Original Sessions Planned
Sessions I planned to attend but understood I might flake on…
- Console Wars Revisited
- Pushing the Boundaries of Music Licensing
- Five Ways a Video Game Can Make You Cry
- Leveraging Your Data
- Ongoing User Engagement: How to Listen to Your Community
- The Game Renaissance: Art History for Game Devs

As you can see, I was interested in a variety of conference sessions!

Friday Night & Saturday Morning
Last night I passed out not long after catching up on uploading photos and checking out the happenings with other peeps. I will have to share the pix in my final blog. Went to bed at 12:30am and then got up at 7:30ish. Not too bad for a game event week!

I left home around 8:50am taking the Muni bus because my scooter was at the office in the garage. I had plans to ride my scooter home tonight. I grabbed an iced latte at my favorite place that makes them called the Roastery near work and also picked up an apple oatmeal from Jamba Juice. I looooooove steel oats now, and probably wont be able to go back to instant oatmeal.

Video: The Walk to GDC Conference
I did get a chance to record a video this day! The following video has me talking a bit about GDC and the walk to Moscone center from work. Beautiful day with clear blue skies. The video shows the little band that was outside the front door of the office as they were warming up for the St. Patrick’s Day parade.

Session: Leveraging Your Data
At around 10:14am I headed out for the Leveraging Your Data session, which sounded like it would be quite boring. I ignored my expectations and I am glad I did! This session was quite more scientific than I imagined. The most interesting parts was how data was shared for massive multiplayer online games from different aspects that only harm games such as farming and hacking, but what made it even more interesting was people who encountered issues in the game and the areas of a zone or map that caused the disconnects could be checked into. Definitely something that any game developer should at least tune into for a positive ingame experience.

Some statistics that shared whether or not people are likely to stay with a game based on their relationships with people in the game. One of the more interesting discussions happened during the questions after the presentation was over. One of the men asked how the female gamer behavior was in certain games. Dmitri Williams shares that women who were introduced to the game by a family or loved one tended to be more social in interaction of the game as they enjoyed discussing with others, while the women who came to the game on their own were KILLERS! He emphasized this, which caused everyone to chuckle in the crowd. I have to admit I have much more of a killer instinct in the game because that’s the goal, to play the game how it is intended to be played. I actually kind of get annoyed when people want to chit-chat during a fast-paced action game like Unreal Tournament 2004 or Quake Live. Why are we chatting when we’re trying to accomplish a goal to win the match!

South Hall Wanderer
Today was the best day to take photos because the hype from those who attended the show already died down and I wasn’t in any rush since I had today off from work. After taking at least 600 photos (I take dups automatically through camera settings, which results in sharper photos) the end resulted in 82 GDC show floor and booth pictures.

I headed over to the GDC store near the entrance of South Hall to check out any 2010 merchandise they had for sell. I purchased a white long-sleeve thermal shirt, GDC bear, water container and other little items to share the experience with GameSpot members in the community via Today on the Spot after GDC episode. I also grabbed as much schwag as I could to add to this little bundle giveaway so there were magazines, company or game branded pens, bag, and more to give away. Sophia and Kevin host the show and you can see the schwag in this episode of the show after the news portion beginning at timecode 3:22 and the trivia session near the end at timecode 23:15. There is no need to send me compliments about how awesome I am. I already know I am sweet.

Session: Ongoing User Engagement
The Ongoing User Engagement: How to Listen to Your Community session was an interesting perspective about iphone/touch applications and how they deal with community interaction. The spokesperson deals with an iphone game called PocketGods.

Bolt Creative hosted some creative contests that were shared like having people dress up as a pocket god and have a picture of them posing. The other contest requested for wallpapers to be created, but there was a catch; the entrants also had to install the wallpaper at their local apple store and take a picture of the wallpaper on a store computer. One of the other cute stories was about a 7 year old girl who sent the developers of the game feedback about the pocket gods needing to be much more mean.

When I first heard about it I thought he said 9 years old, but this little girl was 7 years old. Thinking back now, I think I might have thought funny things like this for cartoons at 7 years old. I was an avid Road Runner and Wiley Coyote fan.

What’s with the line?
Not long after getting out of the last session I was wondering what the big deal was about a huge line for a session and was concerned that it was my next session so I checked to see what the next room was for the Game Renaissance Art History session. I was happy to find it wasn’t my session and skimmed the room’s session name but the name of the session was vague. I found out later that Wil Wright was in on the session.

This picture doesn’t do the line justice, but you should know that this line looked like it went underneath the hall that takes you to the South Hall. Might as well go out with a bang, GDC! Last session of the year with a popular industry figure!

Session: Game Renaissance Art History
I am obviously not a game developer but the description for this session intrigued me. Before finding a seat I bumped into John Romero near the entrance of the session and he gave me a paper weight of a business card; it’s quite awesome to be honest. I felt like I received a medal award!

After sitting down I bumped into a friend from work who was talking to Robin Mayne from Bioware. I joked with Robin doing a type of worship gesture raising my hands up and down in honor of his work with Mass Effect 2, a game I finished a week prior to attending GDC.

The Game Renaissance: Art History for Game Devs took on a whole other meaning for me because I took a college course last year about Humanities and the Arts. I honestly do not believe I would have understood the background of what was explained in this session if it wasn’t for taking that course last year. John Sharp was full of interesting history but he also used some humor so it never touched the boring surface. There was also a lot of comparisons between what people define as art and design. A funny part about the open question session was how people were asking what to do with the future, but Sharp pretty much is a historian so he told them it was up to them, the game developers.

The End of GDC 2010
The crowds were leaving the North Hall and I while I was getting some video footage of people jumping on the escalator I bumped into Jason Della Rocca and we chatted it up for a bit about the GDC award show and his mix up with me and another red head at one of the parties. Always nice to meet gamers who remembers Mplayer and someone who has been working in the industry for so many years. I found out later that we both know a variety of the same people.

Dinner with Bioware
After this I headed back to the office only to hear my phone ringing… who could it be? One of the Bioware guys wanted to know if I wanted to head out to dinner for the last day of GDC and so we all met at the statue near Union Square not long thereafter. I had a chance to meet with some other Bioware leads that made Mass Effect 2 and Helen Stuckey, formerly Australian Centre for the Moving Image & now with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Helen shared her experience briefly about the transitions of games and film. She was unable to stay for desert because she had a flight that evening.

We walked up quite a few hills to this cute little French/European place called Cafe De La Presse near Nob Hill district. I took some pictures of the food and dessert I got there, and definitely need to drop by there again soon. Armando at the table was actually teasing me for taking photos of my food, “Look at you taking pictures of your food; are you a food critic?” [Maybe I will be someday. LOL]

The highlights of the night? Men and women were wearing dresses were all over the streets so we were all wondering what that the deal was when people kept coming inside the restaurant to go to the bathroom to the walk around downtown [found out later it was a Brides of March in San Francisco]; Zoolander [film] expressions by one of the Bioware guys; discussions of the Chocolate Rain song was also stifled in the breeze [hahah]; meeting a developer of the original Baldur’s Gate game; talking about some of the older generation of PC games; and lastly, these guys were the coolest people you will ever meet in the game industry. I kid you not. I kind of wished I lived in Edmonton, Canada from how awesome they were from humor to personalities because well, it’s hard to deal with people after a long week of GDC or E3.

This group was well-spirited for having a long week [some of them hosted sessions] at GDC to roaming the crazy things that happen in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for having me guys!

One of the lowlights about the night was finding out a day later that they actually hung out with my old pal, Tom Ohle after dinner. I had plans to meet up with Tom during the week, but it didn’t fall through. There is always this E3!

GDC Resources
If you ever want to see what it is like to watch GDC sessions, there is 2009 and 2008 sessions on GDCVault - check this page. Free education and experience from other people in the industry can never be a bad thing to discover! Maybe the 2010 sessions will display after GDC Canada and GDC Austin happen this year. If you have a way to attend GDC it is well worth the expense. Check the website for further details and either see if you can save up for next year or attend the Canada and Austin one later this year.

Desire to Understand Development
I have always had the desire to create mods, levels and skins for games and while I have dabbled in creating skins for Quake 2 models, level designs in strategy games (FPS shooter maps were difficult, but I did give it a try; brother was much better at it than I was), and a little bit of voice acting in a modification for Quake 3, I believe today’s games don’t allow people to test the tools like they used to. Seems that the communities lasted much longer for the games that did allow this. I have to admit that I was actually really good at Quake 2 models, which is basically adding a texture to a model in the game back then. The tools were quite easy compared to the Quake 1 skinning. I would be interested in taking courses for this aspect of game development, plus, my brother enjoys taking photos of textures so it’s not like I don’t have a source to go to. LOL

My desire to understand today’s game development was nurtured this year when I attended these GDC sessions. If I had to pin point a session that ignited the flame it would be the Bordelands session. Finding the best art to go with pretty much blew my mind on the amount of things it takes to consider an art style to stick with.

Seems like if I work in the media aspect of games there should be better understanding of what it takes to make games these days. I have to give mad props to Stevie Case for diving into game development many years ago along with Carrie Gouskas who now produces games for EA Mythic. Both of these ladies took a leap of faith to understand what it takes to make the games.

NEXT UP: SUNDAY > > >