This GDC was a strange one for me. Last year I didn't have any assignments and simply dragged on the coat tails of
Hammer while we appropriately dodged meetings and played hang-man through the keynotes of some of our respective game idols. It was pretty much a perfect week. And I remember coming back totally pumped from learning more of where our industry had spawned from (not necessarily where it was going), but none the less, happy as hell to be part of this stealth Katamari running through the entertainment budgets of millions.
Last week, I was just too tired to care. I still had a fantastic week, don't get me wrong, but I found myself in the press room downloading keynotes alone instead of getting up early for the 9ams (and damn everyone of you who won one of those thousand HDTVs at the Xbox keynote simply because you are a freakin morning person).
Part of the reason this year was so odd for me was running around with a
mike instead of a pen for a change. I offered to do a day of coverage for a
web site just getting off the ground. The kids there had never been to GDC, and I had never tried video journalism so we were all flying by the seats of our pants. As much as I hate to admit it, the money is much easier, and it was a nice break from the usual pressure. I am way too old to get use to it, but it wasnt so bad leaving the show with nothing more than a hangover and a check rather than 5 stories assignments about some video card the company won't even loan me to preview or a PSP game that we played over a month ago.
One of the talks I will never forgive myself for missing was
Will Wrights preview of
Spores which is becoming a Fable of the game gossip it seems.
Cranky was staying with me over the week, and his comment was simply that Will was actually God. He may in fact be correct. If any human were to be given the title, who else but the creator of Sim City to take the honor? At least he knows how the shit works. I am also sad to have missed the talked on sexuality in gaming, but I will leave that for another post.
For me, the week was mainly about people. All the new team writing for
Gamegirladvance was actually in one city, Justin, Corinna were here for the awards, I finally met
CliffyB (who I am pretty sure has the hots for seanbaby),
Bentllama was in town and I did a sit down interview with him that was scrapped due to background noise, I had spontaneous karaoke in a cab with Raymond that is too fucking weird for you to even believe, but the highlight for me was to finally have the chance to spend time with
Zoe Flower whos work I enjoy, but more importantly admire as a person. Oh wait, that was actually a tie with the night I spent with Nicole and Heather, two female game developers from Ubisoft Montreal but there will be more on that later at E3. You better practice up ladies ;)
OK, that is my empty download. I don't have many photos from the week since my camera is so huge, but thanks to Kholer, I do have some shots from the after party the night the "Walk-of-Game" was officially opened at the Metreon. The "Walk of Game", the gaming version of Hollywood's Walk of Fame, now contains stars for Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, the creator of "Pong", and Shigeru Miyamoto, the "Donkey Kong" creator, as well as Halo, Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog (who I totally made out with afterwards in the green room).
He looks just like Pac Man!
