Plan for James "Nycto" Frasca

I've finally had time to recover from the late nights I had while up at PAX. It was the first gaming convention I've ever been to, and I had a blast. My cohorts and I decided we were going to this when they first announced it, though only one of us pre-registered.

Going to the various panels was well worth the cover charge. As Josh Williams said in his .plan, they were really pushing the idea of independent game development. Developers are relying heavily on franchises and "sure things." The result is a heavily stagnated industry. Graphics, though they were demanded by the gamer to some extent, have become the selling point of a game, which leads to utter disappointment. The experts they had present also talked about the increased cost to make games, which is killing a lot of development firms.

The best part of the convention was meeting Josh Williams and Jay Moore. My buddy Dan and I were standing in line to get in to the theatre talking about the future of gaming. I mentioned independent game as a feasible source for quality games and one of the guys standing in line next to us joined the conversation. When he told me he worked for Garage Games, my jaw dropped. Josh, Dan and I started talking and wound up sitting with each other during the panel. He told me he would be talking in a panel on Sunday, which convinced me to stay another day. Right before the panel on Sunday, I got to meet Jay. I wish I could have talked longer, but we needed to get a place in line.

I was a little disappointed by the Exposition Floor. There wasn't a whole lot in there, and I wound up making my walk around in less than 30 minutes. Mechassault 2 caught my attention, which is surprising because I'm not a big console fan (except for my old Sega... Eternal Champions rules). The sheer amount of options you have were just extraordinary.

We snapped a few photos on Sunday and posted them, if you're interested. Don't ask me about the weird look on my face, I have no friggin' idea either. And this one is the best picture, period.

In my last .plan, I talked about my content management system. I had hoped to have a release by the end of summer, which is fast approaching, but it doesn't look like I will. I am happy with the workings of it, but I really want to go over it with a fine tooth comb before I make any release. I also need to finish some coding for a few of the modules. You might also say that feature creep is starting to set in, but I feel like all the things I've added would have been added eventually and have all been working towards my goal of streamlined content controller. When I release, I want to give people a reason to use it.

I'm not going to try and give an estimate of when I will be releasing this thing because I still have to write documentation. I'm not looking for to that, let me tell you.

I'll keep cracking on this and you guys keep making games.