Clint Hocking, creative director at Ubisoft Montreal, will deliver a keynote address on hyper realism and game design at the GameX Industry Summit taking place alongside the GameX Expo in Philadelphia this October.
The GameX Industry Summit announced today that Clint Hocking, creative director at Ubisoft Montreal, will be a keynote speaker at the industry conference taking place from October 25-27 in Philadelphia. Hocking will deliver an address titled “The Territory is Not the Map: Hyper Realism and the New Immersion Paradigm.”
Hocking has an extensive list of credits and credentials. He first made marks for his work on the Splinter Cell series, for which he has served as a designer and writer and took home the first-ever Game Developer’s Choice Award for Excellence in Scriptwriting. Following his work on Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Hocking worked as the Creative Director on Far Cry 2.
Hocking will draw on that background in storytelling in games, among many other fields, in his keynote, which addresses “the potential long-term future of gaming by looking at the accelerating convergence between rising technologies and competing media from the internet, games, music and narrative media.” The talk will also touch on the implications of the rising prevalence of portable devices on media and “augmented reality.”
“As our media become more richly interactive and as our experience of the world becomes increasingly fragmented and parallelized, a new media culture is disintegrating the old,” Hocking said. “Games of the future will reflect this cultural shift by themselves becoming more fragmentary, more parallelized, and less focused on rich simulation and traditional notions of immersion. My keynote talk at GameX Industry Summit will explore this idea fully. “
The GameX Industry Summit is an industry conference that coincides with the GameX Expo, which is a consumer show geared toward gamers and geeks of all breeds, and will feature playable demos of upcoming games like EA’s Dante’s Inferno, as well as entertainment and appearances by none other than Escapist staff and the guest of honor, Zero Punctuation‘s Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw himself.
Press release follows.
Philadelphia, PA—Tuesday, July 28, 2009—The GameX Industry Summit today announced its third confirmed keynote speaker, Clint Hocking, creative director for Ubisoft Montreal. Co-located with GameX (Games & Media Expo) on October 24-25, 2009, GameX Industry Summit is presented by the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) chapters in New York, New Jersey, Boston, Baltimore and Philadelphia.
Hocking began his career at Ubisoft as a level designer on the original Splinter Cell, eventually taking on roles of game designer and scriptwriter. Splinter Cell was nominated for seven Game Developer’s Choice Awards (including nominations for Excellence in Level Design, Game Design and Scriptwriting). Along with writer JT Petty, Hocking was honored for his writing work with the first-ever Game Developer’s Choice Award for Excellence in Scriptwriting.
Hocking continued to develop the Splinter Cell franchise as lead level designer, scriptwriter, and creative director on Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory – the highest rated Splinter Cell to date with an aggregate review score of 94%. Clint next took on the role of Creative Director on Far Cry 2, a controversial title that took players into the ‘Heart of Darkness’ of a fully realized African state torn apart by civil war. Both innovative and acclaimed, Far Cry 2 was another hit for Ubisoft.
Game industry professionals are invited to hear Hocking speak at the GameX Industry Summit. GameX Industry Summit centers around two days of games-focused lectures, panels, roundtables and keynotes from the best and brightest minds in the games business. GameX Industry Summit features the Philly Game Jam, a 48-hour game development marathon. In addition, GameX Industry Summit attendees have access to GameX, a game consumer convention supported by a major media sponsor, NBC Local Media in Philadelphia – WCAU TV/NBC 10.
Hocking’s keynote, entitled “The Territory is not the Map: Hyper Realism and the New Immersion Paradigm,” examines the potential long-term future of gaming by looking at the accelerating convergence between rising technologies and competing media from the internet, games, music and narrative media. Hocking will also explore augmented reality and the prominence of portable wireless devices and their design relevance in contrast to the linear, authored structures of previous generations of media that have been culturally dominant.
Hocking states, “As our media become more richly interactive and as our experience of the world becomes increasingly fragmented and parallelized, a new media culture is disintegrating the old. Games of the future will reflect this cultural shift by themselves becoming more fragmentary, more parallelized, and less focused on rich simulation and traditional notions of immersion. My keynote talk at GameX Industry Summit will explore this idea fully.”
Darius Kazemi, president of Orbus Gameworks and chapter president for IGDA Boston, adds, “Like no other game developer, Clint Hocking is at the forefront of both theory and practice in game design. His presentations and articles are brilliant and thought-provoking, and his commercial games prove that he not only talks the talk, but walks the walk.”
In addition to working as a game developer, Hocking is active in the game development community, and is a vocal proponent of games as an emerging medium and art form. Clint is on the advisory board of the Montreal IGDA Chapter, and is a frequent speaker at the Game Developers Conference and other conferences around the world. He maintains a blog at http://www.clicknothing.typepad.com/.
Published: Jul 29, 2009 07:35 pm