Delusions of grandeur.

I actually meant to write about the seminar in Philly at a time considerably closer to the actual event, but as usual things conspired to keep that from happening. This past week has seen me almost unspeakably busy, a state of being that won’t let up until Wednesday. Even then, given some of the things that happened at said conference, my schedule doesn’t show any signs of slackening for long.

I suppose I should back up a bit. Although there are a great number of details I can’t write about here, the project that I’m heading up for HGD is shaping up to be something special, I think. We’ve got an excellent concept (really, a collecting of two main concepts) backed up by a pair of talented programmers and a design team (myself and Jason) who, so far at least, have managed to keep this game on-track. While I’m far from a neutral party, if you asked me what I thought of our game design I wouldn’t have any trouble telling you that I love it and, I hope, everyone else will too.

One of the sessions at last weekend’s conference had a “pitch your game idea” theme. A panel of developers ranging from lead designers to art directors and systems programmers listened to our sixty-second pitches, at which point they would (theoretically) proceed to dismantle it and tell us why they were terrible. In practice, partially because eight out of the ten games pitched were less “games” and more “universe ideas”, there wasn’t a whole lot of real criticism going on. People would give their presentation, get cut off after sixty seconds, and the panel would ask them a few questions and make a couple of suggestions. Often these suggestions took the shape of the panelists describing the game that they wished the presenter would have pitched.

Once the last slot came around I decided to step up and pitch the core concepts behind my team’s game. Almost from the start I knew I had their attention: the moderator – who was also the chair of this particular conference and a fairly prominent member of CMP, the people behind GDC – had her eyes locked on me with her mouth slightly open. Unlike most of the other pitches, rather than being cut at sixty seconds she gave me a look that said something along the lines of “take as much time as you need as long as it isn’t ridiculous.” After almost two minutes I voluntarily stopped the pitch and got a great response from the panel. They loved the idea and had a ton of suggestions for additions and tweaks, many of which are already in the design document (but I hadn’t mentioned due to time constraints).

Afterwards I had several one-on-one conversations with the panel members and Jane (the moderator) where they continued to laud the concept and express their hope that they could see what we have at GDC in March. One of the panelists went so far as to invite my team to his studio’s offices in New York, should we ever find ourselves in the area.

All in all it was a wonderful experience. I’m trying very hard to stay grounded about this whole thing, especially considering that the pitch they got was largely based on things we intend to do with this game as opposed to things we already have. Nonetheless, it’s really exciting to think that in almost exactly four months I may be presenting a pre-alpha build to a bunch of established game developers and media members at the largest (and arguably most important) conference in the industry.

Heady stuff.

Ding-dong…

…the witch is dead. Too bad we couldn’t get rid of him before the damage had been done, but at least if he leaves in disgrace I can derive some pleasure comfort I’m-just-glad-he’s-gone.