I know it seems like a long time ago, back when flares and moustaches were in fashion, but I thought it would be worth writing a word or two about our trip to the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Covering the whole week would be something of an epic undertaking so I’ll just keep it to a couple of the highlights.

The People

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this several times before, but this is what it’s all about. Seeing people take the controller, play the game and genuinely enjoy themselves. Particularly those who begin with ‘this game isn’t for me’ but who inevitably don’t put the controller down for half an hour, then return later with their friend to play splitscreen. As a programmer in most companies this isn’t something you typically get to see. You work for however long at a desk to create a game, then it magically appears in shops. There’s no point at which you witness total strangers (i.e. not your friends being polite) playing the game you’ve slaved away on for so long, and actually having fun!

This was immeasurably encouraging for us – it confirmed that we were on the right track, that people do enjoy the game and that we aren’t just crazy. These are the people that you don’t get to see – the people you’re making it for, the people that are one day going to appreciate all that effort. Hopefully.

The Award Ceremony

The awards ceremony was fun and it certainly wasn’t what I was expecting. But then having not read anything about the IGF award ceremony itself prior to going I’d been expecting something akin to a school hall with a cardboard box for a stage and a tramp giving out the awards. Turns out the IGF awards were the precursor to the Game Developer Awards so it was all very fancy; suits, massive audience, enormous  screens, free wine. We were way out of our depth and we stuck out like a sore thumb. Except for me. I fitted right in. No I didn’t.

Us with Andy Schatz, creator of Monaco, winner of the Internet

What really terrified us was when Joe Danger was announced and came up on the big screens. That was the moment that I think we were all secretly hoping that we wouldn’t win and have to get up on the huge stage in front of hundreds of people who had absolutely no idea who we were. But everything turned out ok because we didn’t win.

The Crab

Then there was this:

Before

After

The crab feast. This is like, 600 crabs. Sean had to face off against them in an arena and fight them to the death. How different things could have been.

Hello everybody! Sorry we’ve been so quiet lately, we’ve been in the thick of it. I don’t think any of us have ever worked so hard, except that one time where Dave had to earn his flight back from Thailand, but he doesn’t like to talk about that.

Getting ready for GDC, then PAX East all the while trying to finish the game has been quite the marathon (ask anyone who’s seen us lately (which is practically nobody) – we look like extras from Shaun of the Dead), but we’re almost there now. You should see the fruit of our labour very soon and we very much hope you’ll like it.

Coffee won't fix this

We’ll also pop up some posts about how GDC and PAX went possibly sometime before the next GDC and PAX.

Not long ago a couple of tramps came a-knocking at our door. We tried to give them some money to help them on their way but it turned out it to be the lovely chaps from Johnny Two Shoes. JTS are (as the more astute among you may have deduced) two guys living the dream – making the games they want to make, the way they want to make them. They have a growing catalog of quality games and are just branching out to iPhone development. Go play!

Johnny Two Shoes all dressed up for a night out

We had a bit of an office gaming session where we got a sneaky play of the latest version of High Speed Chase 2 (also available on iPhone incidentally) and they had a sneaky play of Joe Danger. As you can see from their picture they don’t look like the sharpest tools in the box, but looks can be decieving. They really know their stuff and gave us some great feedback on Joe

After they took the piss out of the size of our office for a bit we took them out to show them the wonders of Guildford – that garden of unearthly delights. That is to say we went to Wagamama whereupon we all ordered exactly the same thing (71 for those in the know), and then we did some drinking.

As it happens, JTS can’t handle their booze and after assaulting a fruit machine for apparently insulting their mother they stole a police car and we haven’t heard from them since.

Good luck to you chaps. Game development on the run – now that’s innovation.

Now go play some of their games!

Well we made it through in one piece, though we may not be the same men we were at the beginning. Particularly Grant, he’s no longer a man, I’m not entirely sure what he is but he scares me just a little. 4 days of non-stop talking (not a problem for Sean) is quite a task, and frankly, I didn’t know it was possible to be in so much pain from simply standing all day (what a disgrace I am), but it was all more than worth it. We met a lot of very cool people, and we’d just like to say thankyouverymuchindeedy to all the lovely people we got such a great response from, along with Eurogamer and Pixel-lab for allowing us to introduce Joe to the public for the first time.

Here are some of the nice things people have said:

IndieGames

ThatVideoGameBlog

Resolution Magazine

The queue for Joe Danger... *cough*

I should also quickly mention the Show & Yell event that David from Pixel-lab organised on the friday night after the Expo. This was an informal get together of indie developers with a selection giving brief presentations/Q&As about, well, whatever they felt like really. Sean gave a talk about the birthing process of killer whales and how this is analogous to the production, or ‘birthing’ if you will, of an independent game. He may have also briefly mentioned our development process and how we got this far. There was also a lot of beer.

Where's Wally?

We’ll be doing a more in-depth update on the Expo and Show & Yell at some point in the coming days, along with the competition that we didn’t get round to running as we were so busy. And quite frankly I’m pretty sure nobody wanted to win a Joe Danger t-shirt we’d been wearing all day in the man-sweat filled expo hall

End of the Expo. Exhausted but happy, Sean has just pleasured his final visitor.

It seems some poor confused soul has invited Sean to participate in a Playful chat session about digital distribution and the rise of independent development as part of London Digital Week.

From the site:

“EAT YOUR GAMES is a one-hour chat session about digital distribution, the rise of indie development, and stable platforms with three of the UK’s most interesting games companies.”

Eat Your Games is happening at Shoreditch Town Hall on Friday 25th September. We’ll be there to heckle Sean, come along and give us a hand. You have to register your attendance but it’s free and I assume there’ll be drinking afterwards, so all good then!

I thought I’d follow up Grant’s favourite games post, with my better favourite games. Here we go!

The first game I can remember playing was Robotron 2084. I was amazed, it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. I was in a science fiction film, a universe where anything was possible. I was hooked.

I was going to write about more than four of my favourite games, but I quickly realised that this post would go on for approximately FOREVER. Thinking about what to write has brought back many memories of games long forgotten, of countless hours spent in front of a computer instead of playing outside, and of despairing parents presumably regretting ever buying the damn thing in the first place. Sadly I still spend countless hours in front of a computer instead of playing outside and my parents still depair.

1. Syndicate (PC)

Awesome

As amazing a game as it was, my memories of Syndicate aren’t based on the central core of the game itself, but around the ‘sandbox’ you could potentially have termed the cities. As with most people who played it (I assume), Syndicate brought out the sociopath in me. I spent countless hours running around its cities trying to hunt down and murder every last citizen. I think this may have been a result of some kind of obsessive-compulsive need, similar to having to collect every last star/weapon/hidden item rather than a sadistic desire to commit digital genocide.

It was the first game I played that involved research trees. This gave it a whole new level over other games I was playing at the time. I probably had no idea what I was really doing, but if it ended in having a more destructive gun I was happy. In addition it had the cool sci-fi setting (I’ve always been a massive sci-fi fan), ridiculous weapons, cyborgs, explosions – everything a growing boy needs.

2. Super Mario Kart (SNES)

Awesome

One of the greatest racing games of all time. Beautiful handling, great track design, brilliantly tense battle mode – all perfect for a bunch of friends to be playing in close quarters, fuelled on sugar and that endless energy you have when you’re young. This is a game that must have been responsible for many broken pads. I’ve never been a pad thrower, but when you’re about to cross the finish line in first and someone hits you with a red shell and you subsequently finish last, tempers could certainly flare.

I still love this game – Sean and I used to play it when we were both at Criterion. The only problem is Sean is some kind of battle mode ninja so it was usually pointless even trying to beat him.

3. Street Fighter 2 (SNES)

Awesome

One of the biggest gaming events of my childhood! My brother and I getting a SNES with SF2 for Christmas. Having spent many an afternoon in front of the arcade cabinet in Hatfield swimming pool (Hatfield swimming pool is not amongst my fondest memories) I was ecstatic to finally have it in our living room! It’s the only fighter that I’ve ever been good at. I thought I was cool because I could win with my eyes closed, until someone beat me with one hand. Humiliating.

4. The Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max, Grim Fandango

I’ve lumped my favourite Lucasarts adventures into one here as I was a massive LA fanboy. These are some of the best games ever made in my eyes. I remember being totally sucked into the pirate universe of MI despite not even liking pirates at the time. It just seemed so beautifully realised and it spanned (in my young eyes) such an epic voyage. These games brought so much more to the table than simply blasting aliens, racing a car or shooting the bad guy in the face, and as much as I like to shoot bad guys’ faces off sometimes you need a little more.

Honourable Mentions

1. Wolfenstein 3d & Doom
2. Zelda: Link to the Past
3. Goldeneye
4. Super Mario World
5. Sensible Soccer
6. Duke Nukem 3d
7. Supercars 2
8. Speedball 2 (This is here mainly for the theme tune – listen to this, it’s still awesome. Has anybody ever done a cover of it?)

Guildford, Wednesday afternoon. Sean and I leave the ranch to meet  Edge Online at Develop in Brighton for our first ever interview. Hooray!

Brighton, later on Wednesday afternoon. We arrive at our hotel near the seafront about 10 minutes before we’re meant to be meeting Edge. This is not ideal. We leave the hotel and discover we’re miles away from the Hilton, by the time we get there we present a good argument for the stereotypical sweaty programmer.

Us at work

We meet Edge and go to a nearby bar to find some quiet away from the teeming Hilton bar. Sean and I are quite nervous as this is our first interview, and the mere presence of a Dictaphone has us tripping over ourselves further cementing that awkward stereotype. After a few minutes the nervousness passes and gives way to verbal diarrhoea. It passes in a bit of a blur (the interview not the verbal diarrhoea) and afterwards I don’t really remember a great deal about what we talked about, but hopefully Edge can salvage some kind of coherent material from our nonsense. Unfortunately halfway through it turns out Edge is double booked and has to shoot off to interview someone you’ve actually heard of. The experience certainly makes me wonder about the whole process from the journalist’s point of view. From my perspective it was very much like any conversation, but as such it must be hard (or at least time consuming) to parse the conversation for the salient bits of information, the answers to the questions that were actually asked. I expect they have a tougher job with inexperienced interviewees such as ourselves, what with us veering wildly off topic or getting over-excited and weeing ourselves (Sean).

We return to the Hilton bar which is swarming with wild game developers let loose from the office for the day.  Over the next couple of hours we meet many lovely people both new and old (RPS, Zombie Cow, Beatnik, Media Molecule) before going to dinner with some old friends. Afterwards we go to Audio where the Gamesindustry.biz party is kicking off. There are free blue cocktails (bad) and free bacon sandwiches (good), and a pool table (good). We proceed to take advantage of the free bar (after all, the bar is a game developer’s second home – their first being the office), meet some old friends, make some new friends, probably lose said new friends and all in all have a rather pleasant night.

Back in Guildford, Thursday morning,  I wonder if perhaps the free bar was not in fact such a good idea after all.

The morning after