My E3 this year...

So my E3 has come and gone. I was only able to go for one day. My E3 was mainly to share the American game culture with a class of game programming students from Japan. Wow im tired. :)

I got there about 9:30. Registration was really painless and took me like 1-2 minutes to pick up my pass. Called the main guy who set up me being the tour guide and met them somewhere around Kentia hall. I thought it was interesting that the passes had to be shown under a UV light to make sure they were valid and not knock-offs. Overall security has been bumped up all around and I saw a fair amount of police walking around the floor. It was fun meeting the group of students and I felt a little old explaining to them about American arcade companies and old home systems. Its funny to see someone hold an atari 2600 cart for the first time. Hehe.

I showed them around the main floor. It was cool and gave them the spiel about what American companies were around and what they did when we went booth to booth. Even though they are gamers they dont know who most of these companies are. A lot of times a game will even be distributed by a total other company in Japan. (I.e. GTA was published under Capcom).

So the new generation seemed to be shaping up. There were some interesting products but nothing that I really "needed" to have. Tons of FPS's, tons of MMOs (actually tons of Korean games that are coming). There was a long line to Wii. :) so I skipped out. I played some games and it was funny that a Blizzard friend and I tried playing Battlefield 2142 and we had no idea what was going on at all. We were lost. Haha. Then a EA guy tries explaining the whole thing and we got even more confused. Haha. Nothing all that super exciting for me. There were a cpl games that looked nice and I liked the lighting/some of the FX on the newest Bandai Gundam game. Im happy to report booth babes were alive and well. They are a bit distracting though. Talking with some peeps about serious subject and then losing my train of thought because someone in a silly outfit is jumping all over the place. Hey! Im an artist. A visual person. I cannot be held at fault for that. :)

After I left E3 I went to Gardena to a hotel. I held a class along with a Japanese lady from Activision. We talked about development, art, coding, and did a bit of Q&A. These students were very smart and enjoyed talking about the differences between American and Japanese games and culture. I showed them Torque and TGB. They were rather impressed and I hope they pick it up. They all jotted down the GarageGames address and seemed very happy that I showed them around the toolset and some demos. After our goodbyes I ran off to an E3 party.

Pendulum Studios (great people btw), Softimage, Intel and the House of Moves had a "Where the booth babes are at" party. Hehe. It was a good party overall and im glad a group of my peeps came out for it. Free in and out burgers, dancing, open bar. It was a good night. Hehe. I closed the party at like 3:30 am. It was kind of sad to see some guys there just trying to hit on the hired help and our group. We were there and we just wanted to have fun. Hehe.