So today started with a presentation by the Extra Credits writer, James Portnow (who now has his own show James Recommends which is great), the current head of Legend of the Five Rings canon, and Morello from Riot talking about player-driven narratives. Very video-game centric but really, REALLY cool stuff - how can players actions in games change the story of the world? Then on to floor to watch LMQ thump TSM in a match or two (TSM later came back convincingly, woot!), followed by Much Capitalism And Exchanging Of Currency For Swag. Incidentally, I have a Miss Fortune unlock and Arcade MF skin for the first person to call shotgun here :) Then went on to get my Kindle autographed by Patrick Rothfuss (woot!), then another Extra Credits panel - general stuff this time, a general purpose Q&A. Great insights, great back-and-forth. After that I hopped a bus to the Extra Credits after-party. I really cant state enough how much respect I have for these guys: they take game design (from a gamers point of view) and present it engagingly but still with oodles of academic rigour. In any case, at the after-party I got to chat with James for fifteen minutes, and hes totally sold on coming to South Africa to check out the game dev scene! *Such joys* Then played some games (Coup and Star Cadet) with a bunch of the other fans - great fun, great people. Then ran into Dan Floyd (the actual presenter for Extra Credits) and chatted with him a bit, then roped him into a game of Cards Against Humanity. Hilariously fun, but he excused himself after a bit: dont know if it was because he had other people to see or if the game was off-puttingly offensive. Then an impromptu Design Club of Deus Ex: Human Revolution where James analysed the opening scenes (I corrected him on something! Im smart and cool! :) ). Eventually I just wanted to sit so left the room to find a chair, and ran into the Legends of the Five Rings canon guy. We wound up chatting about a bunch of stuff regarding canon and inter/meta-textual player-driven narrative. FYI, Im apparently still fairly articulate at 1AM, and this guy was super-hyped :) Got his details, looking forward to chatting with him more if he gets back to me. Soooo... basically, today I got to hang out with amazing game development and fiction author celebrities. Its been a good day. (And to all my LoL friends: Dan Floyd wears two bracelets, one reads I
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 09:03:46 +0000