Friday March 9th – Camaraderie with a Convict, a Conductor and a Flight Controller

What, the last day of the conference already? But it felt like we’d only just arrived in San Francisco! We had no time to waste. There were more cool presentations to go to.

Today’s talks covered how games get reviewed, marketing for indies, and for us the most interesting presentation of the day, “Awesome Video Game Data”.

The Awesome Video Game Data talk was given by Geoffrey Zatkin of video game research firm EEDAR. We were already familiar with this company as we’d seen presentations from them at the Game Connect Asia Pacific conferences in Australia over the last couple of years. These guys have teams of analysts constantly reviewing video game data from which they extrapolate key industry statistics. These aren’t just interesting facts and figures though. This stuff can help you plan your business strategy. They never fail to impress us with their in-depth knowledge of this huge industry. Here’s some of the awesome data we were presented with: (more…)

Thursday March 8th – the Joy of Jetpacks and Videoing Vektor

The second day started with one of those meetings we can’t talk about at the moment, but which could lead to an interesting future development. This is one of the things we love about GDC – there are so many industry people there to meet and talk with about potential opportunities. Of course, if anything does happen, we’ll let you know right here on our blog. (more…)

Well, how did that happen? It seemed like it was only yesterday we’d finished writing last year’s GDC Diaries. But when you’re constantly working against the clock to make games, months pass in the blink of an eye. A cough could be all that separates GDC in March from E3 in June. One major sneeze and suddenly it’s Thanksgiving. Fart and it’s Christmas…..OK, OK, you get the point, right? No wonder studios find it so hard to estimate when games will be finished. Game development years are way shorter than normal years. That’s a fact. Now the year had turned full circle and it was time to head off to San Francisco yet again for that electronic love-fest they call the Game Developers Conference. (more…)

It’s almost time for us to fly out to San Francisco for this year’s Game Developers Conference. We’ve got an early build of escapeVektor on the 3DS to show press and the latest version of Spirit Hunters Inc. We’ve been flat out over the last few weeks making sure everything is prepared.

However, we’re never too busy for an interview. So when The Strikester from Nintendo Nation asked Nic to answer a few questions, he was right on it.

INTERVIEW: NNOOO

The Strikester

What happens when you make a successful WiiWare game? The Strikester talks to Nic Watt, the head of the team behind the hit game escapeVEKTOR.

NN: Congratulations on the success of escapeVEKTOR: Chapter 1 on WiiWare. What was the idea behind it?

NW: The idea came from several places. Firstly we wanted to make a new WiiWare game and thought that doing something fun and stylish with depth would appeal to the Nintendo market. Secondly we wanted to make something we could ensure would give the best game-play and graphics we could achieve with not only our resources but also within the confines of the WiiWare service.

I really like the idea of having a person trapped inside the player’s Wii and having to go through games to get out. This sparked the idea of a series of games telling the tales of Vektor, how he became trapped in your Wii and his subsequent escape. escapeVektor is only one part of that story.

Click here for the rest of the interview