11am After arriving at the GDC I immediately went through the badge process. Unfortunately I was unable to get Press badge and had to pay for an expo pass. Fortunately I had prepaid and was able to get a lower price...but I my badge was lost in the mail. Or at least it was lost in the mail until after the GDC had begun. The first person I spoke to said I had to "plead my case" with the front desk. Thankfully that amounted to saying I hadn't received a badge. After a quick process, I had my badge and was headed for the floor.

11h15am On to the floor. The floor was jam packed with visitors and exhibits. The first exhibit was a Nokia display touting their new mobile phone and mobile gaming. There were players everywhere, but it didn't really meet my objectives...so on we went.

11h20am After pacing the floor a couple of times I ended up near the Garage Games booth. You of course know Garage Games. They have provided a low-cost, high-end game engine to developers to help them create high quality independent games. Their booth was nearly packed throughout the show. Thankfully it was well manned. 4 men in blue Garage Game shirts were answering questions to beginner's questions. The sad side was seeing people who knew nothing about games looking and thinking they would be able to make great games with little work. Most of them didn't know what the Torque engine really was. The cool side was seeing some early work on Cyberfuge: Second Battalion by Idryonis and speaking with Jesse McIntyre of the same. Their game is still quite some time from being completed (years). However, it looks really good. Anyone who has played Halo or Metroid Prime would certainly see something in the game that looks familiar and fun. Jesse unabashedly stated that it was a combination of those two games in same of its conceptuality. In any event, the only thing that was disappointing about it was that I won't be able to play it for some time.

11h50am Continued on my path over to the IGF pavilion. The Independent Games Festival pavilion is broken into two section. Instead of providing each of the games in the student showcase, and each of the finalists in the festival its own mini-booth, they are crowded together in two separate circles, each with 10 points on it. The setup is difficult to use, and leads to a poor representation of the games, as it is impossible to hear one game over another due to their proximity. Furthermore, while the closeness of the games makes it easy to turn your head and view each from a distance, there is very little room up close to the games, and games that draw a crowd often cause adjacent games to not have enough room to stand next to them. All in all it was rather disappointing as a set-up goes, that more thought was not given to the IGF presentation. They were portrayed as small and insignificant in the overall scheme of the floor. In any event, upon first reaching the IGF section, I happened to notice Brainsmash was showing off Toy Trouble, which was the first real review on Game Tunnel. I stopped by and said 'hi,' as they were getting ready to leave for a speaker.

12pm Switching over to the IGF finalists side of the pavilion, I saw that each of the winners from the previous nights ceremonies had a beautiful trophy next to their consoles. After giving all of the finalists a little of a pre-curser look over, I decided to speak to Geoff of Ailtius games, whose game BaseGolf was one of the finalists, but unfortunately not one of the winners. Geoff was awesome to talk to, and it was unfortunate that I ran out of time before I was able to speak to him further about how BaseGolf was doing and his future plans. I did find out that he was looking to do another Sports Game next, perhaps 2 more before moving on to a different genre. The next game on tap may end up being an indoor soccer game that allows you literally kick it around a house.

12h30pm Wandered over to the book store in the lobby. It is rare to find so many game creation books so available. Since I don't make games, I wasn't able to really find anything I was looking for, but I was able to smile at the pretty covers...and scoff at the Andre Lamothe books.

12h50pm With hunger on the belly, I headed for lunch at a little place called Ravioli's. Made sure to order the Alfredo sauce so I wouldn't have to explain a red stain on my shirt the rest of the day. Food was exceptional for the price.

2pm Headed back into the GDC, but this time the target was the career pavilion. My brother is a programmer, and was looking for a way to further his work in the industry, so I went along as he talked to each of the studios. My favorite moment was the Nintendo of America booth, who said "We don't have any jobs in the US, we make our games in Japan." No questions there, but why exactly are you in the career pavilion?

3pm Onto Digital Eel and Strange Adventures in Infinite Space. I have to admit this was not a favorite of mine among the finalists. Still, the players who were playing seemed to be really enjoying themselves. I got to talk to Bill Sears for a minute about the game and upcoming projects. It seems that Digital Eel is considering many different possibilities for future games, including mobile and multiplayer. The hope is to keep the gameplay that people enjoy with SAIS, and add things to it to make it better. With a multiplayer, the game would become turn based, but with the real-time battles remaining. Bill seemed to think being a part of the IGF was nearly making the game more mainstream than had been intended. I don't think that will become an issue with the current game, but who knows about the future.

3h30pm Samurai! I had several favorites at the IGF, and this was certainly one of them. There are few games that are so easy to pick up, yet so strategically challenging and fun to play as Samurai. I wished them all the luck in the world as they go forward with this game. Tremendous amounts of work had been done to make sure that Samurai was completed before the IGF. David Adams I believe is the person I spoke with (unfortunately I forgot to write that name down). Certainly Klear Games, who created the game, was the most enthusiastic and joyful group to be around at the show...and they had some stiff competition! The group couldn't stop laughing and joking, and they were giving away T-Shirts like they were candy! Many got a copy of the demo, and one lucky website got a reviewers copy...more on that to come for sure!

4h00pm Anyone who has played Teenage Lawnmower, or Funeral Quest will note that the storylines are a bit twisted. Teenage Lawnmower was one of the finalists at the IGF, and its creator, Seth Robinson was present to provide insight into the game. Seth did have help in creating the game, his artistically talent wife, Akiko, is the other half of the 2-person team that created Teenage Lawnmower. It is a game steeped in storyline, with 1/2 MB of text! Not that you should consider it to be only a great story, there is also a well-developed action part of the game, built on top of a great-looking 3D engine. In fact Seth created his own 3D model format for the game. He is considering doing a role-player next, and the great, and decidedly different storylines that are present in his games can again expect to be seen. Talking to Seth was great, as you might have expected someone a bit out there if you had played the games, but instead, he was really down to earth. I enjoyed one of the better conversations I had at the GDC with Seth while discussing his games, this website, and things that would keep game developers from being involved with this website.

4h30pm I took a break from the action and went through some of the exhibits. Discreet was showing off modeling, nVidia had an interesting drawing contest, and tried to win people over with a scantly-clad fairy. Hmmm, wonder what they think about at work? How to make more realistic breasts? Honestly I hoped they had bigger goals. So I went over to the ATI booth, to see the Wild Tangent discussion. Theirs started with a digitally created dancer, followed by a blond bimbo in a swimsuit. The cool thing about both was the ability of just the character to fade into the screen, with the desktop still visible in the background, and even other programs being used! Imagine it! Scantily clad women dancing on your desktop while you are doing other tasks...we should get these guys together with nVidia!

5pm Back to the shuttle...then to dinner at a Mexican Grill and back for the suite night...then to bed...after an hour of Halo.

Day 1 was a fantastic day. I really enjoyed being able to talk to many people who I'd only conversed with in email previously. An interesting thing is the psyche of independent developers. Since independent developers are typically small, unfunded teams, the work that goes into creating a game is nearly a love project. That is to say, rarely will an independent developer reap the rewards of their effort to create a great game. It takes a great amount of effort to do one, and the time will likely not be compensated financially in most cases. It is likely due to this that Independent developers are so fiercely protective of their games. One of the difficulties of this website is creating a good relationship with all independent developers. Since the game is so much a part of the person after putting so much effort in, it is difficult to give it to a reviewer who may not appreciate the work involved in the game...and is likely to not fully appreciate the game itself. As with any website that does reviews of games, this website must rate some games lower than others. With the close relationship that most Indie developers have with their games, that can lead to a developer feeling that their game has been unfairly judged. In some cases that may be absolutely correct. The people who write reviews for this site or any other try to be entirely professionally, but they are human and are creatures of opinion. Any review written will have people who agree with it and disagree with it. Games have increased in popularity and also decreased in sales due to reviews. Since there are so few outlets for Indie games to be reviewed, it becomes an interesting responsibility and burden to properly review games for this website. Still the hope is that the website will be a benefit to both the people who play games, and to the people who review them.

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By: Russell Carroll
Posted: Saturday March 08, 2003