GDC 2009 Blog Day 1
Well Day 1 of GDC 2009 was quite eventful and not totally in a good way. The good news is that I made it to San Francisco. The bad news is that my luggage is somewhere between JFK in New York and SFO in San Francisco.
I got up at about 3 am to finish getting ready for the trip. I got packed and left about 4:15 figuring I'd have plenty of time to get to the flight. I actually nearly missed it! I misjudged the time and when the plane would leave so I nearly missed it. Not that it would have been a bad thing since the plane ended up having a mechanical problem that put us back over an hour. The problem? A switch was loose and was saying something was broken that wasn't. By the time we left though it was already too late to catch my flight to San Fran so they had given me an alternate. I missed that one too since it was all the way across JFK!!! That requires a TRAM ride, you cannot just walk.
So they booked me on another flight that I nearly missed with a DIFFERENT airline. I started with Delta and ended up on American Airlines. I knew I was going to have luggage issues when AA hadn't gotten my electronic ticket saying I was rebooked on that flight. So Delta didn't get them my luggage in time or it wasn't packed since they didn't know it went on that plane.
This means I had NO clothes when I got here except for what I was wearing (and I'm glad I decided to keep my jacket and not put it in the suitcase!). This means all my nice clothes, suit, etc are not here. I really hope I get them by tomorrow (they said I might have had it by tonight but I doubt it at this point).
I needed more clothes stat so I went to Macy's and ended up spending $171 on 1 shirt, 1 pair of pants, 1 thing of underwear, 1 thing of socks, and 1 thing of undershirts! It was INSANE. But at least I will look good (and people wonder why I don't buy name brand usually). I'm also getting a few copies of my resume printed to drop by the career expo with some companies. CCP, Bioware, Bethesda, and others; I am looking at you!
Microsoft had its bar/cafe set up again this year and I'm sure G4 will be setting up again soon, that area looked ready to go for Xplay. Halo Wars was definitely being demoed as was Dawn of War II (they had PCs and Xboxes all over the place for people to play). They were also showing off a bunch of community made games that were kinda cool! Its amazing what individuals can create. The Expo and Career Expo areas weren't open yet but construction was underway and they look just as incredible as last year from what I could see.
Then came the IGDA party. I had registered once I got here and got all of that straight so I was good to go. I ate some killer sushi at Sushi Rock up the street from the Triton. I'm right across from Chinatown literally! Its a block walk through the entrance. After that I made it to the Westin and began networking. I knew I should have brought more business cards but they'd probably have been in my luggage. Luckily I kept my laptop and the like as a carry-on. Anyway, I met a Fallout 3 dev who did a LOT of the landscaping for the game. We talked Fallout in specific and gaming in general for a while. I don't remember his name offhand but I'm going to catch it tomorrow since he'll have his namebadge on him then. I met with some other students who are looking to get into the field as well including one whole group of them from Chico State here in Cali. Lindsey and Michael were really cool and I talked with them for a while! It was nice finding kindred (and skewed like me) spirits. :D They've actually set up a whole mock studio at Chico and are working on putting out an actual game! Thats a really cool idea and I love it!
Tomorrow will be a lot more interesting (and I hope I meet more cool people and get to hang with the others I met tonight). If you want me to look at games or pubishers/developers let me know! I'm already checking out a God of War booth (if they have it), the new Final Fantasy game (if its on display), the Versus mode for RE5 if they have a booth, and the OnLive game console if the developer is here. If there are other items let me know!
I'm off to bed now. I have a workshop fairly early in the morning (10:30) on creating an Independent Game Studio. I'll write again tomorrow with pictures if I take any!
Peace!
Gerry