Chris and I attended the IGDA LA Chapter’s July meeting for a panel discussion titled “Running a Small Development Studio: Perils, Pitfalls & Promise.” I was interested in checking out the event because it was a relevant topic and I’ve yet to attend any of the LA Chapter meetings. I’ve been an IGDA member on 2 separate occasions but failed to see value in the membership since there were never any meetings. This year they’ve restarted and are having meetings the 2nd Thursday of every month.

The talk was excellent. The speakers gave a good idea of some of the challenges of getting a company started and keeping it rolling.

The speakers were:

John Beck CEO, WayForward Technologies (A Boy and His Blob, Where the Wild Things Are, Space Chimps)

Jenova Chen Creative Director, thatgamecompany (Flower, flOw, Cloud, Journey)

Tian Mu CEO, Co-Founder, Naked Sky Entertainment, Inc. (Star Trek DAC, RoboBlitz, RoboHordes)

Jesse Vigil Founder, Partner, Psychic Bunny (Codename Games, Lead Balloon)

After the talk, it transformed into a mixer. It was good chit-chatting with some of the homies and the regulars. Met and re-met a couple people we saw at the USC Global Game Jam. I had a good chat with the homies Nite and Deon, who worked on Lulu Cao’s thesis project, SomeDay.

This IGDA-LA event is every 2nd Thursday. It hasn’t been updated for a while, but you can try the website for info about the next one. If they keep having meetings of this caliber, I’ll have to renew my membership.

Oh yeah, baby. I came up. Won this wonderful game at the raffle.