Game Developers Conference 2011

I recently attended the 2011 GDC (Game Developers Conference) in San Fransisco.  I went there to check out latest trends and tech, network and squeeze in a little sight seeing as every chance i get to go somewhere new, i make time to enjoy the splendors of the town.  Heres a recap of my experience.

We first arrived it was a bit damp, but not too cold.  San Fransisco's climate is the best in the world Imo.

Typical SF city street, damp, a few homeless and some cop cars.

We checked into a small hotel called the Hotel Bijou, somewhere near Market and 5th St.  It was small and quaint, nothing special.
We dropped our bags off- grabbed some coffee and a pastry and headed off for the conference to meet up with a few more friends who were former Garage Games employees and a few Artists.
I had a brief meeting with  Matt Tubergen of W3I , in late morning on Wedensday to discuss the idea of making My Virtual Girlfriend a freemium game.  One of the top trends in the IOS market right now is freemium games.  On average they generate more revenue than a paid application and it's a lower barrier to entry for most players as it is a free download.  Matt is the founder of and recharge studios who created dolphin play for Iphone.  It is one of the more successful freemium games available currently.  Matt is a sharp guy who knows business development and IOS well, He was there to seek out IOS developers and offer to publish their freemium games.  We discussed making My Virtual Girlfriend a freemium game for a bit but after careful consideration, I felt it was not the best choice.  It would require us to change the game significantly and therefore would become a new game altogether.   I think a game really needs to be built with "freemium" in mind, from the beginning,  for it to work best.   We shook hands and left the possibility open that there may be future products we could collaborate on.

Mr. Prangley just arrived.

I met with up with a good friend,  Mr. Kevin Prangley at the Powell drop off from the Bart.  Hes a rockstar concept artist and a former Co-worker from both Petroglyph and Instant Action.  He was here to meet with the guys from Certain Affinity, Massive Black and just checking out the show.  He's looking for a job right now so if you're a studio that needs a kickass concept artist, check out his portfolio.
 We dropped off his bags, then walked to the Moscone Center to meet up with our other Artsy friends.

Don't call them tech artists! Matt O and Starr S.

We met up with Matt Ostgard, and Starr Shaw.  his great grandfather is George Bernard Shaw and Starr loves to tell us about him).  Matt was there looking for a job and Starr was there to check out all the latest gadgets and tech since he was recently re-employed at Garage games.  We all had just the simple Expo pass badges, and didn't attend any conferences but we certainly made use out of those passes by canvassing the show floor all day.

The GDC was Packed and full of geeky energy.

It was pretty busy at the conference with a lot of good energy this year.  It felt like the industry was finally starting to pickup a little.  There was a considerable attendance and a nice employment pavilion in which quite a few studios were hiring. I was able to meetup with another old friend from EA, Alan Blouin, who is now the art director at Big Point Studios.  He was on a crazy hiring spree and looking to find talent to recruit. 

After the show- we headed hung out with Elie and some of the Garage Games guys.  They rented some space at Jillians for beer and billiards.   After losing to my friend Elie, at pool (I scratched on the 8-ball).  I talked for a bit and talked with Kevin Henshaw, Vice President and Biz dev of IMVU.com.  Really cool guy with a keen insight on business. 

Arn from Toucharcade and yours truly.

Shortly thereafter Starr and I headed out to the TouchArcade party at the Marriot for a little social networking.  This was was one of the coolest parts of my trip.  I got to meet both Arn and Eli from Touch Arcade.  Eli wasn't all that conversational with me. In fact, he came off as a bit of a gaming snob actually, I guess thats what success can do to some people... Here here I say, were all good chaps in here, no need for that kind of poppycock!  The good news is though is that his partner Arn, was down to earth and super cool. We talked for a bit, He knew of My Virtual Girlfriend and had mentioned it to a few friends on occasion.  Actually, it seems everyone at the party had heard of the game.  (thanks to Winda ;).  He showed me the latest game he was playing called "Disc Drivin"  it was a turn based social , racing game for Iphone.  Sorry Arn- I lied about photoshopping the picture to make it look better.  I have to give my viewers the raw!  I got to meet up with a lot of other really cool people.  Kyu Lee from Gamevil - the makers of Zenonia2 for Iphone.  I got to meet with some of the creators of Skeeball and tap tap revenge.  I met Ian Harper, the managing director of Hungry Shark for iphone.  How cool is that?  I love hungry shark, He said the game has sold over a million copies already and they are doing great things at Future Games of London.  (FGOL).  I was especially impressed with this one lad named Alex Schwartz from Owlchemy labs.  He and I really hit it off.  We have some common ground to share.  We both made a controversial game that the news love to cover.  We're both Indie developers, and we both used unity to make our games.  However, I think his game is a tad more of a press magnet than mine.  He is the creator of the hilarious "Smuggle Truck" game, which is soon to be released for iphone.He demo'd the game for me and my overall impression was really good.  The art looks fantastic, It's uniquely and funny.  It also employs a simple game mechanic that anyone can get into.  I see the potential for this game being a HUGE hit.   I just hope Apple doesn't freak out on it and not approve the submission (which is exactly what happened to my friend Tom, who worked on Moral Decay).   But Alex means no harm with it,  his intentions are good, he just wants people to be entertained, laugh a little and enjoy the game.   He sees the whole immigration process in America for what it is and it makes fun of the process, not the people.  Although the game environment focuses on immigrants south of the border, he hasn't forgot our northern friends either.  He is making sure that there are White people in there too :).

This is how you turn 2 beds into 4

Early morning flights and a lot of walking, make for some tired guys.  Our room accommodations weren't the best, Starr had only planned to attend with Matt, Kevin and me came after they booked the hotel, so 4 of us, crammed ourselves  into a small 2 bed room and no, Kevin did not sleep on top of Starr.  Being the creative I am,  I had a better plan!  We split the bed up into 4 pieces, literally and each of us took a spot.  It took up literally all the space in the room to get it done, but it worked, wasn't a bad sleep at all (Aside from the bums screaming till 3 am and one of the guys (whom i won't mention), Hellacious snoring.  I finally got to bed and had some reasonable rest.

Day Two, we spent Canvassing the floor again, checking out all that we missed on the first day.  I got to meet with Stefano Corazza, who is the CTO  from Mixamo.com, super great guy.  He showed me their new Auto-rigging tool which looked like an absolute dream.  It creates a rig for your character and you can export back to max as bones or even biped (with the help of a script they have).  He added me to the beta, which comes at a  perfect time because im currently working on the My Virtual Boyfriend, and I can't wait to try it out.  Any developers out there who don't know what Miximo is, let me tell you.  It's a one stop shop for character animations.  The website has a web-enabled tool, that allows you upload your characters and preview animations on them in real time, all through the web browser.  It then allows you to customize and edit those anims before making a final purchase and exporting for use in your game.   Super useful for programmers, producers, designers and general artists (most animators that i know don't like it because it threatens their job security :), but a few embrace it as an alternate resource for the simple walk cycles and Idles.  The prices are affordable and the ease of use is excellent.  This is a company that's going places.  I was able to use some of their anims in My Virtual Girlfriend about a year ago.  I only wish i had heard of them sooner, i could have saved a lot of time.

3dvia game engine- $.99 licensing fee

We collected some swag, networked and seen a few really good indie game engines such as: torque, Unity, and this new one:  3Dvia.  And with affordable pricing with both torque and 3dvia, ($99), I suspect we'll see a lot more indie developers putting out some really cool things this year.  I also met up with some old friends from Petroglyph.  They had a booth at GDC and were demoing their new product "Rise of the Immortals".  The game looks really great and i was impressed with it and apparently, i even helped create it.  Mike Legg (founder of Petroglyph), said they had re-hashed some of the Mytheon assets (which i helped to work on) and incorporated them into this new game and that I'm even mentioned in the art credits.   No wonder the game looks great :)  LOL, Thanks Mike!

Chinatown- San Fransisco

We  headed back to the hotel after the GDC, It was a little earliy, so we decided to check out China town.   There was a lot of cool shops and artsy things to see.  We walked a lot, China town seems to extend for a while.  Mostly comprised of little gift shops, jewelry and restaurants.  We then went on towards the Embarcaro to see the bay bridge and a nice sunset.  We then went back to the hotel for a bit and rested our feet before heading to dinner.

Shortly thereafter Starr and I met up with Arfan Chaudhry  for dinner at Cheesecake factory.  It was my first time meeting with someone from twitter, whom I didn't already know and it was a bit spontaneous.   Arfan is somewhat of an entrepreneur business developer, working on creating a credit monetization system for games.  Although what he does is non-applicable to what we are currently working on,  he was still good company and It was great to meet with him and hang out. We had much to talk about in regards to games and monetization in general.  For 23 years old, the guy really has a really bright future.

Our patio view from Cheesecake Factory in Union Square

It was just the  3 of us at first, rapping and talking shop, but then we were joined by Matt, then came Steven Garcia - A buddy programmer of mine and former co-worker at Instant Action.  He had landed some contract work over at Nihilistic.   We sat, chatted and ate on the patio for a bit then the guys wanted to hit up some clubs,  So i went back to the hotel, checked my emails then called it a night.

Day3.  I'd seen really all there was to see on the show floor at GDC, so It was time for some sight-seeing!  Matt stayed back and continued to get critiques on his art and look for work, while Starr and I decided to check out the town.

We took a cab torward, Haight/Ashbury and Golden Gate park.   The shops offer a lot in the way of diversity and unique items.   From sub-culture smoke shops to pop culture fashion, to Nostalgic toys and items, there is something there for anyone.  (A lot of drug addicts there too, but pretty safe).  From there we walked over to to the Golden Gate Park,  It was full of the usual Joggers, bikers and hippies.

It offers a complete contrast from the pure concrete jungle of downtown San Francisco.  The park is full of Large trees and overgrowth.   San Fransisco offers nearly every climate, and represents every culture.  It's no wonder why people love to visit this place, I would even consider living there if it werent so expensive.  We visited the Japanese Tea Garden which had some really unique landscape.  Starr and I sat and had Udu (a Traditional Japanese noodle soup, for lunch with some green tea.  

 After our lunch we decided to head back to GDC to meetup with Matt and get an early start back to the airport.  Starr wanted to take a little detour to see Japan Town, So we walked- all the way from Golden Gate park to Japan town in Central Downtown SF.  We walked about 3 miles or so before arriving.  I wasn't that impressed with it, it's less intersting than China town imo- but Starr loves anything Japan and we had to see it before we left.  I think we were expecting a bit more touristy stuff there but it seemed like it catered to more to the local.  

We hadn't spent 5 minutes there and it was time to go.  We scrambled around the block to find a cab, and we were starting to get nervous, but we managed to find a cab that drove us back to the Moscone center in time to grab our belongings from the coat check and meetup with Matt.  

We then rode the Bart back to SFO, where we boarded our plane back to Vegas.  

I had a good stay in San Fransisco.  I got to see all the great things that game development has to offer, new engines, and new tools.  I also had the opportunity to meet with a lot of really cool people, and caught up with some old friends and even had some time to do some touristy things.  I'm already looking forward to what next year has to offer.