Time Lapse in South Dakota
Here is a clip from my cross country drive from Boston to Seattle last year. I hope to have the entire thing posted shortly.
PAX Prime 2011. My Feet Survived.
PAX Prime 2011 is over, and it was great fun. Like the previous PAX, having strong panels was important and this year wasn’t any different. I was lucky being able to invite some great community managers to join me on Getting Past the Forums: The Future of Community on Friday, which was great. The discussion was great, and from everyone I talked to the feedback was extremely positive. One of the highlights was the focus on video in various means, such as broadcasting via a service like Twitch.tv, Ustream, or Justin.TV or the Twitter like video service Tout which has 15 second clips built for quicker updates with video. Everyone agreed that video is a powerful medium that will continue to grow. As James Stevenson said, 13 year olds are editing HD video. And we continue to see the power of Youtube every day. Gamespot even wrote an article on the panel! If you went to the panel, tell me how we did, I’d love to hear some feedback.
On top of the panels I was able to see tons of friends I hardly get to see and meet tons of new people. It was great being able to meet Adam Sessler and Wade Beckett from X-Play. Chris Fowler and Adam Fletcher from Gearbox Software were super cool and I hope to work with them on PAX events in the future. My old boss Tarl Raney made it out to Seattle all the way from Berlin and it was great catching up with him.
In the end buying insoles for my shoes were by far the best decision I made for PAX Prime by far!
New WordPress Theme. New Blog.
After moving to a new host, I thought it was about time to update to a new theme. I was unhappy with many of the free themes I have been seeing, and right now I don’t have the time to build my own. I have been noticing the amazing themes being created over at ThemeForest and saw one that I thought would fit perfect with what I want out of the site. Clean with great UX. I pulled the trigger and bought the Dispatch theme, which I have been thrilled with so far.
On top of launching the new theme, I’m going to really attempt to write more often. My writing is a little rusty and the only way to get better is to write more often. Expect to see articles from all types of topics and coming weekly. 2010 has been a great year so far, and hopefully the last couple months will be great as well.
A Seattleite’s PAX Prime 2011 Guide
PAX Prime is just four days away, and with 70,000 people coming into downtown Seattle, it can get a little crazy. I thought I’d give some tips to those who are going to their first PAX, coming to Seattle for the first time, or just like reading some random notes from someone who has gone to every PAX so far.
PAX Prime. Next Week. Panels & More.
It is that time of year again where 70,000 gaming fans converge onto the streets of Seattle and cause extremely long lines at Subway. Yes, it is PAX Prime again, and like the last couple years, I’ll be on panels again. I’ve been lucky enough to attend every PAX and speak at the last three.
Getting Past Forums: The Future of Community
The days of throwing a forum on a website and calling it ‘community’ are over. Facebook Integration, YouTube Uploads, Twitter Updates, User Generated Content, and more are causing the way we think and participate in the community to change at an incredible pace. In this panel we talk to various community managers about how community has changed since they started and where they think the next steps will be. Join Kimi Matsuzaki (Senior Community Developer, Ubisoft/Red Storm), Gabriel Graziani (Senior Community Developer, Ubisoft), Evan Berman (Community Manager, En Masse Entertainment) J Goldberg (Community Manager, Volition), James Stevenson (Senior Community Manager, Insomniac Games), Collin Moore (Community Manager, Sucker Punch Productions).
Serpent Theatre
Friday 3:00pm – 4:00pm
A Panel on Panels: Creating the Comic Inspired Cutscence of inFAMOUS 2
Come and see how Sucker Punch Productions creates our distinct comic inspired cutscenes. Starting from the script to storyboarding to inking to composite and post production. We are going to cover it all. You will get to see some never before versions of cutscenes. Here is a trailer on the style we are going to be talking about, inFAMOUS 2 2D Comic Cutscene. We will also have some special treats for those that show up, so this isn’t something you want to miss! Join Dave Malloy (Video Production Creative Lead), Jance Allen ( Composimator), Mike Haney (Senior Artist), Edward Pun (Digital Penciler), and Collin Moore (Community Manager) for an hour of fun.
Pegasus Theatre
Saturday 2:30pm – 3:30pm
Be sure to stop by both panels, especially the Sucker Punch panel since we are giving away one of a kind t-shirts for our upcoming release inFAMOUS 2: Festival of Blood.
For all you out of towners, or first time PAX attendees, I’ll be making a little guide for PAX and Seattle. So look for that later tonight.
Journey Beta
thatgamecompany has been making amazing games for the last couple years, but Journey takes them to a whole new level. Parts Shadow of the Colossus, Zelda, and a little music game and you get an idea of what they are doing with Journey. Visually it is striking! The sand, the flowing landscape, your scarf, the characters. Everything is inspiring to look at. For those lucky enough to get into the small beta, you know exactly what I mean. Those that aren’t, you will just have to wait to play it. I was only able to play the single player due to a crash bug, but it is a beta and wanting feedback and bug information. thatgamecompany really have something special with Journey.
Back from Super 8
I work up this morning to an email saying I could go see Super 8; the new movie from JJ Abrams creator of LOST, Alias, and director of the recent Star Trek reboot, in IMAX Fake IMAX a day before it comes out. It appears that they are doing a heavy Twitter and Facebook campaign due to fears that people don’t know enough about the movie, partly due to the cryptic trailers that show very little about the film. Well seeing a movie early is always fun in my book, so they sold me and I was quite happy with the movie. WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW!!
Windows Phone 7 Suggestions
I got my Samsung Focus right after they came out. I was impressed with the Windows Phone 7 experience and thought Metro provided a lot of neat options and a great experience. After a bit of growing pains and adjustment I have become very impressed with the platform, but that doesn’t mean Microsoft doesn’t have some things they can improve. The most recently NoDo update increasing the speed of starting applications and the current demos of Mango coming out later this year with HTML5 browser support and a host of other new features, but there are still things MS can change or fix. Here are some areas that I’d like Microsoft to improve with future updates.
The Roads to Becoming a Community Manager (East Coast Version!) Audio
PAX East 2011 is over, but that doesn’t mean you can’t relive it all over again and again. I recorded my panel, The Roads to Becoming a Community Manager (East Coast Version!). Please excuse the electronic interference, I blame James Stevenson’s phone, and sadly Jennifer Kye and Sam Houston can be a little difficult to hear at times. I did my best to clean the audio up.
I think I can speak for everyone on the panel that we all had a blast with this panel at PAX Prime and PAX East. We hope to do it again, but would love to hear feedback. So please feel free to share your thoughts.
PAX East Panels Done. Tell Us How We Did.
PAX East is over. I’m slowly recovering, washing laundry, catching up on work, and returning to normal life. But since PAX East is still fresh in everyone’s minds I thought I’d ask the interwebs how each of the panels went. I can say that everyone on the panel had a great time, we really do enjoy being on panels, and talking about community, but we also love feedback. So tell me what you thought about either panel, what we can improve on, if we can narrow the focus, or just general suggestions. Just use the comments below, message me via Twitter, or a smoke message.
Again, thanks to everyone who showed up the panels. We are already planning on things for PAX Prime.
Note: If you have photos or video of either panel, I’d love to get access to them. Shoot me a message.