Hocking A Draw to Vancouver Game Design Expo

Clint Hocking, creative director at Ubisoft Montreal, was the keynote speaker and huge draw for the recently held Game Design Expo 2009 in Vancouver. In his keynote address, “The Next Generation of Player,” Hocking took the audience through a rapid-fire history of video game consoles, and predicted a “massive demographic shift” by 2015, asking, “Who is Generation Y, and why should game developers care?” Hocking not long ago finished work on Far Cry 2, for which he was creative director, and holds credits on the games Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. He started at Ubisoft as a level designer on the first Splinter Cell. The third annual expo took place February 7 and 8 at Vancity Theatre at the Vancouver International Film Centre, and at the Game Design campus of Vancouver Film School, which offers programs in game development as well as film. During day two of the two-day Game Design Expo, Vancouver Film School’s Game Design campus opened its doors to more than 400 registrants in its annual open house tour. The expo also played host to a panel discussion on the topic of women in the game industry, which correlated with an announcement from the school that it will give out its first-ever Women in Games Scholarship, which will cover the cost of tuition for one aspiring female game designer to attend the one-year game design program. Students in the one-year game design program train to become video game developers in design, but with emphasis on learning visual storytelling techniques, level design principles, and the overall production process.