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posts dated from: march 2011

PAX East: Day 2

PAX East: Day 2
I'm back! YEAH! Sorry about the big delay but I've been super busy with Snapshot ever since I got home from PAX East, but I'm taking a quick break to do this write up of the magical Day 2 of PAX East! This is going to be pretty jumbled as I try to piece together what happened, so I apologize in advance.

The beginning of this day felt absolutely awful. Why the hell did we stay out until half passed midnight for some concerts? I mean, I slept on the floor for a couple hours, but that didn't seem to help me out at all. We didn't get back the night before until really late, and my alarm went off at 6:45am which meant that I only got a couple hours of sleep. Waking up was a strange mix of extreme tiredness and adrenaline. I mean, my body was completely destroyed from lack of sleep, but the feeling of going to PAX for another day of showing off the game had me really excited.

I think I made at least to the car before I passed out. We were heading in a little early again so that Dave could fix more bugs with the demo and so that we could be in the expo hall at 9am. The expo hall opened to the public at 10am, but on the 2nd day they secretly open the expo hall to members of the press at 9am.

PAX East: Day 1

PAX East: Day 1
Before the first day of PAX even began we were already exhausted from the day before. There were a lot of bugs and issues with the build of Snapshot that we showed off in the Made in Mass event, so after we got back to the place we were crashing at, Dave hooked up his PC and was cranking away at the code. I also had my laptop open and I was trying to design a super high res logo for Snapshot to get printed at a Kinkos down the street from the convention center, and we didn't end up getting to sleep until about 1am. Combine that with the fact that we had to wake up at 6:30am to leave at 7am, to get to the convention center at 8am, means that we were looking at a pretty long day.

The traffic getting into Boston on a Friday morning at 7am is about as bad as you can expect it to be. For a few miles it was bumper to bumper, until the car pool lane opened up and we could take advantage of the three humans in our vehicle.

When we pulled up to the Boston Convention Center, we decided to just pull up to the side of one of the doors that was closest to the expo hall so that we could unload our stuff. We had with us a big HDTV, a computer, a big reclining chair, and a box of cables and parts and other things. As soon as we stopped the vehicle and began getting stuff out of the car, some guy came storming out of the door yelling at us that we cant stop here and unload. We told him we only needed to get out some small things for our expo booth, and he continued to yell at us, but we unloaded and went inside anyway.

PAX East: Day 0

PAX East: Day 0
PAX East has come and gone, and by the end of it every part of my body ached as if I had been bench pressing the sun with all four of my limbs. It was probably the most exhausting expo floor I've ever had to be a part of, but of course it was all worth it. The live demo of Snapshot went really well, and a lot of people seemed to really enjoy it.

PAX East really started for me on Wednesday when I had to catch a flight to Manchester, New Hampshire to hook up with the rest of the Retro Affect dudes. The studio is located in Meredith, NH, but I've been working remotely from Tempe for a little while now. The building that the studio is in actually flooded that morning, so good times were had by all when I finally arrived that night. The very next day we headed out to Boston to set up our stuff at the expo hall and also attend an event entitled "Made in Mass."

GDC2011: Independence Day

GDC2011: Independence Day
Normally I would probably start posting about Game Developers Conference as soon as I got home from it, but this time is a little bit different. This year I only have 2 whole days of being home in my room before I have to fly out to the east coast for PAX East, so the GDC recap posts will be pretty slow. (I hope that you didn't already forget that Snapshot is sharing a big booth there for the Boston Indie Showcase.)

The first highlight of GDC I will be sharing is going to be probably the best one of them all. This year I gave a 5 minute micro-talk (which I will probably post about later) which somehow lead to me being back on stage in front of the microphone talking about things, doing impressions, and finally executing the Independence Day speech with my dear friend Tommy Refenes.

This magical moment was caught almost entirely on film by the people in the audience, so check it out:


Or look at a a vimeo version.