GDC has begun!

SO this morning was crazy of course. After getting up at 8am I went down to the hotel lobby to meet with Kelly, Richard and Ian. Seyi was running late so I waited for him while the rest of the gang headed over. I ran into Brian Crescente and some of the other Kotaku guys in the lobby too, seems they're staying at the Drake as well. Once I hit the convention center, of course I began running into people left and right as I made my way to the press lounge. Registration was uneventful, it was good to see Sibel and the rest of the FortySeven people once again. After making sure everyone was settled and had their plans in order for the day, I headed back out to meet with Sean, the Fullsail student I'm mentoring at the conference as part of the IGDA's student scholarship program.

Scattershots of play - Inde Games Summit

Now I'm sitting in the IGS, listening to Kelle Santiago, Jonathan Mak and Pekko Koskinen talk about their various veiws on gaming and design. I haven't been able to decipher precisely what they're discussing right now because (1) I'm writing this so I can't really listen that well and (2) I was reviewing some stuff for the IGDA chapter leaders workshop going on during lunch. But, I have the recorder running and so I'm capturing all the audio to play back later for my writeup next Monday.

Damn you Dustin!

Dustin Clingman totally got the drop on me this year. In case you don't know, Dustin and I photo-snipe each other the entire conference. I actually saw him on my way from the press lounge to the IGS, but my camera was still in the bag. Turns out he knew I was meeting with my student scholar (Dustin is a professor at Fullsail) and so as I was talking with him at the bottom of the second floor escalator, Dustin rode it down and snapped like 8 pictures on his iPhone of me at the bottom. So, he gets the opening shot this year. But I have the camera out now, so he better watch himself.