Game Dev. Conference – Austin, Texas

So if you haven’t read the subtle hints that Heimdallr and myself I have posted in that we are currently in Austin, Texas the Live Music Capitol of the World as the proclaim. Though we wouldn’t really know much about that at least this year. Just haven’t heard or seen much, probably not as big of a scene being that it is mid week. We really aren’t here for the social scene, been a good time so far in terms of learning and nerding.

We are finishing out our 2nd day here. Gone through a number of sessions where we have hopefully picked up some insight as well as learned some new fun stuff to be applied. Now AGDC isn’t all development, but has a number of things to talk about for the business side (its not all fun and games!), publishing and 3rd party vendors eager to help us all out ^_^. We are splitting up the sessions between the group of us here and trying to make sure to get all we can get out of all the big boys and big girls in the industry. Its a smaller crowd this year, which probably is a direct relationship to the economics in the US being a little out of whack!

Now, I am a total buffoon, and I am sure most of you will agree, but I didn’t bring my camera and I haven’t poked Heimdallr hard enough to get any pictures from him. I tried the cell phone move but I am still a few years behind in that technology it seems, haha. So I have done one better, I went in search for some photos and I came across another blog at the IndieGames.com Blog. You can read their blog and click on the images to get to the flickr pages in which they have upload a good selection of images.

I am going to side step a little as I might find this story just funny in my own head, who knows. We arrive mid wednesday afternoon, and got to the hotel and checked in. Got to the very top of this rock and find out they put us in the handycap access room, which I believe is the start to our hotel rooms antics. First things first of course, we try to get internet. Failed. So we try to call down and get support. Failed. So we try to contact the service provider for the hotel. Failed.
Between being forwarded to wrong numbers, to then be given a phone number that reaches an adult math making phone service, oh I do not jest! After getting that all sorted out I sat on hold through 3 tiers of support to be told that the access point needs to be restarted but no one has access to the room from the hotel. Yes, fail. So in a hotel full of gaming folks the wireless net doesn’t work but the lines do and boy is the network bogged down. We should have come when it was a scrapbook convention!

I am going to back track a little more, so it has come to our attention that I am incapable of opening up a hotel room door. The card goes in, the light goes green and I am just incapable of opening the darn door. It seems that everyone else is capable and I am just pathetic, something I am sure most of you will agree with haha.

Ok, going forward. Now there is vending machines on all floors. We are on the 11th, and I got the itch for some late night caffeine. So went to the vending machine, and notice that the insert for the dollar bill wasn’t looking so hot and it won’t take the dollars I had. So I went down to the 10th floor. This machine only had a big hole where the dollar bill insert was, yeah someone took it. Weird. So I went down to the 9th floor and this one would not take the bills and me with no change. So down the 8th floor and the 7th floor where both were also missing the dollar bill insert. I guess there was a need for these somewhere else, not sure where or why…but finally the 6th floor had a working vending machine.

So other then all that the hotel is very nice and helpful as its been years since we have been in class room settings so all of this learning is exhausting!

Heimdallr has promised me to bring his camera out tomorrow and get some of his own photos so we can post. I am glad to hear that Requiem is back up after moving this week and glad we are done with all this moving. Total nightmare from all development side all the way to the community we are all pretty glad this is behind us and hope it isn’t going to need to happen again. Now we get back to all the fun stuff!! Talk Like a Pirate day is come up in a few hours, oh so excited and I hope you all are as well, we are the only game publisher that I am aware of that celebrates this every year.