Here’s the remainder of my good AGC photos. I got lots of backs of heads and other such. A week later, I just want to get on with everything else in my life, and that is a lot. Had fun, was disturbed by more than a few things, got really down on myself for no one else’s fault but my own, and came out feeling only somewhat OK.

Anyway. Includes the IGDA-Austin shindig at Beerland with Guitar Hero 2. Captions in parentheses.
Continue reading Views from AGC…

From MTV News, you heard it first:

Stein hustled his way into EA the hard way. Four years ago, he dropped a dead-end job at Abercrombie & Fitch on the spot when he got a summer gig as a tester on an earlier EA “Tiger Woods” game. He came back for more summer testings, became discouraged by his lack of progress and even did some soul-searching in Europe before persistence got him into the internship program.

EA Games: At least it’s not hawking clothes at the mall.

I’m still working on Gamasutra articles before it all gets too old and unimportant, but here’s Gordon Walton, seen above, giving his post-MMO Rant rant which I largely transcribed in my article.

My first four articles on AGC are up on Gamasutra, with at least two more coming in the next few days.

The MMO Rant. This was the first one I’d actually attended, mainly because it’s been crowded and loud and crazy the past two years it’s been covered, and everyone else was covering it, so why should I? Well, this year, someone was paying me to. And once again, Gordon Walton proves that he is in fact the pimp of the MMO industry. Y’all bi***es ain’t sh**.

Finding the Funny. This was supposed to be the one with Al Rowe and Erik Wolpaw, but it was a diminished cast. I really ought to look up and play Destroy All Humans! and so should you.

Damion Schubert’s talk on Men In Tights. Yeah, I pretty much had to go to this one. The photo I took wasn’t that bad, either. Hopefully he’ll get his slideshow up soon.

SOE heads talk about overhauling SWG. What I didn’t point out in the story was that NGE was heralded by a load of rumors during last year’s AGC, in the vein of “SOE is doing a bunch of wacky changes to SWG (pronounced ’swig’) and a bunch of devs are going to quit.” Neither John Blakely (Edit: I’ve since heard that Blakely was there) nor Todd Fiala were working in Austin at the time this all went down, but were part of the crew sent from San Diego to shore up the shop. (Fiala was a programming lead at launch, but got moved some time after.)

So, more to come, including pictures and a little commentary from the Guitar Hero 2 semi-drunken-tourney at Beerland (!) and whatever else I feel like talking about here.

Yeah, I know all about Steve Irwin. Nature is a horrible psychotic bitch, right? Forget conservation now. Fuck the ocean, and all of Australian wildlife. Just watch it all get paved over now. There’s no one left to stop it.

Anyway, back in Texas, Nellie Connally died. First Lady of Texas, wife of John Connally? Rode in the front seat with JFK and Jackie? Managed to not get shot? Yeah, she died.

And Rob Pardo’s going to be starting his keynote speech at the same time her funeral begins, Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. And First United Methodist isn’t that far away from the convention center.

Better get your parking space early.

Stinky Wizzleteats is apparently the new spokestoon for Sara Lee. And if you don’t know what that means, you probably shouldn’t be reading this site.

Getting ready for AGC as much as I can this week. Still haven’t made any appointments with the trainloads of game industry flacks wanting interviews. That’s still very weird for me, and it might turn out that I don’t do any at all — I’ll just go to the seminars. But we’ll see what happens. Gamasutra is sending at least three other people for coverage besides me, two of whom are going to be presenting at different times. Which is to say, they’re lots more important than I am and are likely to wonder who I am and what the hell I’m doing there.

To which I’ll probably reach into the gimme tote bag full of flyers that everyone registered gets, pull out the latest Game Writers Quarterly and turn to the third mug shot on page 2. Which doesn’t look that much like me, because I got new glasses in the past year and am wearing my hair shorter.

Please, just let me get through the week without making an ass of myself.