John Baez, Tom Fulp, Dan Paladin and myself (Emil Ayoubkhan) headed out to San Francisco for the Annual Independent Games Festival, Game Developers Conference, Game Developers Choice Awards, and a bunch of other titles of events that were going on that I just can't remember. Why were we there you ask ? Castle Crashers was nominated for two awards; Excellence is Visual Arts, and the coveted Audience Award. Tom posted his side of the story over at Newgrounds so if you care to hear about our week from a different perspective, I suggest you check it out. Overall the whole week went great, we met a lot of people, won 2 awards (sweet!) and went to many parties hosted by various companies.
Please note that when I attempt to re-tell our adventures it is filled with sarcasm and a mild taste of bitterness
Monday
John and I arrive at the Hotel Union Square after a short flight. Generally, there would be more pictures before we actually arrive at our hotel, but lately it seems to take a few hours/days to get started with the whole picture taking thing. In fact, we even took a camcorder with us this time, which was used for a total of 5 minutes in the cab ride over and then never taken out again, maybe next year we'll have video.
Tuesday
I'm jumping ahead to the first day of setting up our display for Castle Crashers since I didn't really take any pictures of anything for the first few days at the conference. John was a speaker at this years Game Developers Conference (GDC) and his talk went really well, every seat was filled and everyone seemed to be engaged at what he was saying (I was falling asleep of course) No pictures of any of this, but just imagine John spreaking to a bunch of people and then you will have a good idea of what went on.
I arrive at the Independent Games Festival (IGF) section in the exhibition hall at the Moscone Center. We were thrown in the back of the convention center this year, which was a drastic change from a few years back where we were in natural light and on the second floor of the main hall for all to see. At any rate, we quickly setup our display and made sure everything worked for the opening day, on Wednesday.
Later that day we met up with our good friend Ricardo Torres who works at Gamespot.com. They were having their annual GDC/IGF party at the Mint Lounge. They had H’orderves and free alcohol, what more could anyone want? In addition to hanging out with Gamespot folk we met Aaron Greenburg from the Xbox Live team. He introduced us to some of his guys, we introduced him to some of our guys and next thing we know we're all going to Mel's diner for some late night breakfast. Aaron even managed to get all of us into a Microsoft party that we weren't invited to, thanks Aaron! Pictured above is Aaron, our very own Dan Paladin and the #1 rated female Halo 2 player in the United States. I completely forgot her name, so if you end up reading this and you are her, sorry about that.
Wednesday
As Wednesday approached I started to get back into the whole idea of taking pictures, so from this point on you will notice an increase in the amount of pictures that are taken. We had a constant crowd at our booth and it was great to see everyone's reaction to the new demo of Castle Crashers. I lost count at how many film crews came by to record footage, at one point Gametrailers came by and brought about 8 guys with them to record a whole segment with our very own Tom and Dan. A very good first day for us, and there was no room to rest either as we were off to the Independent Games Festival Awards later that night.
But first, a quick break while John gives Dan directions to our hotel, nice map John !! Dan wanted to change before the IGF Awards started, and for some reason I decided to take a picture of this, no point really, but I'm sure you read this all the way through either way.
IGF / Game Developers Choice Awards
We arrive at the show and find our table right in front of the stage. Amazingly enough we were sharing a table with our friends Jake and Don from GastronautStudios.com and Katine Stone from Microsoft who is their Games Program Manager, needless to say we had the best table there. We were up for two awards for the night: Excellence in Visual Arts and the Audience Award and Jake and Don were up for New Studio of the Year.
Thanks to our awesome fans and the judges at IGF, we won in both of the categories we were nomiated for! It was an honor and we really were in shock at the whole thing. Remember how I said Dan wanted to change, check him out with his gold tie, good work Dan! way to make us look like bums by being the only one that dressed up.
Tom noticed Cliff Bleszinski, game designer for Gears of War sitting at the table across from us and he approached him and introduced himself. If you haven't seen Tom's lovely rendition of Gears of War, check it out here Also we have Dan posing with Andy Schatz of Pocketwatch Games who was one of the presenters at the award show.
Coming off a winning night we were ready to celebrate and enjoy the night with all of our friends......Sadly, we didn't have any friends to celebrate with, after this harsh realization of being alone hit, John, Dan, and Tom took it pretty hard.
Those are tears rolling off Toms cheek, and just about the saddest faces I've ever seen, it was quite dramatic.
After a brief cry session we were ready to get some food, we stopped by some French cafe and ordered a bunch of pasta ?
Tom was extremely happy that the resturant had a menu and that he was blessed with the ability to read. After I asked the waitress if I could take her picture, she immediately became confused and looked at me as if I was a internet predator. I went ahead and took her picture anyways and here she is looking uncomfortable.
Amazingly enough we ran into Jake and Don again at the same resturant that night, this was the start of pretty much hanging out with them the remainder of the week. So we combined tables and had a crazy dinner party (not really) with the Gastronaut team as well as Dan Tabar of Cortex Command (which you should totally check out) Later we met with Brandon and Frank from Gamasutra and went to some random Irish/Scottish Bar, the original intent was to go somewhere quiet so we could unwind for the rest of the night and get some drinks. This is what we pretty much walked into...
Very impressive bagpipe performance, and definitely not a quite place.
Thursday
I woke up Thursday morning and went to get ready, I started to brush my teeth and all of a sudden heard Tom screaming my name. I instantly freaked out and began looking around to see why Tom was hiding in my bathroom. We then realized that the window in the shower was looking out into a random shaft in the hotel, oddly enough our rooms were directly above each other and we could talk to each other through the shower window. Some funny jokes were mentioned after this that I can't really share, but they were good, trust me. Anyways, here is the window, one again completely unrelated to anything, but worth a small paragraph.
Here we are early Thursday morning showing off our awards, if you look closely you can see our upcoming Alien Hominid Leaderboard Trophies
Thursday was welcomed with an enormous increase of traffic for everyone at the IGF section. With all of the awards announced and everyone ready for some serious press exposure, it was a good experience for all. If you want to see a full list of winners, check out Gamespots full coverage of the event.
On the Spot Appearance
Our friend Ricardo invited us to appear on the weekly live show that Gamespot puts together called, "On the Spot". Tom, John and Dan were the guests and the topic was Castle Crashers. Rich asked a series of questions while the guys played through the demo, showing off some new bosses and levels. It was a great show and thanks to everyone at Gamespot for having us. If you want to watch the show, check out the full interview here
Xbox Live Arcade Developers Happy Hour
Microsoft had a little event, in a little room with ALL of the XBLA developers you could think of. We had a chance to speak to several of the developers like the Team 17 guys (Worms), Blitz Games developers (Burger King Game, YA!!!) Ninja Bee (Cloning Clyde, Outpost Kaloki) and a slew of other teams. Near the end of the event I asked Katie (the organizer of the event) if we could take a group picture, she looked at me as if I was once again, some type of internet predator. Like I mentioned before it's a slow start with the picture taking process, but as the days go by I get into the groove. So there you have it, a bunch of nerds in one room taking a picture. Here is what it sounded like the whole time in the room.....
Thursday
Thursday was filled with yet more interviews, hundreds of hundreds of fans coming by playing Castle Crashers and some awesome jumpkicks and random pictures.
Overall, we had a great time and are very fortunate to be a part of this community. As we continue development with Castle Crashers and future projects we hope to have more experiences like this. Thanks for taking the time and reading abour our little trip.