I recently attended Gamelab's (www.gmlb.com) one-year anniversary party
at the Gamelab offices on Broadway. Our hosts and the co-founders of
Gamelab, the irrepressible Eric Zimmerman and charming Peter Lee, held
court with the diverse game crowd of oldsters and newcomers. Many
countries were represented at the party. I first happened upon Andy
Dong who was born in New York City but who is running his own game
company in China. His company, Sosgrp, is working on Playstation 3
games and doing quite well, he said. Andy and I then met up with
Ann-Marie Huurre of Women Wise (www.womenwise.com) who had flown in from
her home town of Toronto to moderate the game panel the previous
evening, and Jonas Nilsson, a native of Sweden and founder of his own
game company, Cointeractive (www.cointeractive.com). All three were
extremely knowledgable about the videogame industry in general, and the
NYC industry in particular. It was a pleasure hearing their points of
view on where the industry is headed and how business is going these
days. I then bumped into Matthew Schlanger, President of Black Hammer
Productions (www.blackhammer.com) over the hors d'oeuvres table where he
proceeded to ask me a legal question several times which I could not
hear over the loud music (I gave up). His colleague, Nikita Mikros
joined us for a few minutes as did Angela Taormino of Prefer Network
(www.prefernetwork.com). We wandered to the other end of the long,
narrow office, whose walls were lined with about a hundred old board
games from Eric Zimmerman's extensive personal collection (anyone for a
game of "The Jetsons" or "The Incredible Hulk"?) and met up with Joe
Plotkin of Bwy.net and John Rabasa, Director, Product Marketing for AOL.
I played famous 80s videogame, Asteroids, with the help of Matt
Sapero (he got in the Top Ten Higher Scorers three times; even with
Matt's help working the "thruster" - no jokes, please - I, however, did
not come anywhere near the Top Ten). Matt said that he is trying to
raise money for a game idea along with working in business development
for Larry Gardner of Cyberexruder (www.cyberextruder.com). I also spoke
with Barbara Anglisz, who works with Gotham Games, an offshoot of
Rockstar Games, and producer of the game panel the evening prior, as she
promoted Gotham's first game, and Brian Loube, Interactive Executive
Producer at Imaginary Forces (www.imaginaryforces.com). I said my
thanks and goodbyes to my hosts and went off into the beautiful Fall
evening.
