My Trip to MEGA/MIGS

Over the weekend I attended the MEGA and MIGS conferences over the last weekend here in Montreal, Quebec. I wanted to take this week’s post to talk about my experience at the conference and how it impacted me.

For the better part of it, I spent most of my time at the conference on Monday and Tuesday: the MIGS portion of the conference primarily. While their, I got to meet several people I have met before at the Momentum event back in October. In that time, I also got to see the growth between different projects as well as experience new projects I had yet to see, as well as getting to talk to developers in the industry I am going to be entering in less than two years.

One of the experiences I had was when I had a chance to go and speak with developers at the Ubisoft booth, where I was able to ask questions with recruiters as well as chat with the developers about some of my favorite Ubisoft games with them, as well as networking with them over the short time we were able to communicate before they had to go on break or talk to others. I also got to experience more than just talking to developers, including playing the games around myself, as well as one more than interesting thing: one of the companies sponsoring the event, Red Barrel, was previewing a new drink, a stout with a very fruity taste, more akin to a wine than a beer. But that’s beside the point.

At the event, there were two games that really stuck out to me in my play sessions: the first was a game called Struggling, a two-player couch co-op/arcade game where players take on a mutated head of sorts, with two faces. It has regenerating arms, and each player controls an arm, and has to try and maneuver their way through levels and puzzles in order to advance through the game’s levels. While I played the game solo, I had a ton of fun and really enjoyed the art style, presenting this creepy, otherworldly feel as I played as this sad little gremlin with flailing arms, that made me feel like not only I was struggling to play the game with the set up, but I was struggling to not laugh at the game itself cause of how funny the art style was for me.

After, I played a game called Foundation, a medieval city builder that I had had a chance to play through some time ago at PAX East last April. However, my experience varied in that the game had an updated user interface as well as a brand new system for how you attracted new workers, citizens, and how you developed your city further. The new changes certainly felt welcome, and overall were very enjoyable compared to the previous build I had tested.

My trip to MEGA/MIGS over the weekend was a hell of a blast, and I am really glad to attend. I encourage gamers, new and old to attend the event in the future, and for prospective game developers to attend the conferences at MIGS to learn about a lot of introspective themes and topics in game development.