SCAD-Atlanta SFDM (School of Film & Digital Media) Master Workshop Fall’09

Clint Hocking
Creative Director, Ubisoft Montreal

Tuesday, November 3
6:30 pm reception
7:00 pm talk

SCAD Atlanta
4C Events Space

1600 Peachtree St
NW Atlanta GA 30309

Co-hosted by SCAD-Atlanta and IGDA-Atlanta.

The Territory is not the Map: Hyper Realism and the New Immersion Paradigm

The games of today unsurprisingly strive to mimic the linear, authored structures of previous generations of media largely because gamers and game developers have grown up in a world where those media are culturally dominant. That is changing. As our media become more richly interactive and as our experience of the world becomes increasingly fragmented and parallelized, a new media culture is disintegrating the old. Games of the future will reflect this cultural shift by themselves becoming more fragmentary, more parallelized, and less focused on rich simulation and traditional notions of immersion.

This talk examines the potential long-term future of gaming by looking at the accelerating convergence between rising technologies and competing media from the internet, games, music and narrative media to augmented reality and the prominence of portable wireless devices.

BIO

Clint Hocking has been working at Ubisoft Montreal since July of 2001, when he began his career in the game industry as a Level Designer, Game Designer and Scriptwriter on the original SPLINTER CELL. Along with writer JT Petty, Clint was honoured for his writing work on the title with the first-ever Game Developer’s Choice Award for Excellence in Scriptwriting. Clint continued as Lead Level Designer, Scriptwriter, and Creative Director on SPLINTER CELL: CHAOS THEORY – the highest rated Splinter Cell to date with an aggregate review score of 94%. Clint then worked as Creative Director on the innovative and acclaimed FAR CRY 2. Before games Clint worked in the web industry and experimented with independent filmmaking while earning an M.F.A in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. He lives happily in Montreal with his wife and their dog.