Les conférences se dérouleront à l'Enjmin - 121, rue de Bordeaux - Angoulême / Salle Nemo du CNBDI.
L'entrée est libre dans la limite des places disponibles. Inscription obligatoire auprès de Cette adresse Email est protégée contre les robots spammeurs, vous devez avoir Javascript actif pour la voir .

Les conférences en live seront suivies d'un déjeuner avec le conférencier du matin et Jean-Michel Blottière, organisateur des conférences. 10 étudiants maximum. Inscription obligatoire auprès de Cette adresse Email est protégée contre les robots spammeurs, vous devez avoir Javascript actif pour la voir .

L'après-midi donnera l'occasion aux étudiants de rencontrer les conférenciers présents à Angoulême et de leur présenter leurs projets de fin d'étude.

Lundi 10 mars

18h en visio : Kellee Santiago et Jenova Chen, Co-founders thatgamecompany

TOPIC: “Challenges in creating games with unique emotions”
While video games still deliver the same enjoyable fun since the 1970s, you might find it difficult to find a game that is worth your time and dedication today. The generations that grew up playing video games are now adults, and their expectations as to what and entertaining experience has also grown up. Compared with movies, TVs, and books, the spectrum of emotions that video games offer is not varied at all. Besides the feelings we used to love as children playing games - cool, fun and exciting - it is rare to see games that evoke deeper and different emotional experiences. In this talk, Kellee Santiago and Jenova Chen, graduates of the University of Southern California Interactive Media MFA program and co-founders of thatgamecompany, will discuss why they're thinking about emotions in games, what they see challenging about it, and detail the ups and the downs of their process on their current Playstation Network project, "Flower."

BIO:
Kellee Santiago: Kellee Santiago is a recent graduate of the Interactive Media program at USC School of Cinematic Arts, where she got to work on the multi-award winning student game, Cloud. In addition, she worked as a game designer on Darfur is Dying, and E.L.E.C.T., a game that teaches Army Officers negotiation skills and cultural sensitivity. Kellee believes that games can simultaneously be both deeply engaging and wildly entertaining, and her dream is to show this to the rest of the world.
Jenova Chen: One of the first generation video game design graduates from USC School of Cinematic Arts, creator behind multi-award winning student game Cloud and flow, co-founder of thatgamecompany, Jenova Chen is dedicated to expanding the emotional spectrum of video games and making them available for a much wider audience.

THE COMPANY:
thatgamecompany was founded in the Spring of 2006 by Jenova Chen and Kellee Santiago, two graduates of the University Southern California Interactive Media MFA program. They had worked on several projects together, including the multi-award winning student game, "Cloud," and decided to continue working together on small, experimental games by forming a game studio that would focus on these projects. The company is currently comprised of seven like-minded game makers, and last year they completed their first commercial title, "flOw," downloadable for the Playstation 3, through the Playstation Network. At TGC (thatgamecompany) our goal is to make video games that communicate different emotional experiences the current video game market is not offering. We encourage innovation and experimentation and believe that our creative games will appeal to new, yet untapped, audiences.

Mardi 11 mars

10h en live: Thomas Bidaux, Director of Development, NCsoft Europe

SUBJECT: “New Business Models / New Game Designs”
With new business models emerging it appears they aren’t that easy to integrate in games. They call for special designs and be fully integrated in the conception of the project. The lecture will cover the different kind of business models that have appeared in the past few years and what they require from their teams.

BIO:
Widely recognised as one Europe’s leading figures in the development and execution of online games from his time at Wanadoo, Bidaux was a leading member of the team that launched highly successful Dark Age of Camelot franchise. His talents were employed by the fledgling NCsoft Europe in September 2004, as one of the original core members. Over two years later, the Brighton UK office has massively increased from the original four members to a staff of more than 120 peoples. Thomas’ role at NCsoft is to manage the product development teams as well as researching and acquiring new titles.

THE COMPANY:
Established in 1997, NCsoft® Corporation has quickly become the world’s leading online game developer and publisher with offices in Korea, Taiwan, China, Japan, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States. In 1998, NCsoft launched its flagship product, Lineage® in Seoul, South Korea. Today Lineage has simultaneous connections in the hundreds of thousands in its top territories all over the world. Lineage II, launched in 2004, continues the game series' massively popular status with nearly two million active accounts and simultaneous connections in excess of 110-thousand in Korea alone. Together, Lineage and Lineage II have reached more than 50-million customers worldwide. In 2000, NCsoft made its initial public stock offering, and as of 2003 the Korean Stock Exchange traded NCsoft under the listing KSE: 036570.KS. The company expanded to North America in 2001, when Richard and Robert Garriott, founders of Origin Systems, joined forces with NCsoft to form NC Interactive. Lineage was launched shortly afterwards in North America. In April 2004, Lineage II and City of Heroes® were launched in North America on the same day. 2005 saw the simultaneous worldwide launch of Guild Wars®, which has since sold more than four-million units, and the launch of City of Villains® on Halloween. In 2006, the City of Heroes brand launched in Asia, plus two further instalments of the Guild Wars franchise - Guild Wars Factions® and Guild Wars Nightfall® - both launched within six months of each other, to worldwide acclaim. In 2007 NCsoft signed an exclusive deal with Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. to develop online products for its PlayStation® gaming platforms, including PLAYSTATION®3. The company also launched its first free-to-play online game, Dungeon Runners™, in May, the Guild Wars expansion Guild Wars: Eye of the North™ in August and finally the long-awaited Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa® in November. NCsoft is well positioned for continued success in all of its markets with the right infrastructure and excellent products, including Lineage II, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Guild Wars and Dungeon Runners. Upcoming titles Aion™: The Tower of Eternity and Guild Wars 2™ are anticipated to push the massively multiplayer online gaming industry forward by providing extensive, high-quality content that the gaming public has come to expect from NCsoft. The company anticipates opening additional global markets for NCsoft’s online games in coming years, as well as products in new genres and on new entertainment platforms.


Mardi 11 mars - 14h en visio: Michael Nitsche, Georgia Institute of Technology : Assistant Professor; Director of the Digital World & Image Group; Associate Director of the Experimental Game Lab

TOPIC: "On Machinima "
What if we play not to win or lose but to express ourselves? The relationship between games and film has been a much debated battlefield. However, in the form of Machinima both have given birth to something new and different altogether. On the one hand, Machinima is based in games as a form of emergent play and user-generated-content; on the other, it is a prime example for the digital revolution in film. Machinima is often defined as "film-making with video games." It usually uses a real-time graphic engine to generate game-based movies. Originally, it started out as the recording and playback of unaltered gameplay. It has developed to an own artistic practice that has found its own niche in festivals, TV, and film production. It has even shaped game and game engine design from the Matinee editor in the Unreal engine to the recording features in Will Wright's more recent (and upcoming) games. This talk will give a brief overview of the development of Machinima. It will highlight some key examples and proceed to discuss why Machinima has the necessary qualities to shape the next generation of digital moving images.

BIO:
Michael Nitsche is an Assistant Professor at the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology where he teaches courses on virtual environments and digital moving images. Michael heads the Digital World and Image Group and Associate Director of the Experimental Game Lab. His research interests focus on the design, use, and production of virtual spaces, Machinima, and the borderlines between games and film. Michael’s work is a combination of practical experiments and theoretical exploration. Experiments include collaborations with the National Film and Television School London, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Funatics Germany, Turner Broadcasting, and educational institutions like Cambridge University. Michael has published on the use of cinematic language, performance, and spatial design of virtual worlds and related issues of games research. In a former life he was co-author for a commercial videogame, professional Improv actor, and dramaturgist. He is author of the forthcoming book ‘Video Game Spaces’ at MIT Press. You can find a full bio here: http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~nitsche/info.html
More info at:
http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~nitsche/
http://dwig.lcc.gatech.edu/
http://www.freepixel.org/

THE COMPANY:
The Georgia Institute of Technology is one of the nation's top research universities, distinguished by its commitment to improving the human condition through advanced science and technology. It is consistently ranked in U.S. News & World Report's top ten public universities in the United States. Georgia Tech's campus occupies 400 acres in the heart of the city of Atlanta, where more than 18,000 undergraduate and graduate students receive a focused, technologically based education.


Mardi 11 mars - 18h en visio: Matthew Jeffery

Mercredi 12 mars

10h en live: Nicolas Gaume, Président de Mimesis Republic


SUJET : "Black Mamba, un univers virtuel, interactif et communautaire"
Entre mmos et réseaux sociaux, entre réalité et virtualité : comment la grammaire du jeu peut accompagner et nourrir les nouvelles dynamiques sociales d'aujourd'hui.

BIO :
Passionné de logiciels et de technologies, Nicolas Gaume fonde à 19 ans en 1990, Kalisto, société de création de jeux vidéo. La société se développera pendant 12 ans, employant plus de 300 personnes et commercialisant dans le monde entier plus d’une cinquantaine de jeux sur différents ordinateurs et consoles. L'entreprise disparaît début 2002 dans les turbulences boursières de cette époque. Il est consultant de juin 2002 à avril 2005, pour des groupes comme Lagardère et différentes sociétés du secteur du jeu comme Codemasters ou Ubi Soft. En mai 2005, il intègre le groupe Lagardère pour y créer le département jeux & applications pour téléphones mobiles qu’il dirige au sein de Lagardere Active puis de sa filiale Cellfish jusqu'à fin 2007. Il fonde début 2008, avec Sebastian Lombardo, Mimesis Republic.

LA SOCIETE :
Mimesis Republic est un jeune studio ambitionnant d'explorer et inventer de nouvelles expériences de divertissements interactifs et sociaux, sur PC et téléphones mobiles. 


Mercredi 12 mars - 16h30 en visio: Nicole Lazzaro, President of XEODesign, Inc.


TOPIC: "Halo vs Facebook: the emtions that drive play"
The success of Web 2.0 changes the way we design player interaction and community. HALO 3 attracts 4 million players. Facebook, the more playful of the social networking services, has 50 million. Is play one of its secrets? To find out XEODesign did a comparative study of HALO 3 and Facebook on emotions and social play. Examining the emotions people had using HALO, Facebook, and Wii SPORTS we compared the emotion profile of each to look at how these experiences encourage participation. XEODesign's new research on social media has found interesting opportunities to increase engagement for multiplayer games such as HALO 3 and Wii SPORTS. Inspired by PX Models created from online social activities, we look beyond fiero and schadenfreude to the emotion rich verbs that drive participation in Web 2.0 from Flickr to Facebook in ways that usability and market research cannot measure. Comparing these games with social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter reveals new emotional engagement from social interaction. The comparison draws an interesting road map for the future of online play. Is the future of multiplayer games a service for online chatterboxes or a Wii SPORT nation?

BIO:
Nicole, founder and president of XEODesign, Inc., is an award-winning designer and an authority on emotion and games. Clients including Sony, EA, Ubisoft, Sega, PlayFirst, The Cartoon Network, LeapFrog, Mattel, Monolith, Xfire, D.I.C.E, Leap Frog, The Learning Company, Broderbund, Roxio, and Maxis. She has a degree in Psychology from Stanford University where she also studied film making and computer programming. A frequent speaker at industry events she consults extensively on games and why people play them. She has spent more than 18 years designing successful experiences for all levels of players and users, from novice to expert, in many game genres. Her work on the emotional and cultural content of play has improved the player experiences for more than 40 million people and helped expand the game industry's emotional palette beyond the stereotypical range of anger, frustration, and fear.

THE COMPANY:
XEODesign makes games more fun. Clients including Sony, EA, Ubisoft, Sega, PlayFirst, The Cartoon Network, LeapFrog, Mattel, Monolith, Xfire, D.I.C.E, Leap Frog, The Learning Company, Broderbund, Roxio, and Maxis.

Jeudi 13 mars



17h30 en visio: Michael Mateas, Assistant professor, Computer Science, University of California, Santa Cruz

TOPIC: "Procedural content and the future of game AI"
The game industry is currently experiencing a content creation crisis. With the rise of next-generation consoles, players have come to expect ever larger worlds, modeled in ever more detail; the production of non-procedural assets such as hard-coded scripts, level designs, textures, models, sounds and animations is raising team sizes and production costs to unmanageable levels. Procedural content is the only way out of this content creation crisis, as well as the only way to enable whole new genres of interactive art and entertainment, such as high-agency interactive story. In this talk I'll describe how advanced AI techniques can enable new forms of generative and responsive content, using research examples from the Expressive Intelligence Studio at UC Santa Cruz, including interactive storytelling, level generation and game generation.

BIO:
Michael Mateas' work explores AI-based art and entertainment, forging a new research discipline called Expressive AI. He is currently a faculty member in Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he founded and runs the Expressive Intelligence Studio. Michael is involved in launching UCSC’s game design degree, the first such degree offered in the UC system. Prior to his appointment at UC Santa Cruz, Michael was a faculty member at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he held a joint appointment in the College of Computing and the School of Literature, Communication and Culture. With Andrew Stern, Michael created Façade, an interactive drama that uses AI techniques to combine rich autonomous characters with interactive plot control to create the world’s first, fully-produced, real-time, interactive story; Façade is available for free download at http://www.interactivestory.net/. Michael received his BS in Engineering Physics from the University of the Pacific, his MS in Computer Science from Portland State University, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Vendredi 14 mars

10h en live: Thomas Demachy, Gérant Indeego Games

SUJET: Panorama des studios français de création de jeux vidéo
Alors que le marché global jeu connait une croissance sans précédent, quelle est la situation du jeu vidéo en France ? Quels sont les studios qui marchent, ceux qui marchent moins bien ? Cette présentation démontre qu’entre artisanat et industrie, la création de jeux vidéo en France s’articule de nombreuses manières, comme autant de réponses aux contraintes d’une législation qui tente pourtant de s’adapter.

BIO:
Ingénieur ISEN Toulon, Thomas a commencé comme programmeur dans l’industrie du jeu vidéo en 2001 après des expériences en base de données et en informatique scientifique. Par la suite, il a encadré le studio de développement de Titus à Paris et a aussi coordonné le chapitre parisien de l’IGDA (Association internationale de développeurs). Producteur indépendant, intervenant auprès de plusieurs écoles de jeu vidéo en France, il fonde Indeego Games à Marseille en 2007.

LA SOCIETE:
Indeego Games développe et exploite la plateforme Web 2.0 « Playindee.com » de co-création de jeux vidéo, visant à l’émergence de contenus inédits, en proposant des outils innovants et intuitifs de suivi de projet, d’échange avec la communauté des joueurs et de vente via un système de distribution numérique P2P. Indeego Games invite tous les joueurs à « jouer autrement », de manière plus intelligente en découvrant la diversité de ce média culturel.


15h en visio: Dan Scherlis