GDJurydercon

I tell people that the Game Developers conference involves developers giving talks to other developers about behind the scenes "technical stuff." There are colorful and interesting graphs like this one from my morning session.
















And then there are insane graphs like this one from my mid-morning session. Fun stuff!
















Not so fun was that I got called in for jury duty at 12:45pm. The good news was at 1:45pm they told me to go home. "Thank you for serving your civic duty" and something about taking a shower? Not sure, they were mumbling. So back to GDC where went to another design session and got some neat experimental games to play with. Some of them are available on the web.

The incredibly difficult Flywrench

Rod Humble's Stars over Half Moon Bay. Also on that link is the game titled "The Marriage" which is being cited as a definitive (of definite?) demonstration of "games as art."

Mr. Heart Loves you very Much!

Crayon Physics Deluxe (well the original prototype. we got to play the newer version)

Then on my way over to my last session of GDC, I ran into Jamie Fristrom from Torpex Games who I hadn't seen since E3, when E3 was superbowl E3 and not lame-o public marketing fest E3. It was nice catching up with him. Unfortunately as it would happen, not only my session of choice but even both of my backups were completely filled to capacity. I was sessioned-out-of-luck. So instead I mozied over to the Wondercon (San Francisco Comic Book Convenstion) across the street! Free entry for industry professionals. Hurray! As opposed to GDC which is something like $1400 at full price.
















Comic Book Conventions. Home of yesterday's stars. Looking for $20 so you can be a part of reliving their former glory. Shouldn't it be enough that people care enough about them? And come on, $20??? There must be some rabid fan boys out there because they must be charging that much because people are willing to pay for it. Do you even get an autographed headshot with that? Anyways, I met up with Ben and some comic folks and we headed over to the Westfield to get some food. I must say that Westfield has probably the BEST food court for a MALL in the U.S. (that I know of). I'm not talking about shopping centers or complexes but a mall (albeit a fancy one). Indoors, with a movie theater, and shoe stores, and a book store, and a fruity smelling store. The choices are plentiful and the quality is way above mall average. That said, it is not a full endorsement but if you are in that part of town, it is most convenient to go there when in groups as you don't need to decide what everyone wants to eat. Someone will post to me about a better mall food court but then I will be all the wiser.
















Afterwards we went to the Cartoon Art Museum. There was an awesome Mary Blair exhibit.





































Original concept art from Alice in Wonderland.
















Tomorrow I have to go back to Wondercon to pick up some Pierre Alary (OMG he has a blog) books I've been wanting.