We Made It!
This is part two of the Indie Road-Trip to FGS! If you haven’t yet read the first part, you can do so here.
Arriving in California
So we rolled into California early Saturday afternoon, tired from a dozen hours of driving across Oregon, but also really excited to be in our destination state. We blasted our CD full of songs about California and San Francisco, stopped a couple times to do a bit of sightseeing, and then proceeded to cruise our way south across the Golden Gate bridge into San Francisco!
FGS 2011 Begins!
The next morning, we wake up early in our hostel and head on over to the Mission Bay Conference Center where the Flash Gaming Summit is just getting started. At this point, we are tired due to short sleep and a bit burned out after our long drive, but already getting psyched when we get to the venue early without trouble and there are already tons of people piling in the doors. First thing we see when we come in is a circle of large-print posters for various games participating in the Summit’s game competition, all very cool. I would’ve given anything for the Steambirds poster, but it was the first to sell and got claimed very shortly after the event started!
Before the welcome speech even begins, we run into some folks from Mochi who excitedly inform us that the event has sold out, and there are going to be some awesome announcements this year that will be the talk of the Flash community. We are already excited, and head into the conference room where Jameson Hsu, CEO of Mochi, gives a welcoming speech to everybody attending. There are still many people who have not checked-in yet, but the speech is short and friendly, and he quickly passes the mic on to the first speakers of the day.
The first talk, called Flash+ A Whole New Dimension for Games, given by Thibault Imbert and Lee Brimelow of Adobe, didn’t sound too interesting to me at first. I was already familiar with Flash, and am usually more interested in the more technical-related talks rather than those focusing on the prominence/success of any one platform over another. But this was different, as it was really focused and contained some really exciting announcements exclusive to the event! The two talked about different web platforms such as Flash, HTML5/Javascript, and Unity, and the pros/cons of each as well as their effect on the mobility of applications created with them both to the web and to mobile devices such as Apple and Android phones.
After honestly and open-mindedly comparing all these platforms, they talked for awhile about some new features coming to Flash and AIR, and announced some really cool stuff. There was a lot of buzz when they mentioned that it will now have GPU support! This is really exciting for me, being the developer of a 2D game framework with a large user-base, this means that I will now be able to make optimizations to my engine that strongly improve rendering speeds and subsequently the performance of all my users’ games and applications. But you can watch these events yourself online, the real thing I’d like to communicate was how cool it was to be present for these announcements in-person, and also to be able to talk to all these developers afterwards!
Indie Devs Rock
After the talk finished, most people at the event had checked-in and were present, and there was a good bit of mingling before we went into the next talk; this one I was looking forward to, called Keeping Yourself Honest in Game Design, by Andy Moore, the developer of Steambirds.
We chose this talk over the PopCap one specifically because Andy Moore is a lone indie developer like us, and also had success with his latest game. I am glad we did, too. Andy’s talk was both personal and professional, if that even seems possible. He talked about his break into indie gaming with Colin Northway and Fantastic Contraption, and how since the first game he worked on was so massively successful, he ended up setting the bar so high for himself that he actually had some trouble re-learning how to design games and also how to market them properly. He talked about all his game projects and openly shared all the numbers and metrics with us, something which many indie developers are often reluctant to do and means a lot to the rest of us who are trying to make a living off of game development.
The room the talk took place in was large with a bunch of tables and very cozy, suiting the smaller more personal talks, and also made for a great place to sit and chat afterwards about the session with other developers and industry people who were at the event. Andy said that his talk was more successful than he he had expected it to be (he though he was going to have an empty room, but in fact it was filled to capacity). There was a lot of commotion afterwards, with many people both affected and inspired by his honest talk about being indie, Flash game dev, and the success and future of Steambirds.
Obviously, one of the best things about coming to these events is getting to meet the developers of some of the most fantastic games in person. That alone made the trip more than worth it, never mind also getting to mingle and chat with some amazing professionals and other pioneers of the industry.
Stay tuned for part three, where me, Ola and Nick will talk separately about the event and what we came out of it with! We all had a great time and have lots to say, and if you weren’t there this year and/or didn’t meet us in person, I really hope you can make it out next year!
Continued to part 3!
