GDC Conference Report
GDC was awesome. Some details to follow.


Well, it certainly didn't disappoint. We were there from Sunday to Sunday (more on that later). I got the chance to visit my aunt/godmother who lives in Sausalito, and kindly showed me around San Francisco on Sunday and Friday (it being my first trip to CA ever).

We saw Ghirardelli Square (I bought...a lot of chocolate), the Embarcadero (ate at The Slanted Dwarf Door, and hit See's Candy to buy...more chocolate). We drove down Lombard Street (aka the most crookedest street in the world...I cannot possibly imagine living on that street, it would be a nightmare), visited George Lucas' campus at the Presidio, saw the Golden Gate Bridge from a couple dozen different angles, and, to my delight, visited Coit Tower (for the 6/7 players in the house, that's where I found the Bradshaw media storage depot with the Jennifer artifacts...it was so cool to actually go there, but sadly, I could not find the storage depot X.x). During the whole thing, I got a great history lesson about various aspects of the city.

Right, then. The conference.

Monday

Day 1 of the Game Design Workshop. Introduction to the MDA framework (Mechanics -> Dynamics -> Aesthetics). This was mostly review, but it's the sort of stuff that is well worth reviewing at regular intervals, IMHO. Also introduced the concept of "fail fast" (IOW, rapid iteration...make sure you're not getting hung up on details in early prototypes so you can quickly see what does and doesn't work, make adjustments, and move on to the next iteration). Again, basic stuff and review for most in the room, but good stuff to review.

They broke us up into three groups at that point and sent us to three different rooms, where we further broke down into groups of 6 for an exercise based on Sissyfight 3000. It was great...my group came up with a survival horror theme with a zombie horde. Then we overheard the group next to us declare that they were doing a survival horror theme with an axe murderer, so we reskinned ours to be a boy band running from a ravening horde of screaming 14 year old girls. It played out well, to the entertainment of the rest of the crowd =)

At this point we had to sign up for elective events. I chose "World of Rulecraft" for the first section, which was a sort of "Massively Multiplayer Offline Roleplaying Game". We each chose a class (Rogue, Warrior, or Mage) and went around the room challenging each other to duels (or in the case of rogues like myself, stealing from the other players =D). When we defeated five different people, we could go to the admins and level up, increasing our power.

The catch was, every couple of minutes, "the servers went down", and when they came back up, there were updated "patch notes" on the projection screen. The patch notes were determined by a seperate group of workshop attendees who were chosen beforehand as "moderators". The purpose of the exercise was to get an understanding of how to handle changes to a ruleset that occurred during gameplay. It was probably the most enjoyable part of the workshop.

The second elective for the afternoon was an introduction to the game The Three Musketeers. Pretty simple and straightforward, moderately fun. Our "homework assignment" was to find a way to improve upon the gameplay, specifically to find rulesets that accomodated 3 players, or 4 players. The bonus question was to find a ruleset that handled anywhere from 2-4 players. Harder than it sounds, believe me.

Monday night there was an RPI Alumni event at the Westin hotel a couple blocks away. I saw a number of people there, including arkineaux, one of my fellow 6/7 players, and many others. It was a great time, I ended up staying out with RPI folk until quite late. Also I got a nifty bottle opener and a pen to commemorate the event O.o

Going to take a break here, and cover the other days in a later post.