My my, aren’t I the Classic Internet Literati now! This is Adam Atomic, blogging from the IGF Showcase at the Austin Game Developer’s Conference here in Austin, Texas. It’s actually been pretty fun so far, my last experience with it was in 2004, and it was a disappointment, except for a life-changing session by The Fat Man, who was Indie before Indie was Indie. It is still a very MMORPG- and (thusly?) business-oriented conference, with a fairly small expo floor. And yet, we’re still having a pretty good time!
The conference started on Monday with a whimper. Since the expo floor was closed the traffic through the IGF booths was pretty slow, though we did hook up with the lovely chaps from Beatnik and learned a lot about iPhone dev and sales patterns (hint: there are none) from Brian, i.e. the Pangea guy.
I attended Eric Zimmerman’s session on mass market gameplay on Monday afternoon. I have a lot of respect for Eric - he’s been running an indie shop for years now, and has written one of the very few books on Game Design that approaches it from a very grounded, sane angle that veers away from preposterous terminology and focuses on useful principles, particularly the idea of good games having meaningful choices.
Being a bit of a fan I was really looking forward to the talk, but I have to say that overall it was a very mixed experience. Eric’s thoughts were very clear and presented well, no “reading off the powerpoint” going on here. However, having read Rules of Play there was not a lot of new ground covered. The odd thing about the talk is there was a kind of contradiction throughout, between the things he was saying and the things he was presenting. He talked a lot about meaningful choices, short-term versus long-term goals, etc, but most of his examples were from casual games which take the “we’ll reward you for doing anything” slot machine approach. This sort of design methodology I think tends to devalue user input in the long run, rather than actually reward them. I got a slight sense that Eric sort of knew that there was some dissonance here, but maybe I am just being a PIG.
Tuesday was considerably more exciting, with fancy business types and fat cats cruising by the Goo! booth with some regularity. Tommy demoed Goo! for Intel, showing off massive HD glory on their four-core monstrosity. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say much about exactly who we met, suffice to say that Goo!’s future appears to be secure, and I managed to get some nice iPhone and Flash game hookups as well. It’s really exciting!
Last night was the big corporate party night. After bailing on the adorable GDC attendees party, Tommy finagled us into the swank Sony party at Six Lounge, with a wonderful story about how I was in the bathroom so I wasn’t around when Sony was handing out the invites. After gorging ourselves on their decadent sushi, strawberries, and sliders, we went down to the Steam party, which was packed, but considerably less swank. While Sony only offered free drinks up to $10 each, Valve was buying anybody anything. Unfortunately, the most expensive drink the bar offered was about $9. Ah well!
One staticky phone call later we met up with Robin and Alex from Beatnik at One-Two-One, a pretty quiet bar with a nice cushy rooftop. Then it was back to the Valve party, for more free but mediocre beverages. Note to self: never allow your new British friend to order you an Austin Sunrise. Ugh.
After overwhelming the Brits with a critical mass of sloppy college whores on the other side of Congress, it was time to catch a cab home. So remember kids: network, never buy your own drinks, and don’t call your wife to come get you at midnight because she will run over a can of spraypaint and blow a tire.
Now it’s Wednesday, and things here at the Conference are pretty slow. We’re expecting things to shut down pretty early, as the suits head back to their Real Jobs Someplace Else. Tommy (a fabulous house-guest, for the record) flies back to North Carolina tomorrow morning. I just hope I can survive the next ten days without another Indie around - TIGjam is so close, and yet so far…