The website isn’t updated yet, but I’ll be speaking at the Austin Game Conference next week on the Casual Game Evolution Summit: Moving Beyond Downloads panel.

I’ve heard good things about this event in the past but this will be my first time attending. Hopefully I’ll see some of you there!

The FuturePlay conference has just finished up and I think the organizers should be very happy with what they put together.

The topics were very wide ranging from topics on academia and industry collaboration to game design and AI. My own panel on the future of Casual Games (slides to be posted soon) seemed to be quite successful as well (even though I was competing with Greg Costikyan first thing in the morning!).

One of the most interesting sessions was the Censorship panel on Friday which included most of the major players in the game censorship debate. It’s not often you can get Henry Jenkins, Dr. Craig A Anderson, and Jason Della Rocca all on the same panel. While two hours wasn’t nearly enough time for everyone to present (although John Lazet managed to get in some theatrics during his portion), the session still managed to cover some interesting issues and discussions. Perhaps the most surprising thing to me was that the session wasn’t better attended, especially when compared to the IP session that preceeded it.

The conference closed with an outstanding talk by Michael Mateas of Façade fame. He talked about the future of AI and his visions for how AI can make for better gameplay. He also outlined the basic ideas they used to develop the AI for Façade. Overall this was an outstanding session and a fitting end to a solid conference.

Update: Slides are now available.

If you are based in Europe or are looking for an excuse to visit Paris, you should consider attending the The 2005 Online Games Summit. I will be co-chairing this conference and it is being put on with the support of the IGDA’s Online and Casual Games SIGs.

We think that we’ve put together a strong lineup of speakers covering many aspects of the online games industry, ranging from MMOs to Casual Games and advergames. We’re also covering the a couple of academic related issues, and have some focus on the Asian market as well.

This should be a great show, and hopefully I’ll see some of you there.

If you’re based in or near Europe this should be a great conference to attend. Casuality Europe, a Casual Game focused conference that will be held in Amsterdam next February. There isn’t a lot of information on the site yet, but considering that it is being organized by some of the same people that put together the outstanding Casual Games Conference I expect them to put on a good show.

I’ll be speaking at Future Play 2005 about the Future of Games and the impact the casual market will have on the industry.

Looking at the rest of the speakers this should be a pretty good event. It’s a lot more academic focused than many of the other conferences I’ve been to. It should be interesting to see more of an academic take on some of the same subjects covered at other events.

Registration is pretty cheap ($250 with a $50 discount for IGDA members).