Game City 8

PHEW, that's the first thought, sad sigh is the second, feeling happy is the third.

Game City was insanely fun and a good experience which I recomend for everyone. You get to meet people and hang out with them for a week playing games and talking about stuff wondering around the city of Nottingham (which actually is quite nice in my opinion).


I had three talks over there, my 'The Sounds of Badland' talk, a lecture about 'Video Game Sound Design' and then was part of the 'Nuclear Throne' panel where most of the NT team went through design concepts and other features.

   

                                     so, here I had my Badland talk...!!

          <---setting up and then people started arriving ^                  



 The Q/A in the Badland talk was insanely good, there were clearly people interested in video game sound design and had a lot of good questions and discussions, video game audio is going towards a bright future I tell you :)

There's a few things that kinda bugged me on that talk, first off I had an hour more than intended which was actually super good BUT for some reason I got stuck in showing the impact sounds, weird glitch in my brain I think :D and in the Q/A we were talking about ear fatigue and I pointed out this popular game by name (which you shouldn't really do, very unprofessional of me) which in my opinion really fatigues your ears with the sound being so squashed and I personally know the sound guy behind the game, I really wasn't trying to slag him off or anything honestly, he is a solid professional aswell and i'm sure that the sound side must have been pushed to the squashed direction.
Phew now that's out of my chest :) time to carry on!

 

<-- people arriving to the
      Nuclear Throne panel


     Rami submitting
     Nuclear Throne to IGF ->




The Video Game Sound Design lecture was a bit funny, I wrote the whole thing with either starting sound designers to already professional sound designers in mind. I think there were two sound designers present and rest were just generally interested in the topic. Well, instead of just catering to two people I winged the chat with entry level stuff with my more advanced points in mind for the two sound designers. I think the lecture went pretty well and we went slightly overtime aswell and I enjoyed it :) the idea was to get sound people engaged in a open lecture/conversation/speculation rather than me just babbling about and I think we got this going pretty well, can't wait to do this lecture with the intended audience in mind though, going to be craaaazyyyyyyy!

The Nuclear Throne panel was suuuuuuuper fun to do, pretty much it was Rami Ismail from Vlambeer asking me (sound designer), Paul Veer (visual artist) and Jukio Kallio (composer)
about our design ideas and how we see the game, we also had Jukio performing the starting song
of the game and the ending credits song, it was so so so so so so so nice, we also had a Q/A from the
audience. I think people new to the game didn't really get that much out of this panel as people who already knew the game and I think that was more in our mind aswell, to cater to people who just wanted a more deeper insight of what we're doing instead of advertising in a panel form.

OKAY talks aside i'll just type in some random stuff from Game City.

I got to meet old friends and got to bump into new friends, I met Ed Key who made PROTEUS, seriously, if you don't know the game CHECK IT OUT!

I finally met JMICKLE, the dude who makes cool beats and cool games (Coffee Mafia anyone?!)

I caught Robin Arnott doing good pranks:

I met Jesse Hurtado who's a sound designer/composer, a nice fellow, we had scone pizzas while listening to Britney Spears megamix........the shop had it on!!




Also met composer David Fenn, we were pretty much always at the same place, I think sound people are drawn towards the same places or something, or maybe...maybe it's because....you're a wizard 'arry!

I met a BUNCH of super nice developers aswell, just realized if I type everyone here this blogpost will be probably longer than the lord of the rings book set! Everyone I met were really nice and i'm glad that I met all of you!


I had a lot of good interviews aswell during GameCity :) some with some really big magazines/productions, so be sure to check your local magazine stores for Hunks monthly...errrr... videogame magazines that is!!



I was saddened that our most favourite game of all time, Frogdude, disappeared after a few days, oh the joy we had observing it go at the market square!














Oh and my hotel room...

My hotel room also saw some work, I do work a little too much from time to time...

 

I actually enjoyed my hotel room view aswell!

I miss all the people who I met and the general atmosphere, both Daniels, Brrrap, ohhh you people know yourselves, pretty much everyone who hung at the Pit & Pendulum!!

Being at Nottingham just solified my decision that i'm moving to the UK when I can.

Laters!