So how has it been?
We had meetings with four publishers and all the meetings went well and we have a clear follow up with all of them, so that's good. At least one unexpected angle came out of the meetings which I am interested in pursuing. Really interested... :)
I learned a lot from the experience of doing short pitching meetings. We have some truly unique features as a games developer and I think I did a good job of putting that all across. What would have been good would have been to get a few more NDAs in place before the event so I could talk more freely about our various prototypes. The life of a small developer is often tough, but it is good to have our approach reinforced. Switching our primary business focus to the traditional developer/publisher model over the more business-to-business games is making the whole process much more straightforward. We are innovating the product rather than the business model.
I also want to send a big thank you to Chris for all his help - you are a star :)
I am definitely planning on coming along next year, though the rumour is the event is moving to Cologne. That is a shame as the Leipzig conference centre is really good, though I think Leipzig as a city might be a bit short of accommodation. We ended up staying some 25km outside of town, which though very pretty, was also in the middle of nowhere :
As for the games, two at the show stood out for me and neither were in our field.
- Fallout 3 was very interesting. I have a horrible suspicion that it will have been console-ised, as the demo didn't show any dialogue. The original Fallout games taught me a lot about how cool it is to have real consequences to your actions in a game. You were never constrained by a polarised good/evil approach - you had to pick your won way through a minefield of shades of behaviour in a world that was damn tough. As for this version - we will have to wait and see, but I am hoping that it will be good.
- Call of Duty: World At War. The original Call of Duty games taught me a lot about how horrific WW2 was, it was like living through the Band of Brothers tv series. That gave me a new level of empathy for my grandfather and his experiences as a paratrooper in the war. This game continues that approach, but excitingly for me, it now offers a 4 player co-operative approach. Co-operative games are one of my most loved forms of gaming, so that's rather exciting.
Now... do I get an XBox 360, or a gaming PC?
Also word to the wise: German wasps are nasty! One crawled into my shirt and stung me 5 times on the arm. I am typing this with my whole upper right arm wrapped in bandages! The German for "I've been stung by a wasp" is: ich bin von einer Wespe gestochen worden.
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