GDC Canada 10

So, GDC. Game Developers Conference, which has the same acronym as my industry membership, holds their conferences around various parts of the world - USA San Fran (Prime), USA Austin (Online), China, Europe, and finally the newest, 2nd run, is Canada. These conferences are a gathering of professionals from the gaming industry to talk, discuss, learn, inform, promote, network almost anything related to the gaming industry. I waded among the sea of pros, which wasn't that thick of a sea actually. It was a light and pleasant crowd, and then there was the occasional one that talked too much, but that's normal.

GDC Canada was situated at the Vancouver Convention Centre this year, though only a mere floor, which was sufficient (to a certain extent) for the size of the conference. I must say, whoever designed the convention map in the program UPSIDE DOWN is not very smart... for obvious reasons. Shame on their graphic designer.

As unrelated as all the panels I visited may seem, all the panels I went to (minus one) were all inspiring and interesting, regardless of its relevance to my present career. Just thought I'd note.

Day 1
I couldn't wake up for the 9:30 keynote opener. It was about social gaming, which was a meh topic for me so I took my time. My first session was the 'Ask the Decision Makers' at 11 where they featured four guys of different professional backgrounds (Capcom, Next Level, Playstation Network, F9E) and companies discuss pitching. What the higher ups want to see, and how to sell your idea well.

1:30 was 'Character Voices' with Zach Hanks where he touched on conceptualizing, casting and recording voices for characters in games. Awesome to know that he was involved in Dawn of War II. He was an even more amazing voice actor.

At 3, I sat in on 'The Art of Conversion' which was probably the least interesting to me as it revolved around social gaming.

4:30, 'Can We Talk? - Speech in Videogames' turned out to be a lot more technical than expected, though was still informative. Again, there were reps from various companies (Blue Castle, EA, Radical, Proganda) touching on their expertise and the process of making, organizing and using speech/dialog data.

Day 2
Started the day off with an awesome session on 'Bringing Dragon Age to Life' at 11 where the lead animator and lead character designer both came in to talk about the process they went through to create such a diverse and memorable cast, both main and side characters. Then they threw in some teaser monsters (The Harvester and the Strider) from the next expansion following Awakening. Means I'm holding off on another run of Dragon Age for a bit longer!

1:30 was Sony's presentation and demo on Playstation Move and Stereoscopic 3D technology. The room was too small to fit the amount of people who showed up to check it out. They first went through to explain their Stereoscopic 3D technology to come and they even had us use 3D glasses. The 2nd half was the background to the Playstation Move and a live demo using the developer demo kit. It's impressive enough that I might actually want one for those Playstation Move games to come just by seeing what can already be done via just the demo.

To finish it off, 4:30 was a lecture on leader practices by Brian Sharp of Bungie. The room was surprisingly insanely packed. The lecture was also nicely packed with some enlightening advice as well. Self note: will work on locking eyes.

The number of companies in the Expo hall were a bit disappointing, as I did expect more companies to participate. I haven't visited other/previous GDCs, so I don't think I can judge fairly though. Regardless, ModNation Racers was playable in there and I got to give it a whirl. There was a bar in the middle of the hall too. Not sure what it meant. I didn't ask.

The whole conference wasn't all just a one-way dialog: I somehow managed to establish some "connections" which I hope will see through eventually.

I also saw Shane Bettenhausen pass through. His name slipped my mind during that moment so I couldn't give him a shout out. Probably the only guy I recognized at the conference besides Tommy Tallarico who came to do his keynote for the game career seminar. Speaking of him, I hear VGL was not bad. CHRONO MUSIC - WHY NOT MY YEAR?!

Overall it was a pretty great conference for those who know more or less the ins and outs of the gaming industry and want to dive deeper and with more detail. The conference showed just how much this social gaming thing is really taking over too. LONG LIVE HARDCORE D:!

(Tagging this under conventions, even though it isn't one.)

And Then Some...

So I returned from Las Vegas Friday (report to come). I did a little sleep catching up on the weekend, got to watch Kick-Ass, bummed around a bit, and threw in my name in some contests for kicks.

Monday rolls around and I win a pass to Game Developers Conference (GDC) Canada happening Thursday and Friday. I feel unworthy of such a pass. I'm unprepared (considering I didn't see it coming) and feel that it might just be out of my league. Regardless, I will go and experience (and report back) what most people not already in the profession can't afford to experience.

Life doesn't want to give me a break yet it seems.

Finishing Up...

The last few weeks went by like it was nothing. Returned from Sakuracon and went straight back to school. Even birthday celebrations were extremely low key this year. Came home late the night before from the drive and slept like there was no tomorrow. Then topped it off with some delicious Pizza Hut pizza and Clash of the Titans. Then the rest of the semester was dedicated to working on trying to finish up final projects/assignments for classes and juggling grad show preparations on the side.

I almost forgot what goodies working with a real client comes with. For my major project, I had the opportunity to present my work to the rest of the info tech department who were in charge of all the hard/soft technologies in the school at their monthly meeting. Apparently my announcement attracted other parties who were interested thus the attendance hit a new record. The presentation didn't even end there: on top of the totally unexpected 15 plus faculty members, the meeting was a video conference connecting other faculty at the other campus locations in the craziest projector room setup. No pressure, really.

Insane presentations don't like to end there... the final semester finisher was the full 8-hour day of presentations in the conference room where each student had 20mins each. It didn't feel as dreadful as last semester, but there was a bigger audience turnout... and my butt started getting sore after lunch. Speaking of lunch, we were provided with ugh!cafeteria pizza and butter cookies again this time. Luckily my presentation was before lunch this time around so my stomach didn't have to flip during my speech.

After that finally ended, it was still too early for celebrations but my classmates felt otherwise. Hay guyz, school's not over - there's still the grad show. More delays, more rushed work... can't say much now but it seems to be coming together for the time being.

So, now. I'm in Las Vegas - 'sup?

Sakuracon 2010: A Mellow Report

A somewhat spur of the moment decision lead to an Easter weekend at Sakuracon in Seattle.

Day 1
ToFu and me made our way down 6am, waited at the border for 1 1/2 hrs, got to the convention at 10am. The registration was absolute shit. For someone who reminded the friend to sign up for will call but didn't do it themselves is a total retard. Yes, THAT WOULD BE ME. So for the next 3 yearshours we lined up for registration while the will call line took a mere ten minutes max.

When we finally got out, we first went to meet DJ Sharpnel. After the autograph, there was the Noizi Ito panel that consisted of relatively standard questions, plus the expected confession of "I love you, will you marry me?" kind of deal. So she is married apparently. The panel nicely finished off with my friend asking about whether she was aware of the Haruhi genderbenders. Sadly she doesn't allow herself to draw them since they may be interpreted as official art. Damn, so close.

We did some wandering afterwards: dealer's, peeked into the speed dating, console rooms, Microsoft room. I somehow won the daily draw at the Microsoft room on our visit, but I regret not picking up Halo instead of a spare controller, especially considering I've been presented with a gold subscription (more on that at another time).

The registration lineup really tired us out though. We/I wanted to go to DJ Sharpnel's hour at the rave party (lol otaku rave) but it wasn't for a few hours so we tried to pass the time at random panels - AMV room and Press your Luck (some game show). As much as we tried to hang on, we finally gave up and decided to grab food at the Taphouse even though we originally considered starving until the next morning. We made it back to the convention for DJ Sharpnel. I suppose he sounds alright live but he used the same beat without much variety unlike his CD releases. Got to experience some strange otaku activities in there: girl in her underwear, strange clusterfuck jump-humping, random high people saying hi, and then the usual train dance.

After his performance, we finally decided to call it a day and not wait for the swimsuit contest (yes, swimsuit contest) so we made our way to ToFu's friend, Garret's, place. The downside of the area he lived in was the lack of public parking. We had to park on top of this insanely steep hill most of the weekend and that created an unwanted exercise routine. At his place, fortunately the two cats there did not phase me with the help of allergy meds so the sleep was peaceful, minus the angry truck that drove by early next morning.

Day 2
Garret joined us the next day. We went to a locally famous bagel shop for brunch and then it was his turn to wait for registration. His was a massive 4 hours compared to our 3. While he waited, we revisited the dealer's room and found a hidden gem table of goodies. My first purchase: $6. I sure started off well. After the quick dealer's room browse, we made our way to the Noizi Ito signing and then met up with Garret and Neku after they were done with reg.

Since I was questioned by a number of people whether I'd be going to the Touhou panel, we figured we should go take a look anyway since the turnout wouldn't be that massive anyway... or so we thought. We were wrong. The room was too small to fit everyone and there were some that had to stand outside and wait. The panel itself was nothing special: a rundown of the history of its popularity and some bogus statistics and facts that had little to no credibility.

The panel was followed by a photoshoot and some after meet which we did not attend. I forgot to take photos. They'll be around the internets prolly. Although I must say leaving early to make it to the concert that kinda sucked makes me wonder what they ended up doing. I'll need to work on my crossdresser senses though. There has been too many traps.


Back to the concert - Dazzle Vision and HIGH and MIGHTY COLOR. Dazzle Vision is angry death metal but with a cute-looking vocalist. HandMC has become this strange death metal as well, but Yusuke is losing his touch or something... due to the loss of Maki perhaps? Long story short, the concert was a disappointment. I decided against getting HandMC's autograph, so we went out for food after and Mina joined us as well. It was prime food-eating time, so our choices were limited and so we ended up at the Taphouse again. [insert joystick jokes]

After some good food, we went back to the convention for the Iron Artist After Hours and of course the two artists, ToFu and Garret participated. The After Hours version was definitely a lot of interesting since the drawing contest allows such words as 'thrusting' and 'banana hammocks' and how it was mandatory to draw boobs or it's a given that you won't get voted.

Day 3
As usual, the last day's main purpose was the dealer's room. We first got breakfast from an organic market nearby and made our way to the convention for the lolita fashion show! It was quite neat.. minus the traps. The girls who crossdressed the guys outfits were so much more better looking than the actual guys in the guy clothes. :/

After the fashion show, we went to the dealer's room real quick before making our way to the Vocaloid panel. We were late to show so we didn't get entry until half way through. The vocaloid panel was also hosted by some of the Touhou crew (surprise surprise). They made us watch through one of the one-hour plus long medleys. The panel followed by a photoshoot (more traps) and then we moved ourselves back to the dealer's room. In the last few moments, I managed to get a few deals there. Safest haul yet. A side note, there are no plans on beating that record.


After the fun in the dealer's room, that was that. We sat around the closing ceremonies because there was really nothing left and we were eventually kicked out. The rest of the evening was spent hanging out at Garret's place, playing BlazBlue while waiting for Summer Wars to finish downloading. We watched that and then just chilled until we realized it was already midnight and we needed to jet. On our way back up, we stopped by Walmart and got some US-exclusive goodies. The border was dead so the way up was pretty smooth, minus the nasty rain/wind/dark weather.

I don't usually take photos at a convention, but this Cloud was just that awesome.


Strange, both the trip started and ended up with wonderful spillages. Prior to the trip, nail polish went effing everywhere (not cool). Post trip, the ice tea I got from Walmart cracked in my car trunk. Life is telling me that REALITY SUCKS, ENJOY THE FREEDOM WHILE YOU CAN CUZ WHEN YOU RETURN, REALITY IS READY FOR YOU.

No, Bunnies dammit!

[insert April Fools joke]

I don't have much brain power left to really execute any sort of witty April Fools joke. Usually after the 1st means Easter weekend follows, which means the beginning of April, which means there's only 20 days left until the end of the semester, which means graduation is soon, which means there's not much time left. I've already been doing a lot of complaining about the running out of time thing, but that's the only thing on my mind.

The past week involved the ending of my mentorship. On the final two days, I was finally given some interesting productive work (research was fun too, but that's pre-production). A new intern came and took my seat as he had priority as a "full time intern" as opposed to this weak one-day-a-week setup our school has. Working on the other side wasn't actually bad, as it was quiet and I felt pretty productive working over there. The experience ended with a neat parting gift, the typical Friday beer, and watching Non-Format's awesome presentation off of youtube. My current inspirational design heroes perhaps?

Monday rolled around and fresh from the postman came my passport! The more I thought about Sakuracon over the weekend, the more I wanted to go. So OKAY! Let's go! Didn't prepare much though as the week was pretty busy with school things. Definitely didn't put in any effort into getting myself a proper wig as well. I won't be taking this convention as seriously as I usually do (no super shopping, no super panel visiting and no super guest signature getting), but using it more as a getaway and maybe solely for Noizi Ito. :b

I also got at ticket yesterday for parking at a parking lot where I would plan to get my round of bubble tea after I cross the street to steal some dessert from the a family dinner. His claim was I parked and left the parking lot. He was definitely right about that BUT my sole purpose was to buy bubble tea and my visit to the restaurant was no more than 10 mins. I WILL CONTEST AND EFFING WIN THIS BATTLE.

Anyway, it's getting late and I still have a list of things to do before we head down in the morning.
I WILL DEFEAT YOU, CATS.