I’ve been working on initiatives for Women in Games International for four years and have recently been involved with some organizing for the rebooted International Game Developers Association Los Angeles Chapter.

To get some ideas for WIGI and IGDA LA, I attended the recent meeting for the IGDA’s Orange County Chapter. Held at the offices of Foundation 9 in Irvine, it was a fun event!

I’ve been in the game industry for 13 years, but I had never before participated in a game design contest. The attendees were split up into 10 groups of six to nine people and we had an hour to come up with a game design including a company name, game title, platform, game engine, main characters and game features.

Every team picked three random words out of a hat and was required to use two of the words in their game design. Our team picked two food-related words along with “toe ring.” We decided to throw out toe ring and starting planning a food fight game.

We initially intended to publish our game for the Wii console to take advantage of the motion controls for a simulated food fight in a school cafeteria. But a “publisher representative” came along and said they wanted our game to be a PSP title. It kind of screwed up the whole motion controls aspect of gameplay, but our team was able to move forward with game design.

We ended up with a game where players start in kindergarten and progress through the grade levels to eighth grade, improving food fight skills, earning better weapons (food items) and using coins earned to customize their player with clothes and protective gear.

At the end of the hour, all teams had to present their game to the group and the “publishers” decided on their favorite. I thought our game was a marketable idea, but a game about drawing with a marker on passed out peoples’ faces with at a party won the competition. The publishers wanted to “play that game right now.’

I’ve spent my game career making packaging and other game marketing materials, so this was my first time brainstorming with a team on game design. It was a lot of fun and I really admired our team’s ability to work together, compromise and roll with the punches of random publisher changes.

I’m not sure WIGI or IGDA LA are the right audiences for a meeting of this type, but I definitely got a new perspective on creating chapter meetings and events for video game professionals.

Way to go IGDA OC!

The International Game Developers Association Los Angeles Chapter has begun a reboot to revitalize the chapter, encourage networking and have a monthly educational gathering for members. Last night was the first of monthly meetings on the second Thursday of the month.

The meeting was held at Rich Media Institute in Venice and had 100 attendees. There was a roundtable discussion called “Beyond Facebook and the iPhone: The Future of Casual Game Development” and had four panelists including Quinn Dunki – Founder, One Girl One Laptop Productions; Zack Ford – Co-Founder & CTO, Zero G Games; Christopher Ulm – CEO, Appy Entertainment; and Cynthia Woll – Founder & CEO, Cul de Sac Studios.

One of the most interesting things I heard last night from the panel is “Facebook is an MMO,” but it’s a “stealth” game—one where users don’t really know they’re playing a game. They think they’re just checking in on their Facebook friends, checking their crops in Farmville, networking or socializing, etc. And this concept of “stealth” games is very good for the video game industry to expand our market and get more and more people playing our products and paying our salaries.

A long-held definition of casual games is “no commitment.” You don’t have to commit hours of time to play the game. You can spend five minutes between other tasks just for a short break.

I don’t believe that definition is still true. Games like aquarium or environment building may be considered “casual,” but they require a commitment to keep the gameplay going. Your fish, your crops, your village will die if you don’t keep up on maintenance and such.

I sincerely believe the future of casual game development is very exciting and will be extremely lucrative for the game industry. And what’s even more exciting is the potential expansion of the industry in so many ways. We’re going to start partnering with even more facets of the technology industry to bring gameplay to every mobile device, every social networking site, to many more product and brand sites as well as to new hardware coming out such as tablets and other computing devices.

Casual game development also will bring a lot of new blood to the industry—more women, more types of artists and programmers, more marketers and PR people as well as senior management from the channels we’re moving into. This means more opportunity for jobs as well as more opportunity for current game industry vets to expand their skillsets and portfolios.

I’ve been a “hardcore casual gamer” for going on 20 years, but my 13+ years in the industry has mainly been focused on AAA console titles. It’s every game worker’s dream to make the kinds of games they like to play. I’d like to move into casual game development and use the experience I’ve gained to expand that market and its offerings.

It’s been reported that the video game industry brought in nearly 70 percent more income than film (including box office and DVD sales) this past year in the UK.

It was many years ago that I learned that the video game industry brings in far more income worldwide than does the film industry. But this is still impressive news, especially since the UK film industry had its most successful year in nearly 30 years.

What does this mean, other than it’s really cool to work in video games? (Especially for someone like me, who originally wanted to work in movies, but instead ended up in games, and there are a lot of us!)

It means it’s way past time for the game industry to get its due from the public, the financial industry and governments. There are US states and foreign territories that are offering tax and other incentives to the game industry, but there are still many states and foreign countries that are trying to ban some video games and strictly regulate the rest of the industry–far exceeding the standards applied to the film industry.

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Money talks. B*llsh*t walks.” The game industry has proven for more than a decade that we can generate the money. When are the politicians and the media going to give credit where credit is due and recognize the power and influence of game companies?

Bottom line, the video game industry should have the influence, freedom and economic clout of the film industry—where it counts—in regulation, taxation and creative freedom.

http://www.industrygamers.com/news/game-revenue-surpasses-movies-in-uk/