Summit's Social Game, Edition III (2024)

You may not realize this, but the annual Games Industry Law Summit in Vilnius is, in fact, just a cover op for something more important: the annual barter fair of the UFO crews that regularly crash-land on planet Earth.

If you're attending the 9th edition of the Summit two weeks from now, upon registration in your attendee bag you will find an envelope with the crew list of your UFO, your personal UFO badge, and the rules of the barter fair.

The Reception Dinner on September 3 is where you get to meet the other members of your crew, including the captain, and to develop the strategy for the lift-off on the following day.

Then, on September 4, the first day of the actual conference, you will be issued with the blueprint of your UFO – indicating the spare parts that are missing – and one tradable spare part that you are free to exchange as you like.

All the UFO crews, aliens that they are, have devised the names that – in their opinion – make total sense, and perfectly blend into the business environment of the planet:

Engineers of Bermuda, Detectives of the Holy See, Sailors of Mongolia... should be fairly common names at any conference?

Grenada (population 125.000) may be well known for its philosophers, just like Botswana (population 2.6 million) may be famous for its pilots, and Cuba (population 11 million) – for its crop of investment bankers.

The goal of the barter fair is for each UFO team to work together on trading with the other crews, in order to procure the spare parts that your ship needs for the lift-off.

The names of the other teams – their declared professions, and their declared places of origins – hold the clues for who may have the specific spare part that you need.

Each UFO has a crew of 10 aliens, plus the captain.

The teams that complete their blueprint first, get to pick their prizes: we have stocked 50+ special items, including exclusive t-shirts with this year's cover art, and a selection of books (among these, "Gardens of the Moon" – the first entry in the cult 'The Malazan Book of the Fallen' series by Steven Erikson; and "Invisible Planets", Ken Liu's second anthology of translations of the modern science fiction from China) – not to mention a pot gascon of Chateau de Cassaigne's armagnac for the very first team that takes off.

Early next week, we will reach out to the prospective captains of the UFOs, who will need to coordinate their diverse crews. A huge responsibility – but, perhaps, not that much different from trying to coordinate game developers who raise money for their next project?

Here's to meeting new people, and to the competitive spirit that is shared both by aliens stranded on a rapidly warming rock, and by lawyers who work with the games industry!

S.