#Pondering

Steve
Jul 31, 2013
10:00 AM
Steve Says:

Getting Out Of The House

I think I’ve got some sort of neurosis that leads me to believe that I need to absorb whatever information I can pertaining to the games industry. So when I heard about Casual Connect, my little gears started turning, and I decided let’s check it out.


Honestly, I’d never heard about Casual Connect until I saw an email come in stating that they needed volunteers. I still don’t have a mobile phone, and I’ve got game notifications turned off on Facebook… so it’s safe to say that I’m not a part of the casual gaming world. Growing up with consoles… well, I’m still very much entrenched in the old way of doing things. I give you money, you give me a finished game, I play it. Sometimes multiple times. But that’s where our relationship ends. I don’t like to buy revealing outfits for my augmented heroines… and the idea of free 2 play, legit makes me nervous. I don’t like micro transactions.

 

So a convention that focuses in on that space is both something that makes me feel weird to be at, and somewhere where I felt I should probably go to learn more. Yesterday was the first day of it, and I filled up my schedule. There’s about six different talks (most being about 20 minutes long) happening at any given time, so it’s not too hard to find something that’s worth your attention.

 

It was stressful for me to attend. Partially because my jaw spontaneously decided to lock-up on me on Monday, so it’s hard to eat or talk at the moment. But mostly this blog post from Gamasutra is an excellent read as to why. It’s very easy to get into a cycle where you feel that you need to get out of the house, that you need to have a presence at industry related events, and yet also that it’s painful to be away from your work. It feels like any moment you’re not at your computer working is a waste of time. And yet, you can’t keep that up… staying at my computer non-stop inevitably leads to procrastinating with a game, or netflix. Sometimes even trimming my nails.

 

While waiting for the first lecture of the day to start, here’s something that I jotted down in my notebook:

It’s mildly stressful sitting here at a conference I’m attending of my own freewill. Cost isn’t an issue, but time is. I’ve started animation on our first female bruiser, and I feel like I should be working on it right now. Attending a conference for mobile/casual gaming also feels weird to me in principal, but with that sector being such a powerhouse, I shouldn’t ignore it entirely, right? Hopefully I can get something out of this that can apply to our more traditional goals of game design.

Anyways, day 1 was pretty alright. The 20 minute format of the lectures makes it difficult to convey any meaningful insight to an audience, but it has got me thinking about traditional versus the new model of revenue generation. I’ll post up my notes from individual lectures next Monday.