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Social Networking 1.0
By Corvus | March 13, 2007
As exciting as Web 2.0 trends may be, there’s really no substiture for good old fashioned social scenes to get people talking. Last Tuesday night’s IGDA member party was certainly no exception. The ability to get a read on body language, tone of voice, etc, gives you (perhaps) a truer picture of the people you’re dealing with.
I had my fair share of odd conversations at the party, and met my fair share of people who’s full names I neither know, nor care to know. From the decidedly drunken programmer who, judging by the last project he claims to have worked on, is f*ing brilliant, to the decidedly drunken somebody or the other who spit on Wayne while vehemently denouncing something or the other. But a few moments of the party stand out:
My first in-person conversation with Chris Bateman for example! If you’re not familiar with Chris, he’s the man and mind behind the studio International Hobo (link), the game Play With Fire (link), and the blog Only a Game (link). That’s him in the picture next to the guy with the curly moustache.
Another great moment of the party was meeting two fellow indie studio folks, Marcus Riedner and Travis Savo. Marcus is Chief Creative Officer, and Travis is Chief Executive Officer of Verse Studios (link). Marcus and I started up a great conversation about storytelling in games before we’d even entered the party and I suspect the conversation will be continued for as long as he’ll put up with my raving. Once in the party, we were joined by Wayne and Travis and the conversation turned to business topics. It turns out that both of our studios have met many of the same challenges, most notably that of being spread across multiple regions. Later on in the conference, we talked about collaborating on a white paper on the issues of running an indie studio with a decentralized structure and suggested that we ought to try and run a session on the topic at next year’s GDC. Who knows? We may see even deeper collaboration as the years progress. Regardless, Verse Studios are people you should keep an eye on.
Finally, the most important connections I feel I made at GDC this year were with the next generation of game devs. From coders to visual artists and animators, to writers, musicians, and sound effects guys, GDC was teaming with talent waiting to explode onto the scene. Many of the up-and-coming I met were volunteers but a few, such as Adrian Sandoval and Karen McKenna, were attendees. I met Adrian and Karen in queue for the party Tuesday night and ran into them again a couple of times over the rest of the week. Adrian has started up a brand new blog (link) and Karen has a portfolio site (link). Be sure to check out Karen’s sculpture while you’re there, it’s good stuph.
March 13th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Pleasure to meet you ‘in the flesh’ (so to speak!)