Blade Edge

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

So I knocked off my first day of GDC. Not too bad, tho I still wish I hadn’t had so much trouble getting the damn internet to work. Ironically enough, when I finally gave up and left the Press Lounge, I was able to connect no problem out in the concourse and got a good strong connection. Figures. I met up with Ian Overgard (The Senshi) around lunch time, which is when Dave and Lissa showed up as well. So we all got to sit down together for lunch, and I managed to snag Jason Della Rocca from the IGDA as well as Jim Charne to join us at the table – which was good cause Jason and I both had to head over from Moscone West around the corner to Moscone North for the Chapter Formalization workshop. I also caught sight of Kris Schlacter while trying to find Seyi in the lunch crowd. Kris smiled and gave me the one-finger salute with both hands, no doubt in response to my coverage of him a few days ago but it was all in good fun of course, and it was good to meet up with him early on.

So Jason and I left for Moscone North, talking about the upcoming workshop. North is the new addition to the conference this year – last year we were crammed like sardines into just Moscone West. So although you have to hoof it a block, it’s nice to have the extra space. The workshop went well, as I report above, and afterwards we went up to the main lobby of the concourse to hang out at the IGDA booth for a while before heading out to dinner. There I ran into Tom Buscaglia (IGDA board member and well known as The Game Attorney). Tom’s quite a character and always fun to talk with, so we chatted a while. I also checked out the MS Lobby Bar, which is pretty swank this year, and the XNA coding challenge – where they stuck four teams (of 1-2 people each) in two roped-off areas with some pretty sweet dev stations from Alienware and they have until Friday to create a game using XNA Game Studio Express. Pretty damn cool. I took pics but I seem to be having trouble adding them to the gallery on the coverage page. I think they may be too big at 1024×768? I dunno, I’ll talk to Michalson about it tomorrow morning and get it sorted.

So yea, all of us from the chapter workshop descended upon Buca di Beppo, an Italian resteraunt that served huge portions of food. My god I almost had another case of severe stomach gas from eating too much. I need to be more careful around food Doesn’t help either when the meal’s not on you 😛

So yea, the GDC coverage page is up, but I’m the only one on there right now. Richard and Michalson will have something tomorrow, as will Sean and Ian hopefully (tho I’ve already told them to enjoy the conference first, report later). Kelly’s leaving tomorrow for NYC because he got called in as an expert witness for a court case, so he didn’t bring his laptop but is taking copious notes on his 3DS Max and Maya sessions for posting later in the week. Dan Marchant was MIA today, but that’s fine, we’ll catch up with him tomorrow morning.

I guess that’s about it. As always, stay tuned!