Tag Archives: gdc

Meet the Blahggers

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So this GDC thing is coming up in March. That’s the Game Developers Conference, and although the name suggests this is for insiders only, money talks — $1625 for an all-access pass, prices good until tomorrow.

I don’t think that includes an open bar. Trust me, I looked.

I read over on Schubert’s Zen of Design that he’s hosting a Game Blogger Meet N Greet in connection with the GDC, which sounds interesting and all, but there is no way in hell I can sell a gaming conference to my boss. He’s not a visionary like me. He’s good for signing paychecks, however, and providing unrestricted net access. (Meet N Greet details)

Some of the issues up for discussion, which I can answer right now because I’m good at explaining things:

Privacy issues — stay anonymous, guard it with your life. You do like to get paid, don’t you? (and, for us outsiders, you don’t want your account mysteriously banned, do you?)

Troublesome posters and/or spam — Posters, edit their crap to something more … syco-fancy. Some dude thinks he can come into my house (here) where I pay the bills and take a shit, he’s got another thing coming. (Way more fun than a blanket IP ban, too.) Spam, Akismet and Bad Behavior for the win. No auto-moderation necessary.

Best blog software — It begins and ends with WordPress.

The bar tab — Invite one of the IGE guys, they’re rich.

Probably the best piece of advice I could offer to wannabes, startups and blogger hags alike would be this, (not that I was asked): Take a stand on something. Fanbois, suckups and company mouthpieces we have aplenty.

Your best work will always start off with “I just had a crazy idea”.

Conversely, not every crazy idea will be good work. We want to read that too.

First Thing We Do, We Kill All the Poets™

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Curious Game Designers’ Challenge at the GDC thing this year: the Emily Dickinson license.

And when I say “curious,” I mean “what the fuck could they have been thinking?”

The contestants did the best they could with the lame ass material they were given:

What if YOU were in charge of a game development company that had just landed the license for the complete works of Emily Dickinson, one of the greatest American Poets of all time? What game would you create?

Hey, because she could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for her. End of story.

(Not soon enough in my opinion, but that’s another post.)

I’m hoping this might make next year’s challenge:

We’d like any reward, kthx.

Why is risk versus reward such a hard concept to understand?