Small Hairy Animals (MindTrek pt. 2)

As everyone knows, lectures, workshops and panel discussions are not the most important part of a conference. The most important part is everything that happens in between and after these (no I’m not referring to free food and beer).

Like I noted in my previous post, Adam Greenfields’ presentation really made an impact on me. Worrying that he might dissapear as fast as Miguel Sicart did, I hurried down to him to prevent such a situation. I’m glad I did, for it turned out he was leaving in less than an hour. Luckily, he was willing to spare some of that time for me, resulting in me having worthy information, and good hints on what I could and should do in the future. To conclude, I’d say he’s one pretty awesome dude, and I’ll definitely be following his doings from now on. Although, I have to admit I was disappointed with his attitude towards games (ie. dissing them), but I think I’ll just take it as a challenge.

After the chat, I walked around doing nothing until the end of the conference, and as I was just leaving, a guy came up to me, looking like he actually wanted to talk to me of all people. He had heard my conversation with Adam, and after he introduced himself and his ideas, I understood why.  The guy is called Slava Kozlov, and although still working for Philips, he’s starting up his own company, Summ*n, with a guy called Nikolay Yaremko. Their slogan is “We summon the futures for you to play with them now”, and it sounds very very intriguing to say the least. Obviously, their aspirations go well together with my interest in what games could be. Also, it seems that Slava appreciates what young people have to offer, and that is something I definitely admire. Can’t wait to see what happens with Summ*n!

Our chat was cut short by Slava having to go to an evening event. I had luck on my side again, and got to join the party, although I had no idea of what I was getting myself into this time.

The event was held at Demola in the Finlayson complex, and by the people running Demola. In their site, they say “Demola is a multidiciplinary open innovation environment for the creators of the next generation of digital products and services”. In practice, this means that companies (for example Nokia and TeliaSonera) that happen to have ideas they want done into real products can bring them to Demola, and teams of young talents from the three universities in Tampere get to use their skills and learn project working. Obviously, I had no idea of such a place excisting and definitely no idea someone was doing something so great in the middle of Tampere.

Not only was Demola inspiring, but the event itself was quite something too. Pardon my prejudice, but I never imagined that 40-something and older men (and women too of course, but not that many were present) could have such good and innovative ideas and such readiness for change, plus willingness to give young people some power too. On top of that, many of them are working for big, conservative companies. I loved the way the importance of humanities and art were brought up multiple times during discussion when debating innovations and the next Google. Also, an excellent notion was made:

“Everyone knows that dinosaurs used to be the ruling species, but they were wiped out, and their place inherited but small furry animals. Well, I see big companies as the dinosaurs of our time, and small, innovative companies as the small furry animals. No big innovations that changed the world have been made by the dinosaurs, but by the small, innovative and agile furry animals.”

I couldn’t agree more. Big companies are just too careful and too stuck in their ways to come up with the next Big Thing. The notion applies especially well to game companies, and is also the reason for games being pretty but brainless. Almost all of the few good, innovative games have  been made by small indie developers, not by Squeenix, Nintendo or EA. They’re not willing to take any risks, nor to think about designing games that would appeal to smaller audiences.

Enough of ranting for now, next I think I’ll look into Greenfields’ texts and jot down what kind of thoughts they provoke.