April 2006 - Posts

• Video games are alive! They're ALIVE!

  Yeah, it's another Monday post instead of a Friday one. Cut me some slack, things have been pretty damn busy 'round here lately. We're trying to go through all those thousands and thousands of events everyone snuck in just before the event submission deadline; there's a lot of editing and checking that needs to be done on most events before we can turn 'em around for public consumption. Just the initial pass ate up fully half of last week. I am just so amazingly glad that we got our new online submission system in place and that there's three of us here in the programming department to go through these things. I have a lot of respect for Jonni - if I had to go through all of these by myself with the old submission system, I would have gone crazy. But that's not all that I've been doing. The other big project is something I've been working on since last summer when I first heard that a local performance theater wanted to get involved with Gen Con. A symphony event at Gen Con? One thing immediately sprang to mind: Video Games Live. It's more than just video game music played by a symphony, though. They've got synchronized video and guest appearances and all that, but the really cool thing is when they bring up members of the audience to play classic games while the musicians perform - and adjust - the music and sounds in real-time. It took a long time and some juggling to pull together, but I can't wait. It's going to be an awesome evnet and I'm really excited to be bringing VGL to Gen Con; it's the perfect complement to our expanding eGame programming. And working on it was one of the things I enjoy most about working on a convention: identifying cool things and stuff I love and then figuring out news ways to bring that to the weekend. "I love video games... what other cool video game stuff can I bring to Gen Con?" It's rarely easy to actually pull it off, but I love it. Posted Apr 24 2006, 12:28 PM by Derek Guder with 5 comment(s) Filed under: video games

• Das Xboxen all-round und Mobile Gaming plans for Indy

  Sorry for not posting last Friday, it was a tough day. Almost no one in the office, the Xbox 360 arrived, I was all antsy. I'm sure you know how it is. It didn't help that it was a damn fine day out too. So things slipped a little. But it gives me a natural segue into video games. Those of you who have seen the eGame arenas at past Indy and So Cal events know that the Xbox has always had a pretty central place in our video game programming. That's not really going to change this year, except that we'll have the central core of a bunch of Xbox 360s instead. I should take this time to say that now that I have a 360 to use, it is indeed pretty awesome. The improvements to Xbox Live (specifically the final realization of the online marketplace) is genius: trailers, music, videos - even full demos or games can be accessed straight through the console. There's still some interface things that I think they could polish up and improve, but it's great. If you don't have an Xbox already, then I'd totally recommend grabbing one if you have the chance. If you do have the previous generation of the console, however, then it's harder to recommend whole-heartedly. It is rather expensive and doesn't have that "killer app" (read: Halo 3) yet. But enough about das Xboxen. We'll also have lots of stuff on the PS2 and Gamecube as well. Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero are a must, of course. Most hard-core fighting game fans demand PS2 and how would I be able to live with myself if I didn't have a big Katamari Damacy event? I want to bring in a lot of the really fun Gamecube party games as well, from Super Smash Brothers to maybe some varient of Mario Party. But the real news I wanted to talk about this time is our handheld mobile gaming plans. I wanted to make some witty comment about mobile gaming and wireless Xbox 360 controllers, but I'll have to rely on my genius readers to do that for me. Instead I'll just let everyone know that mobile gaming rocks and it's totally got a place here at Gen Con. So Cal had a mobile gaming lounge that we'll be expanding. It's a comfy place to people to hang out and gather to play stuff on their PSPs or DSs. We'll even have a few of our own systems that for people to try out if they don't have one or didn't bring theirs. The really cool idea, however, is currently named the "wandering badge challenge." I have no idea what it'll actually be called in the end, but here's how it works: You register for the tournament and get several badges or pins. Each game we have in this program will have its own pin - if you're wandering around the convention and you see someone wearing the same pin as you, you can challenge them to a quick game on the spot. If you win, you get their pin. If you lose, they get your pin. Why do the pins matter? Because at the end of the day the people with the most badges win that day's tournament and fabulous prizes. And don't worry if you have a string of bad luck or something - you can buy more pins the same way you'd get event tickets. Get some more pins and get back in the running. That's the general skeleton, at least. There's a lot of details we need to work out (such as the exact list of games we'll be doing this for), but I wanted to give you guys a sneak peak at what we're working on and let all you handheld gaming owners know that we've got some love for you too this year. Posted Apr 04 2006, 02:04 PM by Derek Guder with 6 comment(s) Filed under: video games