This year’s Game Developer’s Conference was super fun and super busy. So busy that I didn’t have time to make my own video blog series! Fortunately our good friend Raymond was there to document the proceedings in HD.
It was a crazy week, and here are some scraps that I can remember…
* Chris was part of the “indie game maker rant” at the Independent Games Summit. He talked about the auteur theory in film and applied it to games. It went over really well and he ended up talking to some dude from the New York Times for a few hours after.
* We got to share our booth with fellow Winnipeg game developers Complex Games and Tom Korp. Good times.
* We handed out a ton of printed material, and had numerous artists approach us looking for work.
* Good buddy Tommy Refenes and I rocked the last IGS talk: “How to finish a game project you … HATE”. I thought it was going to suck, but it ended up being a lot of peoples’ favorite. It ended with friends Kyle and Tommy reciting a dramatic speech from “Independence Day” to cheers from the crowd.
* I realized that “Triple-A” sounds a lot like “Chipotle”.
* We had some very positive meetings with representatives from the major consoles.
* Chrissy and Raymond, while not officially part of the team, helped run our booth. They did a really great job, and it turned out to be invaluable – Chris and I could leave for meetings while they held down the fort. Raymond got really good at explaining the difficult UI of “Heroes and Villains”. (I’m -so- gonna fix that)
* We managed to get three people from TIGSource free expo passes.
* Met Charlie Cleveland! Mega64! Will Wright!
* But the best parts were hanging out with the whole indie crew. There is no group of people as talented, funny, creative and easy-going as this bunch – and the group is growing every year. Derek Yu, Phil Fish, Erin Robinson, Edmund McMillen, Kyle Pulver, Adam Saltsman, Ben Ruiz, Brandon McCartin, Cactus, Petri, David W, Alex May, the 2D Boys and so many others – thanks for a totally awesome time. At one particularly awesome partly, I drunkenly decided to spontaneously form a “human Katamari ball”. In any other group of people, this would have been an embarrassing failure – but with these fine gentlefolk, we had 15+ people hugging, running in a circle while singing “Na Na Na-Na Na Na Na-Na Na” while gathering more. Awesome.
* Baiyon.
So what’s next for IA? Its an open-ended question right now. Stay tuned for more updates! (and the eventual posting of our GDC footage)
