A day in the Life...

A day in the Life...

Some days I think I'm GarageGames biggest fan boy and I live in my own reality distortion field (with about 16 other fanatics that have been drinking too much of the 'kool-aid'). Then I go to a conference like the G.A.M.E.S. Synergy Summit and it becomes clear we have other believers and those for which the light bulb of our fanaticism is just coming on.

The day starts on Monday night at 6pm when Benjamin and I get on a plane going to Orlando from Eugene - anyone who flies much knows if you have a 3 leg flight even if its a red-eye and the weather is good you should 'expect the unexpected' (which working at GG is one of my daily mantras). The trip had its usual bumps and delays and after going to SF, LA, and Dulles (think very big serpentine route across North America) we arrived 13.5 hours later in Orlando.

After checking-in to our hotel and quickly buying our $10 a day internet connection to check our email, we had a great meeting with a new partner, which we'll announce in a few weeks, just suffice it to say its all relates back to flying. Then we all headed out to Texas de Brazil - where they just keep bringing skewers of mouth watering meat until you literally have to turn your chip in and put up the red stop side to keep the hoards of servers away or risk descending into the depths of gluttony and debauchery that really shouldn't be explored in public. We only flirted with such excess Tuesday night.

Then, as Benjamin has mentioned, we hooked up with Stephen Zepp who thought it was time to find some trouble and we'll leave it to say that we all got back to the convention hotel safely, but it took some mechanical engineering and a cell phone to get the 'ignition' working - I think Matt Fairfax & Stephen could have gotten a game wrapped in 'ignition' faster.

This is when a few Zap! matches and the email work begins - oh I said a day, but you should know this is one very very long day. I did enjoy a short nap around 4 am, before starting our adventures in Torque Boot Camp with a delightful mix of black ops military guys, super genius simulation engineers and university and simulation training program directors. A great day all in all was carried by Matt Fairfax and Stephen Zepp seasoned with some presentations by Benjamin and myself.

Then the real drinking... ah I mean networking began. It was an open bar where I got to sit and discuss world peace, socom missions, darwars, natural funativity, and changing the world through available source.

This conference was a surreal mixture of entertainment, military, education and corporate training types. The dialogs with thinkers like, Noah Falstein, Billy Cain - who have been through most of the changes in gaming and James Gee and Peter Raad who are out to change how games are used in education and game education programs have been built.

If I wasn't sure before I knew we were in the right place when a spontaneous LAN Party at a GG hosted hospitality suite broke out Thursday night. I felt at home with most of these diverse characters because at some level we're all out to change the world.

There is much good that the Torque Platform will do in the world. And we only just got to start playing with all the ideas about we might might make it happen. At this conference I figured I could sleep when it was over and it wasn't until I got onto the plane at 6am on Sat. morning that time to sleep had come, and a very exciting long day in the life at GG came to a close - I only wish I'd woken up someplace other than the Phoenix America West customer service desk, but that is another story filled with smoke and near strip searches.

It wasn't until I got back I discovered most of the excitement had been happening at GG headquarters, but those details will have to wait for future news releases.

Next week Desktop Summit game tournaments, more sessions and a new group of people out to change the world. If everything goes just right you'll see two product launches on Linux - I'll leave you to speculate what they might be...