GDC 2009 started off with a bang for me at the IGDA Education Summit’s Game Design Improv with Brenda Brathwaite at the helm and Ian Schreiber and Charles Shami backing her up on the floor. For two hours I had the opportunity to swap places with what I usually force my students to do, design games. It was an absolute delight. “Table 6” as we became labeled at some point during the day designed two games together before the round of firing and hiring which shook up our studio tables managed to come up with several gems. Malcolm Ryan, Baozheng Wang, Morgan Calhoon, Apar Maniar, Peter Juhl, Eku Wand, and Roane Beard were part of what became the myAIG pitch.
Of course this started somewhere, right? There were 6 “Bad” IPs and 6 “Good” IPs listed on a sheet at the front of the room, and tables rolled dice to determine who would design for which IP holder. I did manage to get Tyson Chicken onto the list of “bad” IPs, though I think difficult is a better description. The group with Tyson did manage to do some impressive design work. But, back to AIG. AIG was placed on the list of “bad” IPs for several reasons. This is what we managed to roll. Of course, we could have lampooned AIG, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to consider a difficult IP like AIG and create a game that they would actually want to be made. Out of this came myAIG and the myAIG Lifestyle. I’ll post scanned images of the documents we created and as much of the pitch I can recall next week.