Posts tagged with “panel”

Next week, a portion of the Fire Hose team will be in San Francisco attending and participating in the Game Developer’s Conference, the largest professional conference for game developers in the world. GDC is the place where game developers gather to share their accumulated knowledge, network, do shady business deals and, of course, party.  And as you know, we at Fire Hose know how to party.

But it’s not all fun and games. The Fire Hose team will be out on the floor, showing off Slam Bolt Scrappers at the Sony Online Entertainment booth to old fans and new fans.  A few of us will also be wandering the show, looking for new friends and connecting with old ones, and hopefully finding a few that will be buy us drinks.

While GDC is targeted toward the professional game developer, it also has a lot to offer students and industry hopefuls as well.  On Friday, GDC offers its Game Career Seminar, a track targeted at students looking to break into the industry.

I will actually be speaking at the game career seminar at 3:10, in a talk titled “From College to Industry: 20 Lessons for Getting the Most out of Your Early Career.”  The talk is about my own journey, starting as a programmer at a small government contractor, moving into AAA game development, then into game middleware, and finally settling at Fire Hose.  I’ll talk about the things I’ve learned going to GDC for 10 years, such as the importance of networking, and how much you can learn just by listening to people. I’ll also talk about lessons I’ve learned in the industry, like how to match your company to your own career goals.  There is also a reference to killing babies.

So if you’re heading to GDC, come and say hi to us either at the SOE booth, or stop by my talk on Friday to maybe learn a little bit.

So you thought the slides from the PAX Prime In(die)credible talk looked cool, but wished you could catch the actual panel? WELL FEAR NOT MY FRIEND, we have it for you here! Yes, it’s a glorious 6-parter video of my talk with Robin, Nathan, Dylan, and Andy. Worth watching if you have, erm, a free hour!

Thanks to Nick Dahms for being an awesome human being all around, he taped it and then posted it on the interyoutubes.

Parts 3-6 after the jump!

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The good people at Boston Post Mortem will be reprising the PAX East panel, “Indies Will Shoot You in the Knees,” for the meeting coming up this Wednesday, July 14th starting 7PM at the Skellig in Waltham. Eitan, our Fire Chief, will be moderating the panel, so it’s sure to be an interesting night!

Here’s an excerpt from the BPM site:
“Everyone is talking about Indie games ”” titles like World of Goo, Braid, and AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! ”” A Reckless Disregard for Gravity are making press and making money. But they’re fighting against games with $200 million dollar budgets and 100+ person dev teams. How do Indies compete? Three Boston-based Indie developers will check their water-guns at the door and tell you why and how Indie games are kicking more ass, taking more names, and chewing more bubblegum than their AAA rivals. You will hear from the Ichiro Lambe (IGF Finalist Dejobaan Games, Aaaaa!), Scott Macmillan (Macguffin Games, All Heroes Die) and ex-Bungie AI wizard Damián Isla, founder of the new indie Moonshot Games. The panel will be moderated by Eitan Glinert, founder of Fire Hose Games.”

If you’re in Boston, making video games, and/or are even remotely interested in the business side of game dev I’d definitely recommend checking out the MIT BiG conference happening this coming Friday at the Microsoft NERD center next to MIT. It’s going to be a day long deal with all sorts of interesting panels on non-traditional marketing strategies, the changing face of social games, and “the next big thing”. Of course, the panel I’m most interested in is how to build and launch a gaming start up, mostly because I’m on it. It should be a lot of fun, I know that some of the guys here in the office are already starting a pool on what kind of stupid stuff I’m going to say.

Oh, and did I mention that we’ll be showing off Slam Bolt Scrappers at the conference? It’s true! We’ll have an awesome 4 player build for people to play, so if you didn’t get a chance to try the game out at PAX East be sure to swing by the conference and give our game a shot! Priority will be given to cosplaying conference goers, especially ones dressed up as Ghostbusters or giant chickens.

Fire Hose has some talks coming up! Back to back talks in fact, on May 7th and 8th. Both are in Boston, so if you are in town be sure to stop by and check them out!

What’s that? Can’t afford the conference tickets? Never fear, I’ll be posting a short synopsis of each talk right here on this website. Here’s a sneak peek:

Thursday, May 7th, 10:30 – 11:20 – Rapid and Iterative Prototyping, or How to Rip Off Dinosaur Comics
Ethan and I are going to talk about how to make video games quickly even if you don’t have all the pieces in place. We’ll keep things exciting with lots of jokes, and we’ll be showing off early builds of our current game to illustrate points. The talk is guaranteed to entertain, or we’ll go back in time and save you the 60 minutes by telling you to skip it. You can read more about the talk here or on the conference’s website.

Friday, May 8th, 11:45 – 12:30 – Digital Distribution Panel
I really have no idea what the panel is going to be about beyond the title, but I bet it’s going to be pretty interesting as all three of us panelists come from pretty different backgrounds. My friend Al Reed from Demiurge Studios will be there, and he knows a hell of a lot more than me, so I’m exicted to see what he’s got to say. You can read more about the speakers here but I don’t see a page for our panel. Scot Osterweil and Dave Edery are doing a panel on Serious Games which should be pretty cool too.