Well, I’d intended to go back to see another session, but instead I spent most of the afternoon sitting and chatting with Drew and Activision Jason, and later, Brenda. It was a fine chat about the history and motives behind GDC, the role of educators in the conference, and my curious foray into Game Design. ETCers and other industry folk joined and left our table in a steady stream. This was a much preferred environment for me compared to a packed session, especially in my sleepy state.

After a leisurely dinner at the food court, we returned to our hotels to prepare for the giant IGDA party being thrown tonight. I promptly fell asleep. I doubt I will be scorned for skipping out on the party, nor will my absence likely be noticed (they are expecting 2000 people to attend). The fact of the matter is, I’m exhausted, and the conference proper hasn’t even begun yet! I need to rest up if I intend to survive the rest of the week at all.

I blame the large amount of people, which quickly drain away my energy. Andy says I should just pretend every person at the conference is actually a dog, since puppies seem to give me so much energy (Brenda agrees, thinking it would be extremely fun to think of what breeds people would be). Activision Jason says that creating a defensive energy bubble around oneself is a learned skill, and that I merely need to work my way to 375 (how I grind this skill, I have no idea).

For now, I’ll call it an early night. There’s a session at 9am tomorrow that I really want to go see, so an early bedtime won’t hurt in the least!

The summit talk after lunch was all about revenue models for Free-to-play games, and was very interesting. It was also very popular, and the room was so crammed full that I had to escape afterwards for a re-charge.

Wandering about, I found that the convention has a bean bag chair lounge in the middle of the floor outside the exhibit hall! Brilliant! I chilled out for awhile, soon joined by Tracy, Edmundo, Jake, and Alyson. I decided to sit there on a bean bag and work out what talk I wanted to see in the afternoon, and promptly fell asleep. Doh!

Upon waking, I walked back with Tracy and Jesse. There’s a big, glass-enclosed carousel outside the convention center that looks very fun, and Jesse and I resolved to ride it before GDC is over. “I will have to schedule a time this week to ride it,” I said.

Jesse turned to me with the most incredulous, laser-eyed glare he could muster and scoffed, “I’m not scheduling when I ride the carousel.” I barked back in defense of my inability to be spontaneous, and Tracy berated us both on the silliness of a glass-enclosed carousel to begin with. It was all in good fun, of course. We parted ways with Jesse and returned to the hotel.

Tonight, I met up with the other GDC scholars for dinner at the food court. There are an abundance of interesting people, and many a business card was exchanged. One girl is going to be a first-year at the ETC next year, so I am determined to get her properly introduced to Jesse and Drew.

Yay networking!

So for today, Bandology split up between the Casual Games Summit and the Worlds in Motion Summit. I went to the latter, which is about virtual worlds and massively multiplayer experiences (as Jesse says, “it sounds like a girl came up with the name to that summit,” at which I shook my fist threateningly, at which he smirked).

I picked the summit to learn what I can about MMOs to apply to Bandology. What I discovered, to my surprise, is that there exists in this industry an animosity between “virtual worlds” people (Second Life, Social Networking experiences, etc.) and “mmo game” people (WoW, Club Penguin). This startled me, as I’d never perceived the friction between the two groups until today in this room!

The first two speakers were so-so, but the third guy from GoPets () gave a great talk about Game Interface over User Interface. I think I absorbed a lot of Bandology-relevant tidbits from that talk.

For now, I must finish my lunch and head back to the summit. Stay tuned for more!