I spoke at the 2017 Game Arts Conference (GAC), September 8 – 10, in Las Vegas. The GAC is aimed primarily at independent game developers. The GAC has held several events in Atlantic City, New Jersey, but this was their first event in Las Vegas.

There were actually two co-located conferences at the September Las Vegas event. In addition to the GAC, there was the Casino eSports Conference. I hadn’t even heard of eSports until a few months ago — eSports is where professional video game players compete in front of an audience. This was initially a strange concept to me. But it’s really not a lot different from an audience watching two chess grandmasters play against each other, which is an idea that has been around for at least 100 years. My colleagues at Xbox tell me that eSports could turn out to be a multi-billion dollar industry some day.

Crowd watches Bobby Fischer vs. Mikhail Tal, 1960

Both conferences were held at the Westgate Hotel, which is off the Las Vegas Strip, near the gigantic Las Vegas Convention Center. The Westgate Hotel is notable for having a huge and influential “sports book” that places odds on all kinds of sporting events.

Westgate Sports Book

My talk was about understanding deep neural networks, from the point of view of a game developer. The 2017 GAC Vegas event was very small, as is to be expected for a first-time conference. I’ve talked at conferences of all sizes, ranging from tens of thousands of attendees, down to just tens of attendees. I actually tend to prefer smaller events because they’re a bit more personal. At the GAC, I learned a lot about independent game development, by talking to the attendees and other speakers.

The use of machine learning and artificial intelligence will likely revolutionize many areas. Game development has always introduced state-of-the-art technology, and I will not be surprised if some forward looking ML/AI ideas first emerge from game development.