Wednesday is the first day of the full conference, and as the CAs say the training wheels are off. My day started off helping serve coffee and a rousing conversation with a fellow CA which helped me prep for my talk on Friday. I spent most of the rest of the morning walking around the Expo and Career pavilion running into old friends and making new ones. Around noon I was eating lunch when they asked for volunteers to help give away shirts, I wasn’t doing anything so I jumped at the chance to help. Man was I in for a crazy ride when I got to the table where we were to give away shirts I found a few CAs already piling up shirts and a line beginning to form. By the time we were aloud to give away shirts the line was out of the building and around the block. Thankfully we had kind of thought about how we were going to streamline the process and were able to cut the line down pretty quickly. I have to say though I am very disappointed at how people treat free stuff, first off people were going through the line and taking more than one and then later people were complaining they couldn’t get the size they wanted. People it is free! Please be nice about it.
After the shirts I walked around the Expo until my next shift started, this one was awesome. I got this shift randomly and knew nothing about it except it was a round table for the IGDA. Come to find out I complained about my local IGDA at the right time because a bunch of east coast game developers were present, I ended up joining the discussion as much as working it. What was great is we broke out into strike groups and discussed what we wanted to accomplish in our personal careers and helping the IGDA over the next year. It was a great session and I met some awesome people, and hopefully we can revitalize some of our east coast chapters.
Wednesday night was the IGF(Independent Games Festival Awards) and the Game Developers Choice awards. Imagine a much geekier, cooler and more fun version of the Oscars and this is about it. There were some great games and good acceptance speeches, and Tim Schafer hosting was amazing. In all it was a fun show. I do have to comment on one thing though, the IGF Student showcase is sponsored by Digipen in Washington, and why I think this is a really great school and they put out fantastic games, I need to point out that they have one EVERY student showcase since they have existed. Keep in mind everyone who was accepted used to be a “winner” and Digipen often had more than one accepted, but since 2007 there has only been one winner every year and they have one every year. While this is great for the school I think it is interesting because I don’t always think those are the best games at the show. Just a thought.
The rest of the night was once again spent hanging out with the CAs meeting new people and playing Witch Hunt.
One thing to note as a CA and being under 21 I am not aloud to drink at the conference or anything around it during the week, this was actually nice because I got to be the sober guy making sure everyone was OK :p.