Polygons #8 was the biggest ever, with over 100 developers and games students there. Here are the photos.

There were a diverse bunch of companies represented, with people from Ninja Theory, Rebellion, Gusto, Monumental, SCEE, and MumboJumbo there among others. Rare were there in force too, and as a result Monumental were outnumbered, for once ;)

As Dan was away, the teams this time were opinionated favorite Iain Simons coupled with Tom Scutt of Gusto Games, against Louise Ridgeway from Rare and Andrew Oliver of Blitz.

In connection with the Wii, Andrew Oliver reiterated the point made by Angela Fenge at the Brighton event: Casual isn't stealing market share, it's building a bigger market. During a general discussion on brands in games, he also went into quite some detail on the Burger King work Blitz did:

Toby Barnes: "When you're producing a branded game, does the brand interfere with creativity?"

Andrew Oliver: "We run a profitable business and we don't lay people off. A lot of people talk about advertising in games at conferences, and it seems stupid to me to just simulate billboards, they're tiny, and remind me of banner ads on the net, which I find quite annoying.

We saw the Burger King Games as a good opportunity for creativity. Sure, marketing people may try to push you down certain routes, but so be it."

"People say they're cheap, but they got loads of attention and lots of ad-industry awards."

"We got 3 games done in 6 months. There's more creativity there than in Halo 3"

Audience: "OOOOOHHH"

We kept score this time, more or less, with the audience racing ahead of both teams in the final, quickfire round to snatch victory.

The next one is on December the 13th; we'll tell you where and who the panel are closer to the time. You can keep up through the mailing list, and there's also a Facebook group now too.