Weekend Thoughts

So I gave my talk at the Game Career Seminar at VGXPO this past weekend. It was really cool meeting a bunch of the CMP folks I had never met before. Plus I met a ton of great, really impressive students eager to get into the industry! Makes the blood rush, ya know?

My talk about networking went pretty well, I think. I think I managed to get across many of the important points that I wanted to, plus I gave the audience some time to network with each other. Several students said my talk was their favorite of the whole seminar, whch was awful nice of them to say.

I gave tons of one-on-one networking advice, too, which was really fun. I like learning about someone’s specific situation and then giving them exactly the advice I think they need. It’s so much more focused than writing general articles on this blog or in magazines.

Also, I got to hang out with Jeff and Bill, who I hadn’t seen in 6 and 8 months, respectively. Plus I met a ton of NY/NJ developers I’d never met before.

Jeff, Bill, and I checked out the VGXPO itself (attached to the Game Career Seminar but not run by CMP). The coolest part was the main floor which had tons of old arcade cabinets. I played old favorites like Defender, Gauntlet 2, and Crystal Castles, but I think I had the most fun playing old games I’d never tried before. Specifically, I’m thinking of APB and a game that plays like the third-person levels in Contra, but you can strafe around, literally twisting the joystick to turn. I want to call it Cy-something, but Google fails me. (EDIT: Xybots it is!)

The second-coolest part was a bunch of guys making new Atari 2600 games. Homebrew assembly programming rocks!

The rest of the expo was not really my thing. Lots of teenagers and cosplay, and not much to see except other people playing video games.