From left: Warren Spector (System Shock), Tommy Palm (Candy Crush Saga) and M+DEV organizer Tim Gerritsen.
Maybe it was just a question of thinking bigger all along. Or just shifting the focus.
For more than a decade, individuals and groups on Madison’s burgeoning videogame development scene have been working to try to turn the city into a regional hub. On Oct. 27, the Alliant Energy Center will be the site of M+DEV, a regional game development conference designed to boost the scene, not just in Madison, but in the Midwest.
The event includes top-level industry talent, including keynote speakers Warren Spector, the man who gave us System Shock, Deus Ex and Epic Mickey, and Swedish developer Tommy Palm, one of the minds behind Candy Crush Saga.
The endeavor to create a hub here could have foundered after key players Kurt Squire and Constance Steinkuehler left UW-Madison to take jobs at University of California-Irvine last year. The married professors helped put Madison on the map after they created the Games, Learning and Society (GLS) program.
But before leaving, they helped forge a new partnership with the Madison Games Alliance, a consortium of local developers, and the Madison Regional Economic Program (MadREP). (The Madison Games Alliance recently changed its name to the Wisconsin Games Alliance to reflect a commitment to the entire state.)
Tim Gerritsen, one of M+DEV’s primary organizers, says the conference will create visibility for regional game developers. “You’re seeing so much expansion of game development in the Midwest, but a lot of it’s being overlooked,” says Gerritsen.
Madison’s game development scene continues to stealthily — and steadily — grow. In addition to a strong pool of indie developers, Bluehole, the Korean-based creators of the massively popular multiplayer online battle arena game Player Unknown: Battlegrounds (PUBG), recently opened a small studio here. So did Epic Games, the company responsible for Fortnite and Paragon. And we’re still home to Raven Software (Call of Duty; Infinite Warfare), PerBlue and Filament Games.
Gerritsen’s vision for M+DEV is for it to eventually become for Madison and the Midwest what GDC (Game Developers Conference) is to San Francisco and PAX is to Boston and Seattle — sizable annual events that forward the field and gaming culture. Wisconsin Games Alliance, meanwhile, will serve as a resource for jobs and hiring, capital funding and locating international resources, as well as promotional and networking opportunities.
Human Head Studios’ "Rune: Ragnarok."
“I’m really thrilled to see a game development conference happening here,” says Aaron San Filippo, co-owner of Madison’s Flippfly Studios, which just announced its latest project, a game called Taxi Copter. “There’s been a lot of effort to bring together developers from every corner of the industry, and this seems like a really core piece of that goal. I’d really love to see this become a big draw for developers across the Midwest.”
Gerritsen has long maintained that part of the reason Madison flies under the national radar screen has to do with the legendary Midwestern work ethic — the notion that rather than calling attention to themselves, Madison developers like Raven and Human Head, the studio Gerritsen helped to found in 1997, would rather keep their heads down and just do the work. Human Head’s a great example: For the past several months, they’ve been working on Rune: Ragnarok, a long-awaited sequel to the company’s first major PC game, released way back in 2000.
Gerritsen demonstrates what he and his partners hope to foster through M+DEV. Earlier this year, he left his second stint with Human Head Studios to become the studio director for the newly formed Fantasy Flight Interactive, a studio charged with creating digital games out of Fantasy Flight Games’ properties (think Arkham Horror and Legend of the Five Rings). When Gerritsen got the job offer, he opted to open his studio on Madison’s east side, rather than pick up stakes and move to the company’s offices in Roseville, Minnesota.
“I could have gone anywhere,” he says, “I chose to do it here.”
Gerritsen and WGA are hoping M+DEV helps other developers make the same choice.
“Momentum, or a lack thereof, is the big risk, says Gerritsen. “We want this to be an annual event. The worst thing that could happen is that we hold this, and then nothing happens.”
Like a player repeating a difficult boss battle in Cuphead, Madison has sorta been there before. But Gerritsen’s confident this time is different. He already has the dates set and reserved for M+DEV 2018. That’s a promising start.
Editor's note: This article was corrected to include the correct date for the M+DEV conference. It is on Oct. 27, not Oct. 26.
