Blade Edge

Transposed from Gaiiden’s Scroll

so okay I attended the indie game summit lectures I mentioned, both of which I have posted up on the coverage page. Between my last journal post and the sessions I attended I took a few laps around the third floor of the convention hall snapping pictures of whoever I could find, most of which were decent enough to post up in the gallery in the People section. Ran into a bunch of people I hadn’t seen yet, like the Shizmoo brothers Dan and Josh Goldstein, some of the Large Animal Games crew, Eric Lamendola of Slingo, Matt Wegner and Russ Carroll (of course), Eric Zimmerman, uhm… Josiah Pisciotta and oh yea, I met Danny Ledonne, the guy who made Super Columbine Massacre RPG. He’s there filming interviews with people to make a documentary on the criticism spawned by his own game – I find that amusing . What an awesome way to leverage the response of your product, hahaha! Wish I had played it, I prob coulda been on camera. Oh well. Oh yea Kevin got in this afternoon as well, so it was nice to see him too.

So after the two sessions I met up with the entire GDNet crew in attendance (almost – Ian was absent and Dan Marchant is sill MIA) and we went over the day and what was on tap for tomorrow and Seyi and Kevin gave a final thumbs-up to my site promotional video (which I’ll post online after the conference) after some minor tweaking. I also sat down with Josh Goldstein from Shizmoo (of Kung Fu Chess, Billiard Boxing, Word Ninja and others fame) to show him my latest build of Blitz Blox, which he though was really cool, saying he liked how it was a hardcore puzzle/strategy game and that it looked really good. Coming from a guy like him, that was just awesome. Of course he also managed to come up with an MMO version of the game on the spot, hahaha. Who knows? Maybe that’ll be a joint sequel product with Shizmoo games .

The GD crew broke up around 7 and I returned to the to drop off everything but the camera (oh yea did I mention I’m using Lissa’s Canon Rebel XT? OMG it’s so awesome I want one now!) to take with me to the parties I was planning on attending tonight. However I ended up skipping the IGDA members-only party entirely. I had been to enough parties in my GDC time that I wasn’t willing to stand outside in a huge line (even on a decent nite) to get into a building where I knew people were going to be packed together tighter than a can of sardines. Do the math. The building maxes out at around 900 people, and 1,773 members RSVP’d for the event…. I had a long rant here but I ended up deleting it. Suffice to say I just didn’t bother with it.

The IGF finalist party wasn’t much better, although this is pretty much the case with GDC parties in general, so I’m not really complaining. Still, it would be nice to have some more elbow room at these joints. It was good to see a lot of people there tho, like the duo from Pixeljam (Gamma Bros), Jon Mak (Queasy Games), Josiah Pisciotta (Chronic Logic), Keith Nemitz (Mouschief Co.), and The Behemoth guys (John Baez, Tom Fulp, Dan Paladin) also showed up, though I think they left just as fast because I didn’t get to say anything more than hi to em and shake hands all around before the crowd swallowed them up and I didn’t see them afterwards. Guess I’ll have to catch up with them tomorrow, tho I did have a nice talk with John earlier between Russ and Matt’s sessions.

So yea I left that party around 10ish and meandered back to the hotel to post up all my stuff for the night. Which I did. I dunno, I tried to think up a way to help the others with their coverage, but I’m so enmeshed in my own routine that it’s hard for me to actually realize what I’m doing – if that makes any sense. I think one of the main things that gives me an advantage is that (and I’ve said this before in previous entries prior to GDC) at the beginning of the week I realize and accept the fact that I will not be getting a lot of sleep this week, and that for five days, I can handle that. I’ll be a zombie by Friday night but by then it pretty much won’t matter, and I have the weekend to recover. That’s prob why I’m the only guy still awake right now. Experience counts too. After a while doing things (like parties) just gets a little ho-hum. I go to parties now more to meet people and talk to those I know than for the overall experience. So when I’m done talking I’m ready to leave, and it’s usually hard to talk much at loud clubs so I don’t last long.

I think I’m starting to ramble, so I’m gonna bring this entry to a close. Tomorrow’s when the conference really begins. I’m in Moscone West the whole day for sessions and the IGF Pavilion just has to be located in freakin Moscone North, so I’m going to be hoofing it a lot to get booth shots. Argh I still need to steal last year’s template for that. Bah I’ll do it tomorrow.

Nite.

P.S. – So yea I forgot to mention that the internet really sucks again this year and connection is really spotty (Unless we can steal a cable from one of the computers in the Press Lounge). So if you don’t see a lot of updates during the day in terms of journals and general coverage, that would be why. We’re doing our best, but we certainly aren’t calling it “live” coverage this year