Note: This post is part 3 of a 3 part story. You can find the first part here.

Friday

It was a little harder to drag myself out of bed on Friday than it had been the morning before, but I managed. I gorged myself on complimentary continental breakfast food until I felt human again, then got an Uber and headed to Moscone for the final day of the conference.

I had not yet made it to the West Hall, so I started off in that direction, but decided to do a final sweep of Moscone North and South’s gargantuan lower level first. Down the escalator I went, and made a beeline for the IGF Pavilion. On the way, I passed a motion capture demonstration. A man was dribbling and spinning a basketball while a fully textured, polygonal avatar mimicked his every move.

{% pullquote Motion capture demo %}

The IGF Pavilion, The Return

Back at the IGF Pavilion, I spied Nathalie Lawhead, who had won the IGF Nuovo Award for her amazing Tetrageddon Games and was showing it off to impressed onlookers. I was one of them, and took the opportunity to congratulate her on her win. Tetrageddon Games is a website, a collection of games, and an art project all in one. It’s brilliant, funny, absurd, poignant, sarcastic, experimental, retro, futuristic, and hard to describe without using a bunch of seemingly contradictory adjectives. If you’d like a taste, you might want to start with FROGGY (It’s Hungry), then I recommend diving into the whole wacky website.

{% pullquote Tetrageddon Games at the IGF Pavilion, photo courtesy of Nathalie Lawhead %}

I also met the wonderful Nicky Case, whose semi-autobiographical Coming Out Simulator 2014 was on display and had been nominated for Excellence in Narrative. It’s easy to see why; the game is full of dialogue that’s by turns heart-wrenching and heart-warming, frequently hilarious, and always shot through with a deep undercurrent of humanity. This encounter was particularly memorable because when I presented my card, Nicky, having run out of cards, quickly produced a pen and paper and made me one on the spot. It was even double-sided and illustrated!

The West Hall

After taking another peek at the Videogame History Museum’s treasures and watching another couple rounds of Deluxe Turbo Racing 360, I had lunch with a friend and discussed his ambitious plans to go full indie. He should totally go for it.

Finally, I ventured across the street to the West Hall. I took a long ride up two sets of escalators to the third floor, which was home to the Indie Megabooth and the games of Train Jam.

{% pullquote Train Jam %}

Train Jam, the brainchild of Adriel Wallick, is a game jam that takes place on a train going from Chicago to San Francisco. The ride takes about 52 hours and the train arrives at its destination just in time for the start of GDC. This was only Train Jam’s second year running, but it looks like it’s already entrenched as an annual tradition—and an awesome one. Incidentally, the first Train Jam was featured during a sequence in GameLoading, which I had seen the night before.

The Indie Megabooth

{% pullquote The Indie Megabooth %}

This conference’s incarnation of the Indie Megabooth had an impressive lineup, but I ended up spending most of my time there throwing trucks with my mind and getting squished.

Throw Trucks with Your Mind is a multiplayer deathmatch-style game without guns, swords, or other traditional weapons. In this game, as you might have surmised from the title, your mind is your weapon, and you can use it to throw trucks and other heavy objects. Each player has access to the same set of powers, which include things like push, pull, superjump, and invisibility. Now here’s the really cool thing: You actually control the intensity of your powers with your mind.

{% pullquote Throwing trucks with my mind %}

To play the game, you need to be wearing a NeuroSky EEG headset, a device that reads your alpha, beta, and theta brain waves. On your screen are a red and a blue meter; one measures your focus and the other measures your relaxation. The more you focus or relax, the more the appropriate meter fills, which translates to more telekinetic strength, higher jumps, better invisibility, etc. Each power relies on a different meter, so you have to keep switching your attention between focusing and relaxing. Or you can try to achieve a zen-like state where you excel at both at the same time.

One of the developers clued me into a little secret: By playing the game, you are actually being taught how to meditate.

Well, it’s the most fun I’ve ever had meditating. It turned out I was pretty good at focusing, but less so at relaxing. I and my three opponents ran around an open stadium strewn with crates, boulders, a couple of monster trucks, and one immense rubber ducky on wheels (dubbed “The Quacken”). The goal was simply to smash one another. When you died, a message was displayed: “You have been squished”.

There are some interesting opportunities for teamwork in the game. It takes at least two people to move a truck, for example. There was a truce called at one point so that we could all band together and try to move the Quacken. It took all four of us using as much focus (or was it relaxation?) as we could muster to even make it budge. Then we were back to squashing each other.

{% pullquote Throw Trucks with Your Mind %}

The GDC Store

The last day of GDC is a short day, and the conference closes down earlier than it does the rest of the week. As I left the West Hall, I could already see people streaming out of Moscones North and South. I only had a few minutes, but there was one last stop I wanted to make. I rushed into the South Hall and stepped into the official GDC Store.

There was so much cool stuff to spend money on. You could buy so many different things emblazoned with “GDC 2015” or “Game Developers Conference 2015”. There were shirts, hats, several kinds of hoodies, bags, flasks, pens, lanyards, stuffed animals, and more. I almost sprung for an adult-sized fleece onesie.

Aside from the GDC-branded items, there was a huge array of gaming related merchandise:
T-shirts (of both the ironic and earnest varieties), board games, card games, posters, art cards, minifigs, buttons, jewelry, and the largest collection of books about videogames I’d ever seen in one place.

I had given into the temptation to browse, but I resisted buying…much. Then, with my credit card tucked snugly back in my wallet, I exited the Moscone Center for the final time (on this trip).

{% pullquote In the GDC Store %}

Red Badge, Blue Sky

A pair of developers who make games as Clever Endeavor caught me outside, having spied the red media ribbon on my badge. They accosted me with the utmost friendliness and showed me their game Ultimate Chicken Horse on a laptop, which, as it turns out, is genuinely clever and quite fun! They described it as a competitive Super Meat Boy crossed with The Incredible Machine. You and your opponent take turns placing different blocks, hazards, and such into a platforming level, then you try to run and jump your way across it to the goal. Everything you add to the course can be a help or a hindrance to both of you, giving a nice sense of risk to the placement rounds. Hey developers, don’t be afraid to approach press-type people at industry events!

As they closed down the Moscone Center, I had some time to kill before a planned meeting with friends. I joined the flow of people finding spots on a large grassy area outside. The sky was clear and the grass was cool. It felt like everything in the world was just fine. I spent some time lounging on the lawn, watching the people meander about and form into groups. Old and new friends exchanged greetings and farewells. A lot of people were heading home now. GDC was already wending its way from reality into memory.

Drinks in the Death Star

That night, I had drinks with friends, both old and new, in a bar that sat atop a highrise hotel. The place was packed with conference goers, vacationers, and locals. There was a vast window that allowed a stunning view of San Francisco. I heard someone comment that the shape of the windows made it look like we were gazing out from inside the Death Star. They were right; it did.

We talked about games, art, and other important things. Bold statements were made and opinions were shared. It felt wonderful to be with people that were so engaged and envigorated by the same games and creators as I was. As it was a private gathering, I won’t go into who was there or what ideas were ignited, but that night inside the Death Star was quite possibly the best experience of all my time at GDC. I stayed as long as I could, just late enough to still give myself a few hours sleep before my flight home the next morning. I left feeling energized and pretty certain that together, we’re capable of moving some mountains.

Regrets, I Have a Few

My time at GDC had come to an end. I was fully satiated and utterly exhausted. I had met so many people, played so many games, had so many experiences… Even so, I had missed so much that I had wanted to see.

I hadn’t stopped on the first floor of Moscone West long enough to take in the Mild Rumpus. I had particularly wanted to see Adam Saltsman presenting the first public showing of Overland.

I did see Mr. Warren Robinet doing a postmortem on his groundbreaking Atari game Adventure (I couldn’t write about everything here, okay?), but I missed Howard Scott Warshaw’s postmortem on Yar’s Revenge.

I regret not seeing all of the folks I wanted to meet but didn’t due to everyone’s insanely overcrowded schedules and the lack of decent WiFi coverage on the expo floor.

And then there was Lost Levels. Sigh.

Still and all, it was an awesome time.

I can hardly wait until GDC 2016!

#GDC2015