Brewing at the AGDC

So it's been a crazy September to this point, and it's been tough finding time to blog. But with the mad rush of work, at least temporarily, in the rear-view, I find myself relaxing at my first GDC. I've made it to Austin, and I'm now sitting in Ballroom B with a couple of other stragglers waiting for the first session, a lecture by Chris Crawford. In fact, Chris is right now sitting about 10 feet away typing on his MacBook Pro, probably finalizing his talk.

It's a little odd; I've read much about the man, and even watched one of his talks from many years ago on YouTube. But I've never seen him in person. I'm looking forward to his talk on Interactive Storytelling, although I expect it will contain considerable material from other recent talks he has given. I'm sure he'll focus on his Storytron, but I haven't been keeping up with that lately, so if he does it will be interesting to see what kind of progress the group has made.

It's a strange sensation being here for this conference. I've attended many conferences in my life, but they have all been scientific in nature and have tended to be quite dry for the most part. It's weird seeing the same overall conference structure and design, but instead of research talks and pharmaceutical displays, I'm preparing for game design talks and game industry displays. It's a bizarre sort of frameshift.

There is a whole list of lectures today on storytelling in games, which should make for some interesting, if not excessively hypothetical, discussion. I'll try to update my thoughts on the lectures and other highlights as the conference proceeds.