GDC and Beyond

In a few days, I will be flying out to San Francisco to be a Conference Associate at the Game Developer Conference. It's my first of (I hope) many to come.

I've heard nothing but good things about both the conference as well as the CA program. I'm extremely excited to have the opportunity to go. I also feel nervous about the whole thing. They say if you walk down the right hallway in GDC, you can find anything.

Come to think of it, that might actually be Sin City. But I'm sure it still applies.

My goal is not to get a job, though if Will Wright walks over, comments that the reason Spore has been taking so long is because of a recent Fugashu addiction, then offers me a job, I would certainly accept (it is my understanding that this happens all the time at GDC, no?) I've always said I would put school on hiatus if the right job came around. Most of what I learn is on my own anyway; UAT is merely a place to meet and be around fellow aspiring students like myself (though I really do like many of the teachers and faculty). I'm there to meet, discuss, create and gain experience, with the ultimate goal of finding my spot in the industry. If the process goes faster than previously thought, all the better.

My true hope for the conference is to meet as many cool people as possible (who happen to make or want to make games for a living). I've never been a terribly outgoing "I'm going to meet everyone in the room" kind of person, but I tend to get along with everyone and I love meeting interesting new people. Just being around intelligent people tends to make me happy, especially when we have something to talk about.

It would be nice if one of these new contacts would lead to an internship, but I'm not terribly concerned with that (though, I should probably start fretting, graduation is looming closer and closer). I'll be satisfied if I come home with a few new friends.

I'm trying my best to prepare, my portfolio website is almost complete. I still need to plan out my conference schedule a little more, but it's proving a hard task. I can't decide if I should go to Robin Hunicke's Game Design Workshop that I've heard so much about. Robin seems to just excrete passion (which is actually more attractive than it sounds). Two days is a lot of time though, especially with other events going on. I'll also probably have some CA duties to fulfill sometime in there. I at least want to stop by for a bit, so we'll see.

I requested to work Raph Koster's Metaplace Postmortem (shouldn't that be premortem?) on the off chance that I'd get to shake the guy's hand. MP looks like it has loads of potential as well.

Another talk I'm looking forward to is, of course, Ray Kurzweil's keynote (and not just because I have a soft spot for Ray and futurology in general). At the very least, the talk will be an interesting one, but it has the potential of being the best of the conference (at least from my humble point of view).

On the more logistical side, I am now in the possession of 500 business cards with my name on them.

Nobody actually told me how many 500 really is, because holy crap. I may have to plant a few trees when I get home to balance this all out.

I will try to hand them all out, but I realize most people will toss them before the end of the conference.

My real goal is to have at least a few people want to keep them.



Can't wait to finally meet you, GDC. I have a feeling this is only the beginning.

Eleven Cents

Fugashu, my first released flash game, went public last Friday. For those (and here I'm pretending people actually read this blog) who haven't heard about it, it's a puzzle game with elements from Solitaire, Sudoku and something entirely new. You can play it at www.fugashu.com (though the Kongregate link on there has a version with no ads).

So far feedback has been mostly good. Many of the criticism has been that I need to do more with it (ie. scripted levels instead of random, more gametypes). I guess that means the core concept is good. A few have asked me if it was an entirely new design or if it was an existing game. It was, although it evolved a bit from my original concept. I'd like to go a bit more into depth, but I think I'm going to save that for a post-mortem, uh, post.

While Fugashu wasn't my first game project, I do consider it my first true game. It feels good to have something finished under my belt that I can be proud of.

What still surprises me is the entire project was only 3 weeks worth of work. To me, it seemed at least thrice as long.

That said, I don't think I'm entirely done with Fugashu. If the feedback continues to be positive, I may expand on it. Also, there are still 1-2 rare bugs that have managed to resurface that need to be squashed. As excited as I am with being basically "done" with it, I still believe it has a lot more potential.

Yesterday, for the first time in a month, I woke up and realized I had nothing to do. I got up and played a game other than Fugashu, also the first time in a month.

How this experience compares to being on a large game project, I hope to find out soon.


Good luck, Fugashu. It feels good to be apart from you, at least for now.

It feels even better that on February 1st, the release day, I made 11 cents from the game loader ad.


11 cents.

Hi, my name is Trenton Lloyd Kennedy and I make money from creating games.