Feeling much better today, went to get breakfast at Mel’s dinner near the convention center, bumped into James Jen again. Berrated him for ruining my Tuesday.
First session was IP: Creating it, Using it. It covered the 4 types of IP (trade secrests, patents, trademarks, and copyright), how to use it, and how to protect and defend it. It was generally a good talk, and worth attending. The guy has a book on the subject, which I may pick up if it’s not to heavy/expensive/shit.
From here, went over to the PS3 keynote. Queued up for half an hour, it went right round the convention center, which is a sizable distance. Considered jumping out and doing something else, but I really did’nt have much to do. Keynote was good, got excited about ps3 for the first time ever. Started thinking about buying one.
Saw Reggie Fils-Aime. He has a fat head.
Next, went back over to the west hall to ‘If you’re scared others will find out you don’t know how to be a manager’, which despite being in the form of an ex marine running around with a radio mic telling everyone how much they suck, was pretty useful. The guy obviously normally does this in corporate environments, but it could be applied to games, but again, it’s just about being nice to people. The best part of this talk was that I didn’t need to write anything down, since they have reams of free podcasts and documentation available here: www.manager-tools.com
Lunch time. Walked around the expo halls looking for people to blag hardware off and didn’t find anything useful.
Afternoon: IGDA and “Producing Quality of Life”, which was a load of round table nonsense really. It was half people complaining about getting burned out (WE KNOW), and half useless suggestions from producers like “if staff are working late, we buy them pizza!”. One guy piped up in response to this saying all your staff will be unhealthy and ill if you do that, which is just common sense. Why does no-one have common sense?
Agile/Scrum/XP has been a very popular subject here, it seems most studios are adopting it and loving it, and helps with programmer workloads, and it’s much easier to track productivity and effectiveness. Might be useful for design and art tasks too.
Saw John Romero and his hair, was amused at how short he is.
Talked to some mod guys who have made a combined space shooter/FPS from the source engine, they pretty impressive, I’ll post links when I can find his card. Played Everyday Shooter, which was really impressive; think robotron/rez with a fully guitar based soundtrack. Really pleasant to play, and very accomplished.
Bought a PS3.