GDC & PAX East 2013 Report

Since we spent large portions of the past 2 weeks at GDC & Pax East, I feel like we should probably share a little bit about what happened.

First up was PAX East which went from Thursday to Sunday. PA (and Joel Dreskin) had set up a very nice booth with a few tables & several stations where you could play Precipice of Darkness 4 (which were all running on rather old laptops hooked up to nicer monitors). Since I’m especially pleased with how well the soundtrack turned out, I specifically requested headphones at each station so that people playing could listen to the music – it wasn’t perfect (convention halls are LOUD even with headphones) but definitely better than past booths we’ve done. We also had a rather large monitor in the back of the booth running the teaser trailer for the game on constant loop – I thought I’d get tired of the music but honestly, I scarcely even noticed it after a while. We were right across from the Shovel Knight booth and it was fun to see them get a good amount of attention (which looks like it’s translated over to kickstarter pledges).

We spent the bulk of our time at the booth, talking to fans and answering questions. We did get a little time to wander the expo hall but didn’t really have enough time to actually try out much as well as attend a few panels. The Dust: An Elysian Tail panel was especially fun – instead of using mere slides, Dean Dodrill (the creator) had gone ahead and created some custom areas using the game’s engine & actually ran around them during the presentation. He also showed off some footage of his never-finished animated feature (looked gorgeous) and announced the Steam version of the game. We did a panel for Precipice of Darkness 4 later that day  which was a lot of fun (Q&A panels are the best panels to be on). Not sure if the whole thing is up online anywhere.

I hadn’t realized it when I agreed to do a post-mortem for Precipice of Darkness 3 at GDC but GDC this year literally started the day after PAX East ended. There was no way I was going to survive going straight from Boston to San Francisco so I flew back home after PAX East, stayed there for a few days (working on Precipice of Darkness 4 in the meantime) and then flew up to San Francisco the morning of my post-mortem. Only had time to go to one panel other than mine own – the micro-rant session – but it was fun. I also had a chance to chat with a number of devs that I had met in the past – even better. I think the post-mortem went well although it was a little disappointing that all of the questions after everyone was done were directed at the other two speakers. I was approached by several people after the panel for questioning so at least there’s that. I don’t write out my presentations (since I think that makes them feel stilted) but I was pleased that I managed to make it very close to the allocated time so that I didn’t throw the other speakers off.

Anyway, there you have it. I definitely hope that the people in charge of PAX & GDC coordinate a little better and put a bit of space between the two next year – going immediately from one major convention to another is killer on the health of developers & the media.