Scenes from GDC 2006

Game talk
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Constance Steinkuehler and Heather Kelley playing Animal Crossing: WIld World surreptitiously in the back of the lecture hall as a panel is going on.

Patrick Dugan asking a panel of academics whether the cultural shifts brought on by massively multiplayer games may include damaging our conception of the nation-state as a key form of personal identity. Academics don’t quite know what to say.

Torrential rain.

PictoChat chatrooms everywhere.

David Jaffe: “it’s safe to say [PS3 is] the most powerful game machine on the planet. But it has technical limitations. It seems to be incapable of rendering 3-way sex scenes in real time.”

“Hang on, I have a Commodore 64 in my pocket.” – Ian Bogost. And lo, he does, running on his Palm.

The Fat Man’s annual jam session, where one improvised tune develops a choral descant that goes “Leeeeroooy… Leeerooooy Jenkiiiins…” It was very pretty.

After dinner at Shalimar restaurant,the waiters come out with new plates. “What are these for?” we ask. “For dinner… ” they say. “All you’ve had are the appetizers.” Oh God.

The guy at the casual games party who had a balloon hat on his head, and said that he liked the kid who was making them, so he took one and then asked how much it was. $20.

The conference assistant who was described by their mentor as a mentat instead of a mentee. We concluded that based on the events in Dune, this did not bode well for him.

Ah, game developers are crazy.

I do have more notes to type up, but I am flyng back home in around two hours, so I have to go now. 🙂

9 Comments

  1. “Ah, game developers are crazy.”

    Yeah, this is essentially what I’ve concluded over time… It’s a good thing. 🙂

    Gah, I wish I could have gone this year. But, there’s always future GDCs!

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  4. Looking to branch away from SPAM, Bill? (Bill Waggoner is a well known spam king.)

  6. I have one to add…

    – Steve Wozniak doing magic tricks in the CA lounge.

    As a CA, they wouldn’t let me go pounce Raph. Oh well, there is always next year 🙂

  8. Woz showed up on Tuesday to do some magic for the CA staff. I didn’t get much time to watch the show, but I did see him up in the concorse a little later on. I posted a really crappy picture here.

    All I had was my cell phone for picture taking, so I absolve myself in regards to the quality 🙂

  9. Constance Steinkuehler and Heather Kelley playing Animal Crossing: WIld World surreptitiously in the back of the lecture hall as a panel is going on.

    That image just makes me giggle. Ahhhh, we’d have all gotten in so much trouble back in school…

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