Mar/071
GDC 07 and More! Part 2
So I left off talking about the first days sessions and events, as I mentioned I got back to the hotel pretty late. Anyways I wanted to get up early for the Thrusday sessions, the first being Cliffy B’s Gears of War presentation which I was really looking forward to.
Me being the fanboy went a bit early to the presentation hall to get a good seat since I knew the place would be packed within no time. When I got to the presentation room there were only a few other people there, including Cliff himself! Seeing one of my inspirations for getting into the games industry in person was truely memorable moment. I talked to Cliff for a bit and snagged a picture with him. ( Which reminds me, I need get my pictures and the pictures from the other VV peeps and get them online)
After the Cliffy B presentation I got a call from one of the VV peeps asking if I was going to attended the Miyamoto key note session. I did not know that it was starting soon so I opted to go, though as soon as I walked outside of Moscone North to go Moscone South I noticed a very long line of people waiting to get into the key note session. At first glance the line did not seem that bad, but as walked around looking for the end of the line I realized that the line almost wrapped around the building twice! With the choice of standing in line for a few hours or going to more sessions, I chose the latter. Though it would have been cool to see Miyamoto in person as well, I heard I did not miss much at the key note, and anything I did miss or wanted to know could be found online, so no regerts there. The one session I did miss and was highly interested in as well was Chris Taylor’s talk on the design of Supreme Commander, since it was at the same time as the Gears of War session, perhaps I can find the audio recordings to find out what I missed.
Thus far of the sessions I have mentioned most were really good and informative, but I accidentally attended a really crappy session. I say accidentally, becuase I at the time I planned to go to session from Harmonix which was about their designs on the Guitar Hero franchise, but Mike, a fellow VV designer suggested I go to this particular session entiled, ‘Accessibility Idol’ with him due to the fact that Ernest Adams was one of the speakers. I was not familar with who Ernest Adams was but I took the suggestion and head to the session. Now here is where things go wrong, I’ll try to be brief here.
Basically the session started late to begin with, the speakers were taking way too long to get their act together. Overall there were more panelists than audience members which was not a good sign. Anyways, once things got on track the session started with this odd almost psychedelic video, which tried to be funny but failed miserbly at trying to show the concept of poorly designed games that are intended to be accessible to those that are handicapped. After the video the panelists started talking about their own personal game ideas for the premise of accesibilty.
Before I go on, I need to backtrack for second. Bascially this session started with no formal introductions or info about what the talk was actually about or who the speakers were, the audience was left in the dark so to say as the panelists went on without a care in the world.
Anyways cutting to the chase we went to this talk for Ernest Adams, and his part of this odd talk was kind of cool where he presented a plausible game concept in the realm of accesibilty that involved a very simple flight sim of airships and zepplins. After he presented I kind of got the jist of what these people were trying to do. Bascially they were doing an ‘American Idol’ clone with many speakers and judges to approve or disapprove of game ideas. Kind of a lame premise for a GDC talk but apperently it was accepted and in all its lameness was presented. After Ernest Adams, we walked out on the session as did many others.
So at the end of the day me and some other VV peeps head out to dinner before going to any parties. We went to this really great sushi place that was across the street from Biscut and Blues. The night before, I was trying to convince some peeps to go down there with me but I ended up by myself at Jack in the Box. Anyways that was the night before…this evening we enjoyed lots and lots of sushi due to the almost endless supply of ‘sushi boats’ passing by and large ammounts of specials we ordered.
After dinner we headed to Suite Night, which was an open GDC party at the W hotel. Boy was this place overcrowded! I did not stay their long, maybe for a half hour or less, at which point I headed out with Mike. I believe Mike went back to the hotel, so I called up my friend in the area and went sight seeing with him for a few hours before heading back to the hotel myself.
On Friday, were last few sessions of GDC and also the day I was going to head back to Albany on a late night flight. Nothing interesting happened on the last day excecpt for some vendors handing out free Monster energy drinks in the morning at the front door of the convention center. No better way to start the day than with high levels of caffeine and sugar!
So that about sums up my trip last week in San Francisco, hopefully next year I will be able to attend GDC once agan.
Thanks for reading.
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2:00 am on March 22nd, 2007
sorry for our crappy session…in our defense of starting late, it was because the AV people and the room set up people were late, which was a common tale for GDC sessions that week, and two of our contestants were missing due to illness and we made the video because one of our main judges was too sick to stay and had to fly back to baltimore. we did, however, introduce the session and the speakers along with what they’d been challenged to do. the point, which we tried to get across, was that it was a contest about game designs that those who are quadriplegic could play.
anyway, if you have any constructive advise about a design challenge session that helps get people interested in game accessibility, i’d be interested to hear it. we were very disappointed in the audience turn out and that pretty much crushed us before we began. it would have been also handy if GDC had put up the contestants names on the signage…but that’s another story. we’re not a perfect group of people but we took a chance that this might be an odd way of getting people to learn about accessible design since we are used to having about 2 other people in the audience — so actually this session was our biggest session in the four year’s we’ve been going to GDC. kind of frustrating to say the least.