by date
Plan for Ben Garney
Plan for Ben Garney
| Name: | Ben Garney |  |
|---|---|---|
| Date Posted: | Mar 28, 2004 | |
| Rating: |  Not Rated | |
| Public: | YES | |
| Comments: | YES | |
| RSS Feed: |  or Subscribe with  . | |
| Profile Page: | View profile page for Ben Garney |
Blog post
Got back from GDC!
And boy, was it an exhausting trip. Loads of fun, though. I think by the time IGC comes around I might be mostly rested up. :P
We started out way back in the corner of the show for the first day, but after nVidia saw how cool the TSE demo was, they moved us to their main booth, right at the entrance. Met a lot more people there, and we even got up one of the big plasma screens for a while, which was fun. ;)
Alex, Mark, Rick, and I alternately manned our "booth" (ie, the computer we were demoing on) and wandered the floor, while Jeff and Jay smoozed with a great variety of people. At the start of the trip, Jay said he had something like 45 meetings scheduled... I have no idea how that man can work as hard as he can.
We also gave five half-hour presentations over the course of the show, in one of the nVidia booth's little theaters. The "theater" was a corner of the booth area, open to the aisles, with some benches. I think the area was meant to seat about 15; we drew crowds of 40-50!
The basic runthrough of the presentations was a brief introduction by Jay, followed by Jeff talking about GarageGame's mission and indie game development for ten or fifteen minutes. He gave an overview of Torque 1.2, then I got to go up and talk about Torque Shader Engine myself for another ten minutes. A question and answer session, and then Jay closed us.
It was loads of fun to get to present TSE to all those people. I can't wait till next year - if they liked TSE, they're gonna love what we'll have in twelve months.
I was kept really busy at our booth, but I did manage to wander the floor and go out and have fun after the show. I got to meet up with a lot of really cool people - including members of our community, like Britton LaRoche, Matthew Fairfax, Phil Carlisle, Justin Mette, and others too numerous to list. Had some very excellent dinner conversation at the few restaurants open when we finally finished with the floor.
Hung out in the HomeLAN suite a few evenings. That was a blast; the HomeLAN guys are awesome, and it was great to have a place to sit and hang out and code. If I wasn't afraid I'd die from exhaustion, I'd wish GDC to be on all the time. It was incredibly productive this year - all sorts of great connections being made between us and folk who hadn't met us before.
It was amusing to see the other game engine people and how few people they were attracting. I distinctly remember seeing a pair of BlitzBasic-shirt wearers come by and checking us out, from a distance. The only other engines drawing any sort of numbers were Half Life 2 (or at least, the presentations they were doing on how to model for HL2 - because everyone should give Valve free art ;)), and Unreal, who were hidden away in a suite where no one could visit them.
I actually would have liked to see their new tech, so it was a bit of a shame they were so far out of things. :-/
I guess that's about it for GDC itself. I have a big bag of schwag and business cards to sort through over the next few days, and a messed up sleep cycle, thanks to getting in to Eugene around 4am. (We drove back to town!) Mark and I both got bored on the drive, so we each worked on a project... more on those later. ;)
As for next year... we have some cool plans involving beer and pirates. More than that I can't say. :)
We started out way back in the corner of the show for the first day, but after nVidia saw how cool the TSE demo was, they moved us to their main booth, right at the entrance. Met a lot more people there, and we even got up one of the big plasma screens for a while, which was fun. ;)
Alex, Mark, Rick, and I alternately manned our "booth" (ie, the computer we were demoing on) and wandered the floor, while Jeff and Jay smoozed with a great variety of people. At the start of the trip, Jay said he had something like 45 meetings scheduled... I have no idea how that man can work as hard as he can.
We also gave five half-hour presentations over the course of the show, in one of the nVidia booth's little theaters. The "theater" was a corner of the booth area, open to the aisles, with some benches. I think the area was meant to seat about 15; we drew crowds of 40-50!
The basic runthrough of the presentations was a brief introduction by Jay, followed by Jeff talking about GarageGame's mission and indie game development for ten or fifteen minutes. He gave an overview of Torque 1.2, then I got to go up and talk about Torque Shader Engine myself for another ten minutes. A question and answer session, and then Jay closed us.
It was loads of fun to get to present TSE to all those people. I can't wait till next year - if they liked TSE, they're gonna love what we'll have in twelve months.
I was kept really busy at our booth, but I did manage to wander the floor and go out and have fun after the show. I got to meet up with a lot of really cool people - including members of our community, like Britton LaRoche, Matthew Fairfax, Phil Carlisle, Justin Mette, and others too numerous to list. Had some very excellent dinner conversation at the few restaurants open when we finally finished with the floor.
Hung out in the HomeLAN suite a few evenings. That was a blast; the HomeLAN guys are awesome, and it was great to have a place to sit and hang out and code. If I wasn't afraid I'd die from exhaustion, I'd wish GDC to be on all the time. It was incredibly productive this year - all sorts of great connections being made between us and folk who hadn't met us before.
It was amusing to see the other game engine people and how few people they were attracting. I distinctly remember seeing a pair of BlitzBasic-shirt wearers come by and checking us out, from a distance. The only other engines drawing any sort of numbers were Half Life 2 (or at least, the presentations they were doing on how to model for HL2 - because everyone should give Valve free art ;)), and Unreal, who were hidden away in a suite where no one could visit them.
I actually would have liked to see their new tech, so it was a bit of a shame they were so far out of things. :-/
I guess that's about it for GDC itself. I have a big bag of schwag and business cards to sort through over the next few days, and a messed up sleep cycle, thanks to getting in to Eugene around 4am. (We drove back to town!) Mark and I both got bored on the drive, so we each worked on a project... more on those later. ;)
As for next year... we have some cool plans involving beer and pirates. More than that I can't say. :)
Recent Blog Posts
| List: | 09/22/08 - Austin GDC Talks: Robust Efficient Networking and Flash MMOs 05/30/08 - Next Big Thing 02/12/08 - Come See Me At GDC 2008! 10/27/07 - TGEForest Free Release 10/13/07 - Polysoup Free (And IGC) 01/26/07 - Speaking and Running Into Walls (Collision Fix) 12/25/06 - Merry Christmas, Community - Poly Soup 10/05/06 - Community Weekend (Not-IGC) |
|---|
Submit your own resources!| Justin Mette (Mar 28, 2004 at 13:16 GMT) |
During the GG presentations, I was in the audience handing out flyers and answering questions. It was amazing to me how people hadn't heard about GG and Torque after what - like 3 years of being in existence.
What it really drove home was the fact that a revolution is indeed forming around independant game development. All these people that were just realizing about GG and Torque were simply stunned at the whole GG "package" of tools, community, and publishing.
My favorite line was something like "yeah, just go to garagegames.com, put in your credit card info, and download a half million lines of code - it's that easy" :)
Edited on Mar 28, 2004 15:26 GMT
| John Vanderbeck (Mar 28, 2004 at 14:36 GMT) |
Sounds like a blast.
| Nicolas Quijano (Mar 28, 2004 at 15:33 GMT) |
You nuts !! ;)
glad to here you had a blast, and that things went more than well for the GG peeps
Justin, didn't you meet Ben at the last IGC, or did Friday night make you blind for the all weekend ? 8p
Keep on Torquin' !!
| Justin Mette (Mar 28, 2004 at 15:38 GMT) |
Speaking of IGC, Nicolas, send me an email (justin.mette@21-6.com) if you want to be part of Indie Jam this year. We're just starting to get organized.
| Xavier "eXoDuS" Amado (Mar 28, 2004 at 15:57 GMT) |
| Josh Williams (Mar 28, 2004 at 16:23 GMT) |
| Chris (Mar 28, 2004 at 17:16 GMT) |
" if they liked TSE, they
| Ben Garney (Mar 28, 2004 at 19:45 GMT) |
One thing I forgot to mention in my plan is how awesome the people involved with indie game development are. In a previous life, for five years, I fenced fairly regularly at national competitions, and spent a lot of time on planes and in hotels with that group of people.
I feel ten times of the comaraderie I felt at fencing meets with the people I met at GDC and through this community. Almost anyone I run into, I feel like I connect with. I can make geeky tech jokes. I can talk about games with them. We're interested in what the other person is doing. And even outside of games, they usually have interesting things to say about life in general, which I enjoy.
GDC was a lot of fun - and I expect this IGC to be even better, since it's much more focused on indies. ;)
| Jay Moore (Mar 29, 2004 at 04:31 GMT) |
Actually it was really amazing in addition to all those just learning about Torque and GG the number of guys who are industry vets working on a game idea in Torque on the side.
It was great to meet so many GG community members - if the number of people saying they'd be coming to IGC this year is even close to materializing I need to find bigger digs and find more deposits for those kegs.
| Phil Carlisle (Mar 29, 2004 at 10:00 GMT) |
Anyway, the show seemed to be going REALLY well for GG after clearing up the first day booth foul-up.
Mustve been one hell of a schmooze-a-thon.
I was way too far out in the boonies (hotel wise) and way too mixed up in work-related-shenaningans to get to talk to you guys properly! sorry about that, I guess its all a learning experience.
For those that care, I'd say that simply in cost terms IGC is about 1000% more useful to indie developers than GDC. I went to a lot of the tech talks and while they are ok, they dont help you ship a game. You would be better off getting a proceedings CD and spending the rest of your money and time doing polish, getting better art and attending the IGC!
I think Justin had an idea for some stuff at IGC that really would be useful. Perhaps we'll talk about that soon.
Anyway, glad you had a good time Ben! keep at it.. and hurry!
| Michael Cozzolino (Mar 29, 2004 at 16:32 GMT) |
You must be a member and be logged in to either append comments or rate this resource.
