Bold fashion choices get made by GDC attendees, says the guy with the mustache rollercoaster on his face.

I’m honestly having trouble putting my thoughts about yesterday’s events into anything too cogent, and unfortunately the crummy weather will probably prevent me from making it to the show at all today. There are a few, specific things that I’d like to share about my GDC experience, though.

While waiting in line with Jeff to see Sid Meier talk on day one, we’re approached by an enthusiastic young PR representative for 2K Games, current publisher of Sid Meier’s games. In the process of congratulating us for attending the best session of the show, it is revealed that he believes Arrow Pointing Down to be a new “media outlet”, a belief that comes up in a few other conversations over the course of the show. And how can you blame them? With podcast dominated by analysis of Gatorade, half-ass webcam videos, and spastic blog posting, it should be apparent that I AM THE MEDIA.

On day two I saw Louis Castle, co-founder of Westwood Studios and current VP of creative development at EALA, talk about the processes, or lack thereof, that went into making Boom Blox. Like many of the sessions I went to, I found it really interesting, but not in a way that can be retold. It’s a real “you had to be there and you also had to have a pretty serious interest in the game development process” thing. I walked away from that session more excited about Boom Blox than before, and with the feeling that, despite his apparent brilliance, my man Louie C. does not get the respect he deserves.

Probably the highlight of the whole damn show for me was hearing Will Wright talk last night at a private event. Open bar and some amazing-looking food (which I stupidly missed out on) aside, Will Wright is a goddamn captivating public speaker. It’s a cliche thing to say, almost as cliche as mentioning that it’s a cliche, but Will Wright simply sees the world differently from the rest of us, and he’s extremely good at articulating what he sees. Explaining why every Russian space mission has a handgun and a bottle of vodka on-board, and drawing comparisons between Gilligan’s Island and the Seven Deadly Sins, it’s shocking and humbling how Will Wright’s mind works, even when discussing what most would regard as pop culture ephemera. He is entertaining and insightful, and after finally getting to see him speak in person, I can really understand why people feel compelled to deify the man.

Had a number of really great conversations at the Will Wright event, though my personal favorite was when I was accosted by an imposing Australian man who shouted “WHAT DO WE HAVE TO DO TO GET YOU TO COVER OUR GAME” at me before introducing himself as the lead designer on The Force Unleashed for the Wii. The answer: uhh, show it to me!

There’s probably a whole lot more, and I’m already preemptively kicking myself for not making it to the Portal Postmortem session with Erik Wolpaw, but that ought to pretty much put a bow on GDC 2008 for me. See you there next year!

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 3:00 pm and is filed under games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.