This is the west wing, the two others being the north and south.

So, here we are. The place where game-stuff happens, or rather, where people talk about it happening. I was fortionate enough to meet up with the gang from the Tigsource forums before things took off, so there wasn't as much of a pressing need to kick exectuives in the shins to get attention.

The conference itself wasn't as tense as it's exterior might give off. As long as you had your badge, you could basically go anywhere. (something that came in handy when you were about five minutes too late to a talk)

Things got a lot more crouded during the next few days.

Only the XNA demo booth was present the first two days with no other game displays around before the Expo opened on the following wednesday. While I don't own a 360 myself, this will probably be our largest destribution channel for Owlboy, so I felt it was important to check out what people were making for it, but I'll save my reviews of game demos for the following posts.

I don't have a lot of pictures from the first day because my fellow Tiggers were under the impression that cameras were only allowed for the press. Seeing as people were taking pictures anyway, I brought my camera after lunch.

2D-Boy's talk on going indie was insightful. Though I feel D-Pad is in touch with the basics, seeing how sales jump significantly during certain campaigns was the most interesting to me, if only because of the massive scales involved. The Mac and Linux market is also condiderably larger than I anticipated. Of course, with Owlboy being made in XNA, there's little hope in porting unless people are willing to emulate somehow. Reprogramming the whole thing for launch is a bit too much to promise. Of course, the high sales might simply be because World Of Goo fits the marketspace. Regardless, it's something to think about.

I also attended Simon Carless' talk on sales (nice nameby the way.) While he had certainly done his homework, being a dyslexic with english as my second language, I didn't get as much out of it as I had hoped, but maybe the few tidbits I managed to salvage will be of some use later.

Appairantly, the internet is a bobblehead

Next was Cactus' presentation on game design. Not a lot to say here. I laughed my arse off. I also left with a feeling that I need to make one of those batshit insane games I've been thinking about...

Left: Petri Purho (Whom is not sweedish, as I believed. ....sorry about that Petri...) Right: Dylan Flitterer

After that, Petri went through how Crayon Physics Deluxe came to be and what it resulted in. I feel the key aspect here was testing new ideas and making test builds to not only improve yourself, but also find what's fun, and what works. (and appairantly, your tenth project will be the one you can expand on. Ah crap, Owlboy is screwed...)

Dylan's talk was also very helpful in finding ways to inspire yourself to make new games by putting constraints on yourself, something I've always thought is a fantastic way to create things. Really, there's no such thing as "the perfect game" because a game doesn't just have a single form. Most great ideas come from working with or around limitations, and Dylan had some pretty grand suggestions for those. (random cards anyone?)

Oh my! Buildings!

With that, monday's talks were concluded, an I went back to my hotel to give my shoulders a break (I carried my laptop with me the entire time, every day. That's something between 5 to 10 hours a day. Got worse when the expo floor opened up and there would be no chairs around...) Appairantly, being bored is dangerous in this part of the world, so I was promply invited to an indie dinner so I wouldn't go into spazms (really though, thanks guys!)

Look! People! Eating stuff! Bet you wish you could eat something too.

Met a bunch of grand individuals. Cards were exchanged. Food was eaten. Swag was snatched. All in all, a pretty successful outing I'd say.

The following morning, it's at it again. Rod Humble from EA gave a talk on indie games and what to focus on, giving quick tidbits on what to remember and, more often than not, ignore.

Hey! I have that shirt! (...well, they were handing them out after all)

Then, Phil Fish and Kyle Gabler (Made some pretty insignificant games.. what were they again... Hat? .. no.. Fez? And that other one... World of Sludge. Or was it Goo? I forget.) talked about how to market your games yourself and take care of promotion. This was certainly something I could have some use for, and oddly enough, it looks like D-Pad is heading in the right direction according to their points, so that's positive I suppose. I'll have to remember that whole "Don't talk about things you know nothing about, and don't be an asshole" part. Speaking of which, plants are stupid because they're green.

After a talk on running an indie buisness, there was about an hour purely didicated to let indies rant about whatever they felt like. I can't touch up on everything that was said, but it a good session. The short presentation about sex in games was an interesting one, and Tale of Tales used the time to resite poetry (at least, I... think it was) with a small random rant about who's indie from Fish at the end.

After that, I gave a short demo of Owlboy to get somefeedback during the luchbreak. Next up were talks about managing an indie team (Insightful, but of course, method of management is something that's relative, so I can't say if Kellee's tips will work for all of you,) followed by a very interesting talk by Jason Roher on how single-player games have taken over where games were usually always multiplayer games. I think showing how a game grows in complexity with less restricting rules and the interaction of others, be it another player or AI is an interesing one, which I would certainly like to explore more.

An overview of the procedurally generated planet in Love

My next attended talk was Eskil Steenberg's demonstration of how he's creating his game: Love. This one was seriously impressive. Showing off the tools he's created to make the game is even enough of a presentation on it's own. Basic idea is, if there's a problem with how you create content, make a tool to fix it. He's basically created modeling programs, shading programs, editors and simmulation systems that all can work in sync, real-time while the game is running. He even solved the dreaded Unwrap problem in 3D programs for crying out loud! I'm not sure I want to think about how he actually managed to program all that stuff. Add that to a demo of Love, a game where everything is procedural, everything can be edited real time, and things change constantly, it just commes off as one hell of an achievement. I have no idea if the game is any fun to play, but I know from playing open world games like GTA and Fallout, that just browsing around and taking in the atmosphere, looking at the oddities is just something that appeals to me, and Love certainly seems to have that.

Of course, it needs fun gameplay to back it up, but it's off to one hell of a start.

Finishing off was Alec Holowka and Tommy Refenes (Aquaria and Goo!) talking about how to finish a game after you don't want to work on it anymore. I felt this was relevant to me, because I feel like starting something new every other second. It was basically a long story about how crap things get. moreso for Tommy I fear. Regardless, there's always payoff in making something you really care about, and game creation is certainly one of those things.

And that concluded the two day Indie Summit. Was a lot of useful stuff in there, but I was really looking forward to the expo floor opening the next day. There was also the IGF awards, though I didn't know what was in store at that point.

I'll do a writeup on the experiences on the show floor within the following posts.