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.

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:

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

Obviously, I’m not there or I’d be doing a crass live blogging schtick that would mostly fall flat but occasionally be killer … or so I imagine. Anytime a group of my arch enemies is gathered in a single location, milling about, I entertain prank fantasies.

This is what life has reduced me to … prank fantasies.

I present … (if I had all the time in the world and all the money, too) My Top Five List of GDC Pranks:

1. Order 30 Pizza Hut pizzas for delivery to one of the conference dinners.

2. Run around to the different Room Placards for roundtables and hourly sessions, etc. and tape a sign underneath that reads: IGE “Consultants” Reception in Room 1305, immediately following. Heh, I’d bag quite a few of the curious and rabid at the elevators … uncertain how to find Floor 13, but determined to do so.

3. A mysterious (and set to LOUD) ringing cellphone at a dramatic moment in the keynote speech: (answerer stands up in a panic and signals the speaker to pause) It’s God! His Warcraft server is down! (You just know some of the Blizzard Collective is there. Probably enduring all the snide dev jokes, too.)

For these next few, I’d need to infiltrate the convention center with a few props. Trust me, enough money, enough time, I can do anything. A booth, rented to the Dragons Online LLC (ffs, I don’t want to get sued).

4. Real life quests, kind of like Gaming Companies do at their own fan fests, but with a twist. They’re like gaming quests where the pieces never fucking drop. Examples: find an alcoholic drink under 3 bucks within 3 miles of the convention center, good pizza ANYWHERE in California (I speak the truth), and take a cab to a “questionable neighborhood” in Oakland and convince a homey out on the street after midnight to buy your box and purchase a 6-month subscription. (4TW on that one. Anyone that can do that wins EverQuest and a t-shirt.)

5. Set up a few computers at the Fake Gaming LLC booth with some DVDs looping. Examples: Napoleon Dynamite … tagline: A boy, some ligers, this could work!, The Ring … tagline: Become the undead, but not vampires, because that is so Darkness Falls!, Gladiator … tagline: You know you want to dual wield!, I, Robot … tagline: Be a human, be a robot — in the future, it’s all the same!, The Matrix … tagline: There’s still time to buy in on this one!.

If only designing pranks was a profession; it’s my true calling, I think.