Welcome to the Day 2 report of my GDC blog. If you missed part one, you can find it here.
Originally, I had a meeting scheduled this morning with someone high up in the hierarchy at one of the big game publishers about a possible collaboration sometime down the road maybe if the stars align just right, however, apparently someone on his end double-booked him. He suggested meeting tomorrow at 9, apparently forgetting that was the time of the GDC keynote. In the end, we settled on Friday morning.
On my way driving to GDC from my motel, I pass a giant billboard advertising CityVille. "Wow, that's an awfully big advertisement for a Facebook game," I think to myself. A few minutes later, I see the Zynga offices. Aha, now it makes sense! I make sure my shields are up, check my secret smuggler hold, and drive quickly on by.
Simon Carless commented on my last blog that not getting a Game Developer magazine was a mistake on their part so I stopped by the registration booth to see if I could rectify that. They handed me a GD magazine and told me that there was a little stand with a bunch of free publications on the bottom floor. Sure enough, there was, so I loaded up on Edge, Develop, GDM and more.
I arrived at the Moscone Center a little too late to see the first panel on my list (the Shank discussion), but I got into the Spelunky XBLA game panel a couple minutes after it started. I haven't played the free version yet, but based on the panel discussion and screenshots shown, I should probably rectify that. The talk about how they used templates mixed with randomness to create the levels was quite interesting. Both speakers seemed like cool chaps and the game sounds awesome so be sure to buy it when it comes out.
After the Spelunky panel, Andrew Dice of Carpe Fulgur (localizers of the excellent Recettear game) stopped and said hi. Very interesting personality and lots of enthusiasm. I was planning on staying around in the Indie room for the next panel (a discussion of the indie Fund), but Andrew told me that there was going to be a bloodbath next door at the Are Social Games Legitimate? panel, so I decided to change my schedule and go there instead.
The Social Games Legitimacy panel was a blast. The moderator started out by saying that they weren't really satisfied with the title of their panel and that it probably should have been called "Are Social Games Evil?" instead and it just got better from there. On the panel was the Cow Clicker guy, someone from Puzzle Pirates, a Zynga guy (pronounced like Sin
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