(pic via GameCity’s flickr stream)
So, yesterday myself, Minion and ToreSupra wandered down to GameCity Nights to see what it’s all about.
I was, unfortunately, a bit of a mess by the time I rolled up there. Generally, I don’t travel well anyway (as the missus will reassure you) but between a week with a distinct lack of sleep, a 6 hour coach journey where the coach turns up incredibly late and then toddling as fast as my little legs can take me to Antenna, guided ably by Mrs Bob on the phone for directions I certainly wasn’t even remotely close to my best. I think a bearded sweaty mess with a backpack would be a fair description.
However, any stresses immediately relieved by stumbling in to cries of “Ooooooh, here he is” from the Minster and immediately being flocked by the lovely organisers to get set up as fast as possible. Which we then did. Min dealt with the PC side of things, I took the Macwanker corner. Because someone had to, really.
Rather than go down to show off my stuff, which to be fair I get plenty of opportunities for, we opted to show off Min’s stuff and some not entirely random selections of the work of RR-ites.
So on display from the Retro Remakes camp during the night were Min’s Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, Space Cabbage and Pheonix. (Due to framey-use on site, no individual links but here’s Min’s homepage), Stu and Smila’s Ultimate Bruce Lee and Quantasm, TCK’s COBEX, Kuto’s Typhoon 2001 and of course, at some point you have to regale everyone with the story of War Twat whilst blinding random passers by.
And by “on display” I generally mean “indulging in our own personal high score competitions with…” which is what happens when you let us lot loose in a room.
On display from the not-RR camp we got a glance at BlindGirl, a game I’d not had chance to look at yet on XBLIG thanks to life taking over. I really must write something up about it at some point and AVOID (short version – it’s a multiplayer Squares2).
Normally, when I roll up to something like this I’ll end up with a camera full of photos. With GameCity Nights my camera ended up stuck in my pocket being forgotten about because, well, here’s the great thing about GameCity Nights…
It’s highly relaxed and we spent most of the night just chatting. Which, y’know, any right minded person will tell you is far more fun than booth-babing it. Sure, you’re on hand if anyone wants to ask you something but that’s so far from a priority it’s silly. Enjoying yourself there takes absolute priority and for that alone I’d really recommend that if you can drag your arse down there, you do so.
It’s a good night and the gameiness stuff doesn’t take precedent over the social aspects.
Helped along by some seriously good company, one of the most relaxing nights out you could ask for punctuated with the odd bit of fun stuff to do and the panel.
Ah yes, the panel.
It was Doctor Who Adventures night so on hand, Mr James Moran, Charles Cecil and Anwen Aspden compered by One Life Left’s Simon Byron.
To be fair here, I’m more used to places where wot you get some indies in the room together and a level of candidness you can’t really apply once you get further up the mainstream ladder so despite the best efforts of everyone involved to spark it up a bit, for me on message stuff is always going to be a bit bland. At times I felt like I’d wandered into an episode of Dr Who Confidential (“we’ve got a wonderful team doing wonderful things and everyone is wonderful etc…”). That said, it was entertaining enough and getting a glimpse at Sumo Digital’s pitch reel for the Adventure Games made it all worth the while.
It was the sort of pitch reel you watch and end up thinking “yup, if *I* was making the decisions, I’d have picked that”. Good stuff, they really had nailed the show down rather beautifully.
A short Q&A followed with some general questions from the audience and the internets but y’know, when most answers are going to be “we can’t really say anything about that” there’s not a lot further you can take that sort of thing. A shame in one way but a not entirely unexpected one at that.
The three of us ducked out for a ciggy and chat outside for a while and wandered back into a Dr Who themed game of Consequences. We didn’t take part as I’m not allowed paper and a pen (or MSPaint or anything that I can draw on) at events after the Coders Workshop incident(s) about 5 or 6 years ago involving a kids art package and the drawing of manbits everywhere and no-one wanted to be that person who stood up at the front and instead of reading a story out had to say “and Bob has drawn a cock here”.
The winning entry is here for anyone wondering exactly what madness this entailed. A close second place must surely be the team who managed to have the ending to their story entirely in German and had to swap speakers to read it out to the crowd in a moment of lovely accidental performance art madness.
Then it was back to shifting between the bar and chatter for a while before the three of us had to peg off (ah, being a parent is so much fun…) into the night. Or in my case, into a long and torturous return journey that saw me land back home at gone 10am the next day. No matter though, a minor suffering to endure for a fine night with some fine people at a fine venue.
If you’re in the locale or y’know, a lunatic like me who fancies a bit of a trek, and there’s a GameCity Nights on – go there. Really. It’s lovely.
Even with the hellish travel, I had a stonkingly fun night and I’d definitely do it all over again.
