Verily, I am a Name among Nerds.
May. 27th, 2004 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ltmurnauThe conference in Phoenix. Well, overall, it was a great time in a beautiful hot city!
The trip down was the usual annoyance - I have never liked air travel, and it gets worse with every trip. After a 3 1/2 hour wait in Seattle airport and the usual dramas at airport security (I always have to take my boots off because the steel rack in my leg sets off the detectors, which are turned up so high these days they pick up on gum wrappers in your pocket) we arrived in Phoenix, 97 degrees and a clear hot sky. Much the same weather for the rest of the week.
The hotel was great, really nice rooms with an interior courtyard and a pool (Betty spent practically the whole time poolside). Half the usual room rate for the convention, with a good breakfast and free refreshment station in the afternoon included.
We were actually in Tempe, the southeast part of the conurbation that is "Phoenix", very close to the campus of Arizona State University. Hence the streets were full of near-identical blonde coeds named Ashleigh in crop-tops with only half an upper lip each. We found an interesting music store where I picked up a Devo CD and a Throbbing Gristle sampler CD I had never seen before, and a nice used bookstore where I paid too much for a large-format book of Chinese Cultural Revolution era posters.
Friday night Joe Miranda and Betty and I went to the only Goth night going in Phoenix, at a very small bar named Incognito Lounge. Small dance floor with some mirrors to make it look bigger, cheap drinks and not a bad selection of music. The DJ even played "Warm Leatherette" (original version by The Normal, not the Grace Jones one).
The conference/expo was lots of fun, and I was bowled over by the people I met there and the way they treated me. I expected to be completely anonymous there, the way I usually am in a crowd, but found people coming up to me and saying how much they liked my work. It appears I have a reputation!
I was invited to speak at a seminar on designing games about the Battle of the Bulge (a special theme of the conference), and found myself on stage with five other guys who had spent between 5 and 10 years each doing minute research on their own games. I didn't really feel out of my league, it's just that the game I had designed was very different from what they had done. Add to that the facts that mine was the newest such game to be published (I took a case of samples with me to the conference and they got snapped up fast), and that it was packaged in a tin box (the first game to so packaged) and I aroused a lot of interest.
Anyway, lots of ego strokes, discussions for future projects, a long hot walk in the sun with Betty searching for a Walgreen's we never found, and a brief dip in the pool later, it was time to go. It would be nice to go back next year, but I don't know if I'll be able to afford it. At any rate, this was worthwhile.
And yes, here are some pictures:
to placate![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
scuttle, images of Fat Greasy Nerds in their element
the panel at the seminar
blurry photo of the new game I had to show off
The trip down was the usual annoyance - I have never liked air travel, and it gets worse with every trip. After a 3 1/2 hour wait in Seattle airport and the usual dramas at airport security (I always have to take my boots off because the steel rack in my leg sets off the detectors, which are turned up so high these days they pick up on gum wrappers in your pocket) we arrived in Phoenix, 97 degrees and a clear hot sky. Much the same weather for the rest of the week.
The hotel was great, really nice rooms with an interior courtyard and a pool (Betty spent practically the whole time poolside). Half the usual room rate for the convention, with a good breakfast and free refreshment station in the afternoon included.
We were actually in Tempe, the southeast part of the conurbation that is "Phoenix", very close to the campus of Arizona State University. Hence the streets were full of near-identical blonde coeds named Ashleigh in crop-tops with only half an upper lip each. We found an interesting music store where I picked up a Devo CD and a Throbbing Gristle sampler CD I had never seen before, and a nice used bookstore where I paid too much for a large-format book of Chinese Cultural Revolution era posters.
Friday night Joe Miranda and Betty and I went to the only Goth night going in Phoenix, at a very small bar named Incognito Lounge. Small dance floor with some mirrors to make it look bigger, cheap drinks and not a bad selection of music. The DJ even played "Warm Leatherette" (original version by The Normal, not the Grace Jones one).
The conference/expo was lots of fun, and I was bowled over by the people I met there and the way they treated me. I expected to be completely anonymous there, the way I usually am in a crowd, but found people coming up to me and saying how much they liked my work. It appears I have a reputation!
I was invited to speak at a seminar on designing games about the Battle of the Bulge (a special theme of the conference), and found myself on stage with five other guys who had spent between 5 and 10 years each doing minute research on their own games. I didn't really feel out of my league, it's just that the game I had designed was very different from what they had done. Add to that the facts that mine was the newest such game to be published (I took a case of samples with me to the conference and they got snapped up fast), and that it was packaged in a tin box (the first game to so packaged) and I aroused a lot of interest.
Anyway, lots of ego strokes, discussions for future projects, a long hot walk in the sun with Betty searching for a Walgreen's we never found, and a brief dip in the pool later, it was time to go. It would be nice to go back next year, but I don't know if I'll be able to afford it. At any rate, this was worthwhile.
And yes, here are some pictures:
to placate
scuttle, images of Fat Greasy Nerds in their elementthe panel at the seminar
blurry photo of the new game I had to show off
