About freaking time they came out and just said it. Then again, they weren’t part of the picture when I explained why this was bad, nigh on four years ago.

Sorry I’m taking so long to do stories on my Austin trip. I still have my job, and lately it’s been a bitch. I remain committed to doing good work in my final two weeks there, which either makes me a damned useful employee or a real chump. You be the judge.

I only just got my car back yesterday after going two days without, and that I spent over $750 on a new alternator, battery and headlight assembly (former just quit on me, latter some idiot backed into, at least that’s my theory for why it was pushed in with no other body damage,) building and keeping an audience for this site is not a high priority.

But I do still have my notes from the con, and plan to continue it, however long it takes. As detailed as I’ve been, some of this stuff will last readers until the end of the year.

Tha towaz are tha playaz, yo.

I figured there would be a lot more noise made about the round-table speech featuring Dr. Cat of Furcadia, Brian “Psychochild” Green of Near Death Studios (who resurrected Meridian 59) and Bruce “Sir Bruce” Woodcock of… well, his name badge said “Playnet,” but that was questionable. I was wrong, even though Gordon “Tyrant” Walton, now working for Sony Online Entertainment in Austin on some unnamed project after bailing EA/Maxis shortly after The Sims Online shipped (no one blamed him for that, but no one brought it up around him, either,) decided to moderate the discussion.

Well, if anyone could do it, Tyrant could. But I didn’t go in to see. Instead, I basically took a long break before lunch and waited for the next session. (Actually, I stopped in to Patricia Pizer’s talk aboutUru Online, but frankly got tired of hearing about how hardcore Myst players were so hard to please. In retrospect, I wish I’d stopped in on John Taylor, co-founder of Kesmai who’s got his own company, Castle Hill Studios.)

Instead, I went to lunch with the Mythic guys, then came back to give my attention to J. Todd Coleman, recently named CEO of Wolfpack Studios, who was talking about “Building an MMO in your garage: The good, the bad and the ugly.” (No offense meant to Damion “Ubiq” Schubert, Shadowbane’s producer, who was talking at the same time about “The power of collectability,” or Dark Age of Camelot executive producer Matt Firor, speaking on “Common massive multiplayer game development misconceptions.” Sorry, guys, I didn’t make the scheduling here.)

What follows is a fairly raw account of Todd Coleman at his most honest, his most forthcoming, and his most self-deprecating. For those that met him early in Shadowbane’s salad days of pre-release guerilla development, this was definitely not the same person. By all accounts, he’s a changed man.
Continue reading Austin Game Conference: Thursday, Part 3: Todd Coleman, marketing genius (?)…

The conference had lots of speakers, but it was a given that not everyone could see them all. It was also (correctly) assumed that not everyone would care about them all. Of the six categories that the speakers were generally grouped in, I stayed within the Online Design and Online Service tracks for all but one speech at the very end of the conference. Other things interest me about the business, but these are nearest and dearest, and take less effort for me to understand.

The first Online Service presentation, “Software Post-Launch: Why managing the service is as difficult and expensive as development,” was by Jessica Mulligan, who took over executive production duties for both Asheron’s Call games for Turbine Entertainment last spring and recently became a full-time employee.

As pointed out in the last report, however, Mulligan’s career has been much richer.
Continue reading AGC Thursday, Part 2: Jessica Mulligan, and lunch…

Right here. New race, two new Classes, two new Disciplines, new map areas, sixth character slot for those who buy. Coming November.

Retarded Animal Babies 5: The Wargaming Episode.

“What the fuck is a Gary Gygax?”

Long, tiring day means J. is too tired to finish the next saga from AGC.

This site’s host is switching providers tomorrow, which probably means readers should expect an outage anyway. I’ll see about getting more work done tomorrow.

A new job would be nice.

It was about damned time that Austin got its own game conference.

“That’s what I said,” Chris Sherman gushed when I told him that. But Chris didn’t just say that, he actually went and took some initiative, then went and put the thing on at the Austin Convention Center.

He made it look easy. As it turned out, most of the big-name titles coming out of Austin in the past few years have all been massively-multiplayer, so it wasn’t hard to attract local luminaries like “Lord British” Richard Garriott (who is pretty much responsible for making Austin a game city, if any one person is, by moving Origin Systems there in 1989) as speakers.

But that the emerging genre doesn’t have a conference of its own, at least not per se. Given that, and that more than a few comments were made in Austin about how cons like GDC were becoming more about unwashed wanna-bes begging for a touch than as a place for useful communion of ideas, other names from “the industry” (a phrase I’d hear a lot, because it’s used a lot) would make a pilgrimage from all across the continent. A few came farther.

So it turned out to be fun for most. Yeah, there were still bottom-feeders looking for a hookup, and people begging for others to take business cards. But for those who came to learn and shake hands with those they called fellows and friends, it was well worth the trip. I’m told they were expecting 250, but something like 800 registered. Thankfully, the ACC is a big place, so there was more than enough room.

Be advised that my reports here are going to include personal observations and opinions (the latter used sparingly and pointed out for the reader,) quotes both direct, paraphrased and unattributed (to protect those who have jobs and want to keep them,) and might be updated irregularly. I do have photographs, but they’ll have to wait until later.

It’s going to be a challenge of mine just to get them all out by the end of the week. So let’s see.
Continue reading Austin Game Conference: Thursday, Part 1: J. arrives, Mark Jacobs gives history lesson…

I really am not looking forward to the old days of gaping at e-tail screens again, but hey, if it gets people curious about Shadowbane again…

Rayven just sent me this link. Supposedly coming in November. No official word about what this is (expansion pack, probably) or when it’s really coming. And no, I don’t know any better than anyone else.