks and workshops given by professionals for current professionals and wannabe professionals (students).  And as with professional conferences in academic disciplines, they tend to have more expensive entry fees than game conventions, and tend to be on weekdays rather than weekends.  This one is Wednesday and Thursday.

Where there may be no formal talks of this kind at a tabletop game convention, the formal activities at a video game conference are the talks.  A lot of networking and seeing old friends/former co-workers also occurs at video game conferences, and seeing old friends is definitely a part of tabletop game conventions.  But the focus at a convention is on playing games, while the focus at a conference is on making games.