En route to Leipzig – Day Two!
We’re actually in Leipzig now, but I added a bunch of pictures from our last day in London to the earlier gallery:
We hit Camden market, Covent Garden and had dinner on Brick Lane. Camden is basically a weird mix of scenes out of Blade Runner and Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, with the left-overs of the punk and cyber-punk sub-cultures trying to make a buck off of tourists in the streets. We mostly went to let the ladies shop, but Jeff and Paul wound up spending far more than anyone else buying boots.
We got to Covent Garden a bit too late, but we managed to catch the gents working at the GW shop there just before they left for the day and they were nice enough to let us come in and fuss about for a while. It’s a great little shop, lovingly referred to as a “Hobbit Hole” by one of the staff.
Dinner on Brick Lane was something Aubrey had championed after hearing tales of it from Paul and Kate. It’s basically two city blocks full of curry houses. Each restaurant has a doorman of sorts who sits out on the street and tries to convince people to come into the restaurant. By “convince”, I mean “bribe”. They’ll walk up and start offering you things like free bottles of wine or rounds of drinks or appetizers. If you stop and haggle, you can get them to up the freebies, throw in crazy discounts, etc. Paul was awesome at it, but it seemed to make Jeff VERY nervous. I thought it was a hoot when we’d get two guys playing off of each other, basically smack-talking neighboring vendors (“HIS restaurant is empty for a reason, you know.”) and trying to outbid them for your patronage.
After dinner, we headed back to the Miller’s for drinks and candle-light chilling. Then we enjoyed three hours of sleep before heading to the airport this morning.
Now, it’s nap-time.
En Route to Leipzig
We arrived in London yesterday, on our way to Leipzig for Games Convention. Our little gang is made up of myself, Aubrey, Paul, Kate, Jeff and Raine Hickman. As per tradition (well, its a tradition for Paul and I, at least) were staying at the Miller’s, which is just a hoot.
We were jetlagged horribly, but managed to do a bit of running around last night before we settled into the drawing room for drinks and chatting. I took a few pictures, which you can see here. More to come as the trip progresses!
Justin is crazy.
He’s trying to cram all of his stuff for Leipzig into a carry-on bag.
I’ve learned that the only sane way to travel for more than a few days is to treat the entire trip like an expedition to the darkest depths of some uncharted primordial jungle and pack absurd quantities of every possible medication, device, article of clothing, tonic or tool that might conceivably be of use while I’m away. Any attempt to skimp on provisions guarantees that Ill be struck down by some obscure foreign malady or inexplicable hardship within hours of hitting the ground.
But who knows, maybe Justin will have better luck. Or MAYBE he’ll find himself in desperate need of a left-handed sextant mid-week with only one place to turn for help.
Regardless, you all need to go and comment on his blog. The positive feedback might encourage him to post more than once a month.
WAR on The Tonight Show
ALL HAIL THE LENOGOBLIN!!!
Watch it now, as I’m sure it’ll get yanked from youtube shortly.
August is busy.
Before I get started:
Our launch date has been announced!!!
SEPTEMBER 18th, 2008
Mark you calendars, cats and kittens.
Moving on…
As we run up to launch, well be traveling all over the world shaking hands and kissing babies and generally whipping you all into a WAR-crazed frenzy.
Jeff and Paul will be at Gen Con next week (not sure which days, specifically).
Jeff, Paul and I – along with Justin, Kate and a cast of other superstars – will be at the Games Convention in Leipzig the week after next. If you want to see the new, unbearably awesome cinematic, get on a plane and come see us there!
Jeff, Paul and I will be home for TWO WHOLE DAYS after Games Convention before heading to PAX. Im really excited about this show because its THE big-deal fan event for our industry at this point and its basically the last major US event before we launch the game. I expect nothing short of total insanity from everyone who comes to see us.
So yeah. Busy, busy, busy. Then launch. Then VERY BUSY.
SDCC – After the show.
Dear lord, is that one crazy event. Every night, I’d go back to my hotel intending to write something and instead I’d just pass out. But now it’s over and I’m safely tucked away at SFO, en route back home, so I’ll catch up a bit.
First off, a shot back across Barnett’s bow. If you aren’t aware, he’s guest-blogging for TTH throughout the Con, so keep an eye on that. In his first entry, he attributes to me the description of SDCC as “the Geek Prom” and claims it’s a “harsh” take on the event.
Bollocks to that, I say.
Here’s why:
En route to SDCC.
I’ve got a 1 hour layover at SFO before I make my way into San Diego. I’m beginning to get the sense that this event is larger than I initially suspected, because – as near as I can tell – EVERYONE in this airport is heading to the Con. The departure board is just flight after flight into San Diego and there currently a multi-table dispute going on in the cafe behind me about whether or not it was appropriate to use “Ultimate” Nick Fury instead of “Classic” Nick Fury in the Iron Man movie.
Time to hop on beta and see if I can stir up some trouble.
SDCC
This week’s trip to California takes us to the San Diego Comic Con. We’ll have our Traveling Booth of Love with us, so come line up to get your WAR on (queue early, queue often!). I’ll be about Thursday through Saturday (as well as on Wednesday for some sort of “preview night” something-or-other). Barnett will be there as well – mostly roaming the show floor trying to corner and fawn over Frank Miller, but also occasionally in the booth to pose for pictures, gesticulate wildly and spread joy to the masses.
There’s also some party that EA and Oni are co-sponsoring that I apparently have to go to on Friday. I have no clue what it will involve and/or how to get people into it, but if it were to be crashed (and I in no way condone such things) it would be swanky to have it crashed by a crowd of our Faithful.
What else?
Barnett’s talk is apparently on Saturday at 2:00 “somewhere” at the con. Please come prepared to scream.
My current Nerd Goal is to get my hands on the con-exclusive Mousers that Neca is putting out. And to shake Sergio Aragonés’ hand.
That’s about it. See ya in San Diego!
E3 – The Week After.
Short version:
I liked the new E3. It featured enough serious press to make it worthwhile for us to attend, while remaining lean enough to not require a staff of hundreds to man a $5 million booth.
Longer version:
I actually blogged live from the event all week, over at TenTonHammer, so feel free to catch up with specifics there if you haven’t already.
The new E3 worked really well for us. We were able to give actual interviews and demonstrations, without having to scream over trillion-decibel techno music or wade through tens of thousands of people to get anywhere. We make games that can’t be summed up in a twenty second “whiz bang” trailer, so having the chance to sit down and talk for 15 minutes or more with each journalist was really helpful.
There are people who argue that without the over the top spectacle of previous years the show loses “value” for developers who choose to attend. Maybe those folks are right, but I have a hard time imagining a situation where ANY game that’s actually well-made and enjoyable wouldn’t be better suited by getting actual attention from the media rather than spending a million bucks developing a more effective swag cannon or having the army of bikini-clad models drop into their booth on zip-lines. It’s true that in the past more media overall attended, but to what end? They weren’t there looking at the games, they were covering the aforementioned spectacle. Getting the show on national TV does exactly nothing to help developers in attendance.
Now, don’t get me wrong – the new event is imperfect. It should be dropped down to 2 days total and the venue should be changed. I don’t think we need to send it back to hotels, but the convention center is simply too large for it at this point and holding it there only serves to make it feel less important than it is. I’ve heard rumblings that the show is now “dead” (but we heard that in 2006 and 2007 as well) or that it’s going to return to its Past Glory. I think either would be a shame, because it’s REALLY close to being a great event right now, even if it isn’t the sexiest thing in the gaming world anymore.
Speaking of E3…
…I’m going to be guest-blogging for the hep cats over at Ten Ton Hammer throughout the show, so keep an eye out for that next week!