Digital Dave

Aside from the brutal introduction to San Francisco, my time there was great. I’ve wanted to go to northern California ever since I was stationed down south in Camp Pendleton. It’s more of a technology driven part of the world that has plenty of really cool people that are in to the same things that I am. Here in Kansas, I don’t quite get that. The internet is as good as it gets for me, which has worked out pretty well so far.

I definitely understand why people say that you should sell your soul, or at least lease it out, to go to the GDC. It really is a great thing to do. I ran in to some students, but I was mainly running into people who are in the industry. Hell, I even spoke with a CEO of a web games company. We even had a common ground — we both serve in the military. I also got some really great advice from some people who have been in the industry for a really long time.

The sessions were pretty good. The Independent Games Summit was incredibly motivating and inspiring. It was fun spending time in the expo hall, tinkering around and seeing some of the new technology that is coming out. I have to say listening to the postmortems during the IGS was the best part for me. It’s just fascinating to hear the stories from people going from absolutely nothing, to releasing a really cool game.

I spoke with a few companies about internships, which seemed to go “alright” (I didn’t get asked for an interview, so apparently I didn’t have something). Not that it’s a bad thing, but that sure was a prime opportunity to get something going since I was already out there with them. That’s alright though. I had a goof on my part. I forgot the list of companies that I had done some research on, which didn’t help me much on remembering who I wanted to talk too.

I went to the Microsoft Casual Games reception, IGDA party, and Suite Night. Everything else was either invite only, or not advertised well enough. By the time Suite Night rolled around, though, I was completely exhausted. I went there and found that you needed to be on a list to get in the cool rooms, which sucked. I didn’t have the patience to just bounce between the same 2 rooms, so I left after an hour. I met a lot of people during the IGDA party, in large part, by the motivational advice I got from one individual before the party even started. The bulk of my networking ended up coming from the IGDA party. There were quite a lot of people there, and alcohol was basically free, if you worked for it (Networked). At $8 a drink, I decided to work for it. I don’t drink (unless it’s free).

Speaking of being worn out. On average, I started my day at 8:00, and finished around 10-12 at night. If you’ve never gone, be prepared for that.

PARKING…

Don’t rent a car. That is all.

/PARKING…

I went to the Video Games Live concert on Friday. That was really freaking sweet… I recorded some video, but I realized a lot of it is already on YouTube. This was my favorite from the show. There’s just something about the music from that game that sends chills down my back. But in all honesty, the entire show kicked ass. Even this.

So all in all. If you can make it to the GDC, go! For real. You will not be disappointed, especially if you live in an non-game development rich area. I didn’t run into one person who gave me a strange look (well, besides one guy who didn’t believe I’ve been in the Marines for 7+ years), or even one person that refused to talk to me. Everyone was really nice and the stories were plentiful.

In fact. I’m actually thinking about driving down to the Game Developers Conference in Austin this Sept.

Alright. Time to catch up on homework.

Notes:

• I attended coding lectures that spoke about tools to debug graphics, and how to avoid writing bad code. I won’t be typing up all the notes, but if you would like a copy of what I wrote, just e-mail me.

View Thursday’s Pictures

MyPicks:

Very good artists in this competition

Yes. I got to play it… Fuck yeah.

Audiosurf FTW.

Notes:

• These sessions were so interesting (Bioshock: Stupid Story; Blizzard: MMO Design) and/or utterly confusing (Structure vs. Style) that I couldn’t write clear notes. Sorry.

View Wednesday’s Pictures

MyPicks:

Sweet Games

Whoah…

Can you believe this was the first concept to which would only become the current Little Sister (after 3 more concepts) in Bioshock? Cute, huh?

Yay! Lovely way to start the day!

It’s a Great Time to be an Independent Developer

View Pictures from the show

MyPicks:

Awesomeness

Welcome! (I liked the blur)

Because the Tie kicks ass.  I think he’s looking at my camera’s red light…

For being a Bad Ass

The super-student-indie-pro-AAA-wtfjusthappened-awsome award

Some Notes…

• From the World of Goo Minds
  • Make your game instantly rewarding
  • Do not accept anything less than 60% for digital distribution royalties
  • Keep your IP
  • Learn to talk incredibly fast while making crazy ass jokes that make your audience laugh their asses off instead of writing down notes for your lecture… Er. Yeah. =X
• N+ Post
  • Make a WELL DEVELOPED PROTOTYPE in an easy language to find if your game will be fun
  • Self Fund: Load or Grants
    • Best Royalty (obviously)
    • Fewest Financial Risk
    • Retains IP
  • Tackle Biggest Problems First
  • Outsource Early – People HATE getting stuff in the last minute
  • Build tools in C#. Fast and robust (I agree)
  • Render fonts to bitmaps if you’re supporting Asian languages
• Indie Reality Check
  • Hussle
  • MTV and Newsweek want to hear about your personal success stories. Be Personal if you want to get attention. Who gives a rabbits flying monkey’s ass if you coded a sweet game. Every game is sweet. But if you did it without a right arm and you have a learning disability, now that’s a story. ;p
  • You should have
    • Business Card, Website, and a Blog so people can get to know you better

View Tuesday’s Pictures

MyPicks:

Taken from the World of Goo lecture. Those guys kick so much ass, and are incredibly inspirational. Go Indie!

Trying to be “Social”

So, I was going to update this on a daily basis, but if you have never attended GDC before, know this -> They know how to schedule things that take your entire day away.  I didn’t even get back until 1am on weds from Tuesdays activities.  Plus. I’m not a media guy. So, bleh.

I was going to link pictures, but they are taking forever to upload. I’m going to bed. Another long day awaits for me tomorrow. *yawn*

By the way. The Award show will be aired on G4 in a few weeks. It’s definitely worth watching, even if you know who the winners are.  Some hilarious moments.  Plus the music kicked ass.

Sorry, Darius… I swear your articles didn’t go to the wayside today. For some unexplainable reason, I found it incredibly challenging to “bug” people today while they were looking through all the swag, or hanging out in between sessions. I had plenty of opportunties to fire up a conversation, but I just couldn’t cross that line to initiate it! I hope tomorrow goes a little better. At least I have the luxury of having 4 more days here, versus 2. What irritates me is that I know I am incredibly easy to talk to, when somebody else initiates the talking. If I could just initiate a talk, things would be on the verge of being perfect.

Funny thing is that, as many situations as I was in where I could actually spark a conversation, nobody around me tried to do it either. Maybe everyone had the first day hibby-jibbies or something…

Today had a lot of really cool discussion, along with many inspirational post-postmortems. Most notably, the guys from Aquaria. The creator of N/N+. And Pixel Junk.

The first session spoke about the state of the independent game industry. In an effort to not rehash the same content, Adam Martin wrote up a really good “jurnalist” style coverage. Check it out on his blog. http://t-machine.org/

Some quick highlights from today… Because us programmers like to get to the point.

• Input Output Theory
  • Concentrate on what your game outputs to the player.  Make it fun. Make it unique.  Don’t rehash the same ol` same ol` just for the sake of ‘that’s how it’s always done’.  Try to use algorithmic manipulation to do really cool things to give back to the player.  For example: Do strange feedback things with the graphics. See: Everyday Shooter.
• Company
  • You can not sell what you don’t own.  If you have 5 people on your team right now, and 2 years down the road, you decide to finish the game, but the guy who wrote the core code isn’t with you anymore, you’re out of luck.
  • Put together a company
  • Transfer your assets to the company
• Marketing
  • Develop a Personality
    • Introversion: “To challenge perceptions and push boundaries through the release of outstanding video games, to be free to explore”
  • Build Brand Awareness
    • Through employees, partners, press, customers.
  • Establish strong relationship with your community*****
  • Dealing with the Press
    • Send Copies of your Game
    • Do Press Releases
    • ONE point of contact between you and the press
    • Understand their deadline pressures
    • Provide them with an Asset CD
• Online Games (Flash, Shockwave, Etc.)
  • Will be Huge in the near future
  • Sites/Portals to think about
    • http://www.arcadetown.com
    • http://www.instantaction.com
    • http://www.garagegames.com/
    • http://www.kongregate.com/
    • http://www.flashgamelicense.com/

And everything after that became a blur.  While it was interesting, I was tired of moving my pen. (*sniff* where’s laptop *sniff*)

View Todays Pictures Here

MyPicks:

Got to play some games during lunch. Nice Setup!

For some reason, I found this pretty damn funny! The rational for it was that she played KD? for a lot longer than a game like God of War($60), but KD was only $20! And she was curious to see if time is a good way to put value to a game.

I spent today walking around San Francisco taking all kinds of pictures. I also went in a lot of the stores to see what kind of cool things I could find. I found a container store that had all kinds of containers, in all shapes/sizes. That was interesting. I also found the San Francisco mall, of which is a mammoth in and of itself. That thing had to have around 200 stores in it…. Wait, I was off.. There are FOUR HUNDRED stores in this mall. Needless to say, I didn’t make it past the first floor, I decided to bail from pure shopping madness.

I went in to the Moscone Center. They were still setting up and I’m surprised they didn’t kick my tourist looking butt out of there. After I snooped around, I came out to sit on the stairs to see if I could nail a networking opportunity. I probably could have, but my phone decided to distract me.

On my way back I found a Playstation store that rocked my socks off. I snapped a picture of it, and and another, and then I was told I couldn’t take pictures. ;p (*cough* still got’em!)

Erm, yeah. That’s all today held for me today. I need to do some homework now so my day is pretty much over.

But, more pictures. These are mainly of the architectural essence that is all around San Francisco. Some extremely sweet looking buildings here, and probably one of the biggest/widest hotel I’ve ever seen. Parc 55, I think.

Anyway.

Click here to view more pictures.

MyPicks:

Very cool

Get down with your bad self!

Play stations!

And here we go… Almost. There.

If today is any indication for what the rest of this week is going to bring me, I’m in for a crappy time.

Call this bad luck. The fella I was supposed to stay with this week isn’t in town, and the people that were supposed to pass on the apt. room key, locked the key INSIDE of the apartment. So that left me with trying to find a place to sleep, with little to no laptop battery, and a 10% cell phone battery, in a new, chaotic city. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get with him tomorrow, but who knows.

I do have one plus… When my phone is charged, at least. Having an iPhone is great. Following your position on google maps made my drive a LOT easier. I’m just thankful I found a Hostel that had room for me (and that was even luck). ;|

Speaking of car… Holy hell driving in this city is a nightmare. Well, Not driving, but PARKING! God I wish somebody out there would have told me to not rent a car. *snaps fingers* Now I’ve got to pay a heaping load of cash to just park the sucker. Shuttles would have been a lot easier. (San Fran Airport to San Fran, and from San Fran to San Jose Airport). Noted.

Oh!!!! The San Francisco HILLS! Holy COW! I’m sure you’ve seen them. They look a lot better in the pictures or on the telivision…. Not so much, in person. Crraaaaap! I felt like I was in boot camp all over again. Dragging a bag and carrying a laptop bag up those hills about crippled me!

Well, I promised pictures. Of which is about the only highlight from this trip so far. You can view some pictures here.

MyPicks:

Flying Over, Somewhere….

PAIN! (looking straight)

I got my pass to the GDC in the mail Friday. Giggidy… Giggidy…

Between helping my girlfriend move last weekend, I also spent some time researching some companies that will be at the GDC this year. I continue to meet people through the myGDC tool that they provide those that register. The majority that I have met are students, but include a few people that are actually in the industry. Obviously, a whole lot of people decline to join myGDC, but there are still a fair amount of profiles.

I head out Saturday morning. *bites nails*

I’m still trying to figure out how I’ll be updating my journal while I am there. I will have a plethora of pictures, I promise you that. I am a photo-taking-freak. I also plan on driving to some of the outlying areas to scout. I need to find a good place to live if I move to this area of California.  I’m not sure living inside the city is a good idea or not.