Whoa, it’s been a while, and I’m just back from almost 4 weeks away from the Bay Area (and a couple of trips before that!) – all kinds of strange but edifying fun. So let’s go through what I’ve been up to:
– It was my first time at Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle (Flickr gallery). I sat on a panel with Spelunky’s Derek Yu and Dishwasheri’s James Silva, and wrote a piece for Gamasutra about why the show is such a delight.
– Next, GDC Austin in Texas (Flickr gallery) was held in mid-September, and I co-organized the two-day Indie Games Summit there, as well as helped report on the full show. We also co-organized a couple of game documentary showings at the amazing Alamo Drafthouse during that week, including the v.interesting ‘Into The Night’ doc with Jason Rohrer and Chris Crawford.
– Then it was off on my Eastern jaunt, starting with Tokyo Game Show (Flickr gallery), which was another chance to check out Tokyo and a slightly consolidated, but still fascinating TGS. The ‘Sense Of Wonder Night’ experimental game showcase, which I help judge and also documented, was a highlight again – the presentation videos from it are up now.
– Next, we were off to Melbourne, Australia (Flickr gallery), where I spoke at the Digital Distribution Summit, thanks to the nice folks at Film Victoria, who announced local government grants for XBLA, PSN, and other digital titles at the Summit. After that, Holly joined me and we took some holiday in Melbourne and then Sydney, where we also took a jaunt out to the beautiful Blue Mountains, dodging deliciously inclement weather along the way!
– Finally, it was to GDC China in Shanghai (Flickr gallery), where I helped to present IGF China, for the best Asia-Pacific indie games, topped by Farbs’ rather fascinating Captain Forever. I also spoke about tips for success for Western digital distributed/indie titles, which I’m hoping was helpful for all.
And that’s the end of that slightly insane travel schedule for now, phew. The good news (for my jetlag!) is that, since the Independent Games Festival deadline is at the beginning of November and there’s lots of work to do on that, I won’t be traveling quite so much, leading up to GDC 2010. Until next time…