Saturday, March 21, 2009

The Road to GDC, Part 3: Secret Slides

I've been doing some last minute GDC revisions, and have learned some valuable lessons:

* Polishing speeches is hard
* If I do three speeches in a day, I'm going to start losing my voice. I should try not to do that.
* Drinking carbonated water during your speech is a terrible idea
* More importantly, I have a bunch of cool videos and movies that while cool, don't fit into the flow or direction of my speech. That means...



...that's right! If you ask me a question that's along the same lines as some of the footage I have in my "Secret Slides" section, you'll get to see some extra bonus stuff! There's a bunch of "approved but no longer fitting" stuff like movies of hardware assembly and email proof of me being psychic. So, if you ask the right question, you'll get a pretty awesome visual answer in response!

(Also, if you guys ask questions, I don't end up awkwardly staring at a blank audience for 20 minutes at the end)

Thursday, March 5, 2009

The Road to GDC, Part 2: Shameless Begging Commences

Good News: My GDC slides have been tentatively thumbs up'ed by the higher ups at Harmonix! Come GDC, you'll be able to come and check out 70-odd entertaining and informative slides, complete with never seen before video and picture footage!



Interesting News: My speech now has an official time and room! Room 2007, Friday at 9am

Firstly, that room is awesome.



...and really big...



...and I'm super psyched that the GDC guys think that my speech is going to be that interesting.

However, the big lesson from GDC'08 for me was that you need to plan out your nights more than your days. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights, all the big publishers will be throwing huge parties late into the night, which in return is causing some realisations to dawn in my head:


  1. Many people will be drunk or asleep at 9am, making this room harder to fill
  2. I may be drunk or asleep at 9am, making this speech harder to give


So, reader, let's make a deal. I'll speak a little slower and quieter, and ask the lighting guy to turn down the lights a bit, if you show up at 9am and recover while hearing about Rock Band stuff. On top of that, I promise to show up sober, answer hard questions after the speech, and - if you're lucky - show up in clean clothes and a cleanly shaven face.

Deal?