Well, Day 1 of the main conference went off without a hitch. Started off with a complementary bagel, then heard from two fellers from the film school at USC (by this time I had
already successfully performed the arcane professionals' ritual known to some as "networking" - they are not kidding when they say you need to bring at least twenty dozen business cards), talking about how you can use the various Sciences to improve various aspects of the process of game design. They are apparently participating in the whole sort of "movement" to create a more-or-less unified game design vocabulary. Since they were already aware of
danc's efforts, I humbly referred them to my own hovel of a game design blag.
After that was a keynote. The music was too loud and aside from various amusing distractions (most notably, Peter Molyneux's husband being murdered) and announcements, the entire presentation consisted of a Microsoft rep jerking off about XNA on stage for an hour and a half. I like a lot of the technology going into it, though, even if they
do seem to think that "cross-platform" means the 360, the Zune, and both flavors of Windows. Kind of surprised that huge, ponderous, embrace-extend-extinguish
Microsoft would be the first ones to make a formalized "YouTube for games" but upon further reflection, with .NET and DirectX they were really in the right position for it, technologically speaking. So that's some points for them, I guess.
Attended a roundtable discussion on "Designing Conflict Resolution without Violence" which was very crowded. This might be an issue in some of the other roundtables I'm hoping to check out. Still, it was fertile ground for the whole "networking" thing.
After that, and lunch, I witnessed a
very well-attended speech by some apparently popular fellow by the name of Chris Hecker. He was talking about a programming concept of his own invention, "Structure vs. Style" (which isn't what you'd assume), and while I could tell there was some definite meat to the concept I felt that he needed to mull it over for a few more months before I was quite prepared to try to comprehend it fully. Also I kept nodding off.
I stomped around the exposition area for a goodly long while, seeking the companies who desire the skills which I can provide. It reminded me of the fact that I forgot to update my resume before coming here. Which is why I'm now quickly banging something out in another window. For those of you in the audience who are stalking me, there's a possibility that I'll be moving to Scotland!
After that I attended the Independent Games Festival and the Game Developers' Choice Awards, both of which were lovely and both of which you can read better about elsewhere.
