As the Bay Area hunkers down for some much-needed rain (and yes, probably pathetic compared to other East Coast cities, but we like our weather watered-down here), it appears to be time to update this blog again.
Once again, quite a few things have happened since the last update, in various areas of business, leisure, and somewhere in between, as follows:
– Our GDC Europe show, which ran alongside GamesCom in August in Cologne, Germany, ended up doing really well. We had somewhere over 1200 people in our Monday keynote from Disney’s Warren Spector (creator of Deus Ex and the much-awaited Disney Epic Mickey), and we boosted attendee numbers again in the second year of the event.
There’s an official Flickr gallery and our GDC Vault site — which keeps video and audio from our events — has a couple of free video lectures, plus slides from event speakers.
– Since my last post about Weta’s Dr. Grordbort’s rayguns at Comic-Con, I’ve become rather enamored with the entire line, created by District 9 concept designer Greg Broadmore and friends. In fact, my home office now has quite a collection of the metal and glass-crafted steampunk-ish goodies, as showcased on Flickr. Good times!
– Also happening since I last posted was GDC Online, which took over Austin with 3,000 attendees in early October and ended up being a lot of fun (and learning!), too. In fact, while there we saw a city-created infographic which showed that GDC Online is the #13 event of any kind to come to Austin every year in terms of bringing value to the city, an awesome result.
Here’s the official Flickr gallery, showing neat stuff like major sessions, the expo floor, and networking events (yes, there was a Playboy-sponsored party, since they’re working with Bigpoint in the online game space now!)
And GDC Vault — which video recorded all major lectures for All-Access GDC passholders and group/individual subscribers — has free content including Brian Reynolds’ keynote, a great Richard Bartle talk on the MUD, and the first ever GDC Online Awards, with an awesome Ultima Online tribute. I’m proud to be involved.
– I’ve also been building up my collection of computer-related original artwork, with high geekdom the main goal. Here’s what I have so far, with Richard Ironmonger’s ‘Art Is A Coded Message’ a particular recent highlight – a detail is above. And you can’t beat Apple-themed ’80s airbrush illustration art either, of course…
Next up on the travel schedule is GDC China, in Shanghai this December, and myself and Holly will be flying out a bit early to check out Beijing (including The Forbidden City, the Great Wall, and maybe a trip out to see the Terracotta Army if we’re very lucky.)
Elsewhere, since it’s GDC 25, there’ll be some big news on historical-related goodness around the San Francisco show in Feb-March 2011, soon enough. And of course, the 2011 Independent Games Festival entries just got announced, and I can’t wait to see the finalists showcased at GDC in a few months. Fun times!