Late Night PC

Last night we got together for dinner with Erik, Dan Howard, and Scott. We got to talking a little about scrum and agile development, micro ISVs, and working in the software industry. All-in-all what you'd expect when some software-types get together and chat. Today we took it easy, tooled around Mountain View a little bit in the morning. Scott took us for a quick walk around Yahoo! It sounds like they're doing some pretty exciting things there. The next generation of Photos will be pretty sweet. Here's what the weather's been like for us: Okay, it hasn't rained the whole time, but I've seen a lot more of the windshield wipers this time than any other California trip. The SGS was on today at GDC. There's a writeup over at Gamasutra of the keynote by Jesper Juul. I like the idea he raises that explicit goals aren't essential. People like to explore - I think play can be a reward in and of itself. Some photos from the conference are starting to show up on Flickr. So far nothing amazing unless you know some of the people there. Once the expo floor opens there'll be a lot more variety of pics and probably some nice screenies and whatnot too. Tomorrow Jeff and I start the day with How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days. It was tough planning out the schedule - as it turned out many of the sessions we're interested in ended up scheduled on top of each other. Choices are tough and this is an important time to get out there, talk to people and share ideas, so sometimes that takes priority over watching 3D modelling wizards that are way beyond my artistic ability. The prototyping session should be informative and maybe inspiring, getting to the point of knuckling down and cranking out code is a great experience that's (obviously) essential.