Off to GDC

Author:
Jenna Leder

March means big things, boys and girls. Yes, it’s the wind-down of winter, when most LARPS start planning their spring and summer dates, and those that shut for the season get ready to open their doors again. But for me, March is even more important because that is when generally falls the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, California.

GDC, with an average 25,000-30,000 attendees, is one of if not the largest and most important annual events in the game industry. It’s sort of like back-to-school week for developers, with expos, networking events, lectures, tutorials, roundtables, workshops, and more; not to mention the various award ceremonies that take place, the keynotes (this year, father of computer gaming Sid Meier), and the various Summits for Artificial Intelligence, Social Gaming, Independent Games, and so on.

And of course, there are the parties.

My first year attending the Conference, 2008 (this will mark year three for me), I was lucky enough to be invited to a private Valve party, where the Rock Band track of the Portal theme “Still Alive” made its debut, performed by Jonathon Coulton (those who keep track of these kind of things may also know it as the party where some drunk guy tried to steal the song from the XBox). It was pretty awesome getting to rub elbows with personnel and developers from Valve, Bungie, and various other companies in attendance… almost awesome enough to make up for a facepalm of epic proportions that took place the next day.

So I’m hanging out in the CA (CA = Conference Associate’s, the volunteers who run the show. More on that when I get back next week) lounge, and this guy comes in: swarthy skin, a little stocky, long black hair. And I’m thinking to myself, “man, that dude looks a lot like John Romero“. So I watch this guy walk around, chat with some people, shake a few hands, then go on his way.

I go up to my friend who had been talking to the guy and say “wow, he looked JUST like John Romero”. My friend looks at me a bit oddly and says:

“Uh… it WAS John Romero”.

/Facepalm.

I’m flying out Sunday right after Knight Realms (hey, LARPing happens, conference or no conference!), and I should be getting back to New York the morning of the 14th. I hope to have lots of great insider dirt to share with you guys.

Til then!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 5th, 2010 at 10:25 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.