8am
Getting the shuttle to the GDC turned out to be more than a little difficult. We came just after one shuttle had passed, and the next buss was too full to let us on. Finally, the next bus showed up, 20 minutes late and we were able to head off to the GDC...late...grr...

9am-ish
Into the round table for Indie developers. Unfortunately coming in late left me on the floor instead of around the actual table. At one head of the table is Steve Pavlina, notable from Deterity.com, and the person leading the discussion. At the opposite side of the long rectangular table sits Gregory Micek of DIY games, sporting his DIY wind-breaker. There are other notables around, though the discussion hasn't really involved them. Most of those who are speaking either are interested in making indie games or have already done so. The discussion itself is well-structured and definitely aimed at the beginner audience. Most of those who are interested in getting into doing indie work are interested in numbers and what works well, but it seems that there are very small amounts of this type of information.

Selling indie games is certainly not very easy. The discussion on PR shows that between indie developers what works for some in making the public aware of their product doesn't work for others. Steve pressed the point of having something of a hook in your Press Release. Greg also brought up the importance of getting to know people at websites that are indie friendly.

An interesting point brought up was the number of full time indies in the room vs. part time. The split was about equal, but the majority of people in the room were not in either group. Looks like there is another crop of indie developers waiting in the wings. This discussion was certainly a good launching point for them, and I wish them luck.

10:30
After a solid 15 minutes of set-up, Microsoft came on to sell us on their new initiative, XNA, which is intended to act much like Windows, but for gaming. The idea would be to have a single architecture that allows developers to have middleware tools at their command so that games can be easily used across platforms. Certainly this is something that could run well, but there was some skepticism.

11:00
Thanks to my brother I got to check out the Expo floor a little early and was able to chat with some of the developers. Spoke to Seth Robinson who had his site hacked and was kicked off of his host. Sad to see something like that at all, especially during the GDC when developers should be able to focus on making their games better and dreaming up new schemes. Around every corner there are would-be developers showing their talents and thinking up new ideas. The GDC is certainly about innovation, and in such an environment, new ideas seem to flow much freer than they do in many other locations.

11:45
Speaking with Ian McNeil of Spartan fame. I got to have nearly an hour of personal walk through of the game and look at this game that wasn't available to us prior to the conference. They have quite a winner there that has both in-depth battles, but focuses more on the world building and historical aspects of the time period including actual time line events such as the birth of Socrates.

12:30
I saw that Josiah was free so I dropped by to give some of my thoughts on Gish. The game has added a lot of graphic and lighting since I was able to play my preview, and it looks wonderful. Honestly I cannot say enough good things about this game. I gave them my vote for the audience award.

4:00
I got to chat with Greg Micek and Troy Goodfellow from DIYgames.com. Lots of fun to do. With the IGF awards coming up tonight I shared were my votes went for the audience award. (Gish & Fuzzee Teevee) People and places are all very interesting, but there are very few people who can talk indie games. I watched with some joy the surprised and confused looks from the different press members in the press quarters as it was clear that they had no idea what we were discussing.


Highlight of the day
Outside the conference center there was a very attractive woman handing out condoms on a card that talked about safe sex. During lunch I got to listen to some developers talking about it. "Oh yah, give condoms to geeks! As if we didn't have enough torture." Thanks to Brandon McKee, from Microsoft, for that gem (perhaps ever so slightly mis-quoted)

General Impression:
I watched Galaxy Quest the day before the show. In it there is a line "Didn't you guys ever watch the show?" I think that much the same time of comment could be made towards developers and games. "Don't you guys ever play these games?" Certainly no-one has the time to play everything, but there are a large number of developers spend their time dreaming up the games they are going to make without considering the games that have already been made.