NYU's Practice Conference
Sunday, October 30, 2011 at 7:59PM I just attended NYU Game Center's conference called Practice. Special thanks to Frank Lantz, Eric Zimmerman, and the rest of the crew that made this first annual event possible. I wasn't quite sure what it was going to be like, and it ended up not being like any conference I have ever attended before. It wasn't exactly because the sessions were so great though (they were ok). It was because of the very specific vibe the "designers" of the conference tried--and succeeded--in creating.
It was very small, at only about 80 people, which was intentional. It had a single track, meaning there was only one presentation going on at any one time, so there was no way to miss anything and all attendees were "together" throughout. The intent of the conference was to focus on the actual craft of making games--the realy nitty gritty, day-to-day things that working designers are really doing, as opposed to high concept stories. It included a wide range of perspectives, including paper game design (board and card games), core single player games, facebook games, fighting games, physical sports, dance games, and so on. Finally, it succeded in having an attendee list that was mostly actual working designers who are able to engage in a high level of discourse about out craft, rather than newcomers, hobbyists, or suits.
It pretty much succeeded on all those counts except that it could have focused even more on the nitty-gritty of real day-to-day processes than it did. I also think in general the quality of the sessions themselves could have been a lot better. Any by "quality," I really mean a very specific thing here: the number of ideas presented per second. Jesse Fuch's presentation on the history of Monopoly stands out especially here, in that it was the most information per second I've received for quite a long time. Amazing job that we should all aspire to.
The Vibe
Two years ago I wrote about the stark contrast in vibes between the social games summit at GDC (souless, dry, and utterly depressing) with the vibe just next door at the indie games summit (overwhelming love, passion, hope, and encouragement). The true character of a conference is defined by something that's between the lines, something interstitial.
At Practice, the vibe was really exactly what
