Posts Tagged ‘FITC’
Flash, Flash Games, and FITC
Dear readers,
I returned from Toronto a couple of days ago. Toronto was really great. Everyone was riding bikes around–and as a means of transportation, not as a sport. How refreshing. Ji-Ming and I thought the busy, happy urban atmosphere felt a lot like Taipei; of course, we were staying in Chinatown.
I was up there for Flash in the Can, a very fun Flash conference. This was my first Flash conference, and it was very interesting to discover how the Flash community is different from the game development community. Their terminology is all backwards–they say “developer” instead of programmer, and “designer” instead of artist. Oh, and there are actually women in the Flash community.
What I didn’t like is that Flash developers tend to be so reverent of advertising. Someone might say to me, “yeah, my company worked on campaigns for Nike and McDonalds,” and they expect me to be impressed. I know that ads drive most of the money in the Flash world, but it makes me uncomfortable to think about this. One of the reasons I first went into game development, having happily left careers in science and education, was because I wanted to make things for real people. I wanted my paychecks to come from people who pay for my stuff because they want it, rather than because I convinced the government or some agency that what I’m doing is valuable. Of course, once I got into the AAA game industry, I quickly realized how shallow and non-artistic it is, and (like most people in the industry) I yearned to break off and go indie. So now I’m doing small games on my own, and I’m doing whatever I want, even if that is sometimes an experimental train wreck like this. But in order to actually make some money, I find myself signing contracts and making deals with marketing companies. So without realizing it, I’ve started drifting back toward the situation I fled–I’m making things for agencies rather than real people. Maybe I’m just complaining too much, but I feel very conflicted! I mean, for heaven’s sake, back when I had functional convictions I subscribed to Adbusters! Now look at me, making art for ad men who live in L.A.
Okay, I’m done. Back to FITC. I was attending the conference as a representative of actionscript.org, and I ended up posting a bunch of blogs over on their site. Here they are:
FITC Day 1: The intersection of math and art
FITC Day 2: Flash in Console Games
FITC Day 2: Running a Freelance Business
FITC Day 3: Dimension Wars
FITC Day 3: Cool Japanese Stuff