MGIS: Warren Spector keynote

[A week ago I attended the Montreal Game Summit. I'm only getting around now to posting some notes from the sessions, and will do the posts, one-per]

Warren Spector’s Opening Keynote: Warren covered a number of issues facing the industry ranging from violence in games, lack of innovation, lack of alternative business models, lack of genres & content to appeal to non-gamers. He tied these all together under a unifying message of the industry being at an inflection point on many fronts, and that the outcome would determine whether we become an accepted mainstream cultural medium like movies & music, or whether we become marginalized like comic books, radio drama, or vaudeville. The most interesting part in my opinion was that he made the point that we need to aggressively tackle the issue of violence in games. “If we don’t, it will be legislated FOR us, by those who fear it”. In other words, it’s not just a problem we have to deal with – it’s a problem we are creating and shaping. We have a responsibility to address it. Warren’s presentation can be downloaded here.