Return of the Revenge of the Son of Saying Hi to Josiah!

[Phonox]

Hellou.

What? That was yesterday! Why are you bringing that up again? If you don't have a crush on Saber, stop being so defensive about it.

[Blue Fire Cyndaquil]

Because I'm bored.

[Josiah]

Hi! I'm back from GDC and I've got a whole bunch of KotF scoring to catch up on. I really should get to sleep soon, but I'll probably be on quite a lot tomorrow. I'll talk about the conference another time, when it's not so late at night.

[Saber Knight]

Hellou.

What? That was yesterday! Why are you bringing that up again? If you don't have a crush on Saber, stop being so defensive about it.

Heh. That's 'xactly what I thought when I saw it.

*inhales deeply* DI competition today. Woke up at 6:00, partially because I couldn't sleep and partially because I'm leaving at 6:30. Our challenge is at....probably 9:30-ish? Regardless, we have to check in an hour early. And it's at loser school (normally regionals are in my hometown, allowing for a very short commute) that's in some other town *scowl*. Also, a person on my team is coaching a team of little kids. They're at like 8:00-ish, and I wanted to see them.

What sucks is we're going first. It doesn't just suck 'cos we have to get there early, it sucks because going first is a bit of a handicap. Really. You honestly have a better chance of getting a better score if you go last, because the judges all (subconsiously) will be all "oh, that was a really cool FINAL performace. HIGH SCORES!" We can only hope that the last team sucks to avoid the bonus points. Of course, it really doesn't mean that much, but everyone in DI thinks it does. Really. Ask anyone. Probably.

Well....I'm off soon. Wish me luck!

[Cheezdude]

...Youth Group today! Also, excessive amounts of Rock Band!

[NabMaster]

Good luck Saber! Ugh, someone pulled the fire alarm again...that's two nights in a row. I am so glad there's only 3 weeks left until I'm out of here, I can't stand being near drunks and they seem to swarm around this one residence.

[Doodleshark]

Yo. It looks like the Ottawa Senators won't make it to the playoffs this year, which means that I will be able to go downtown without fearing for my life and can instead cheer on my other two favourite teams: Detroit and Calgary.

There's dirty water in my booooooones...

[Josiah]

Hi! So, GDC... GDC is broken into several different parts. There's the conference itself with has tons of lectures and roundtables with famous game industry pros. Unfortunately, you need a very expensive pass to get into that part, so I've never been. There's also some special interest seminars earlier in the week which focus on things like mobile games, educational games, and the like...getting into those also requires an expensive pass.

Then there's the three things I could get into. The expo contains a lot of booths, mostly for companies that sell various types of hardware and software that are related to games. Graphics cards, game engines, online payment programs, 3D modeling software, game design books, etc. There's some fairly interesting stuff if you're a game designer, artist, programmer, etc, but it'd be kinda dull if you're not. The career pavillion is where a bunch of companies who are looking to hire set up booths. It's typically a lot less flashy than the expo (which isn't all that flashy compared to E3 or the Tokyo Game Show) and is a place to talk to people, hand out resumes, and the like. Both the expo and career pavillion booths tend to hand out a bunch of info packets and assorted items with their company logos on (mainly pens and shirts, but lots of little toys and knick-knacks as well). Finally there's the IGDA (Independent Game Developers Choice Awards) and GDCA (Game Developers Choice Awards) show, which is two award shows back to back (one for indy games, the other for commercial games) where the nominees and winners are voted on by game developers.

I spent most of my time in the Expo booth and Career Pavillion (since I couldn't really do much else). I talked to a lot of companies and handed out resumes. Some seemed like they might be interested in my work, others not so much. I'll be sending out follow up letters in a week or so so we'll see if anything comes of it. As previously mentioned, I had a short interview with Konami Japan, which seemed to go well even though I didn't get the job. I'm definately going to try and keep in touch with them for future openings... I also saw some nifty new software (most of which I probably won't be able to afford any time soon), picked up a bunch of free stuff, and had fun playing Buzz! at the Sony booth (they had tournaments for free copies of the game, I almost won).

The award show was lots of fun. Tim Schaffer (the guy behind games like Monkey Island and Psychonauts) hosted the GDCA section and there were a bunch of hillarious videos from Mega64 mixed in. Though I was a bit disapointed with which games won some of the catagories...

Anyway, I'll have a more full write-up in Monday's PV news post.

[Saber Knight]

*sigh*

Well....by this intro I bet you can guess what happened yesterday.

We're not going on to States. We're not even sure how we placed, but we know it's not 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, 'cos they announce those. Usually, they then pin up the scores in comparison to everyone else, but this year they said they'll email it to the coaches. We either placed 4th, 5th, or 6th in our challenge. Tango's team placed 4th out of 9. Not sure how their coach figured that out so quickly, but I digress...

Our superstision was that if the table is not cleared, the youngest in the family can't sleep. Our three movie genres were Action/adventure, Sci-fi/fantasy and Romance. Our sleuth was Cam Jansen (who's a fictional sleuth in little kid books).

*sigh again* I thought we had done well....which makes me sad. Our raw score was 180-something out of 300, but the raw score means absolutely nothing. You could win with a 20, depending on how good/bad the other teams are. Last year, we went to States with a 180-something. The only other team we watched was the team that placed first. They were good, but I didn't think they were that good. We also did pretty good on our IC (IC = Instant Challenge, worth 25% of your score. You basically go in having no idea what they're gonna tell you to do. It's either a building challenge with a set of materials they give you or an acting one, sometimes with a set of materials), or so I thought. It was a performace one (with materials), and performance ones are usually our strong suit. Much better than building.

And, what's probably the most depressing, is that my I have two friends on the team who have older sisters that are on the same team. This is their final year of DI (well, together at least. You can have college DI teams, but there are very few), as they are Seniors. They've been together for 11 years, with a few people coming and going throughout the years. Their skit was incredible. I couldn't believe how amazing it was. But, the team that went after them was another team from my hometown. The Mason team. The Mason team has beat my friend's sisters' team for....years. Last year, the Mason team placed 1st, they placed 2nd, so they didn't go to States. I think this has happened for the past few years, with one exception (I don't know if it's always been 1st and 2nd, sometimes 2nd and 3rd probably). The Mason team went to Globals with us last year.

And...this was probably just the most depressing thing ever...the Mason team beat them again this year. My friend's sisters' team has never been to Globals, though they deserved to ever so much. I am willing to bet a good deal of money that if their team was in a different region than the Mason team that they would have gone to states, an then both teams would go to Globals (1st and 2nd go to Globals). I felt soooooo bad. The whole team was devistated when they were called out for 2nd place. Once they got 2nd, we knew who would get 1st. Who else but the Mason team? Their skit was good, really good, but I thought that the other team was better.

The only good thing of the night was that my friend's sister (on that same team) also coaches a team of little kid DI'ers. Somehow, a group of 2nd and 3rd graders managed to scrape 2nd in their challenge. Since there were 14 teams, the first two go to States. So....yay....I guess. Even my friend's sister couldn't be too excited, she was too depressed. It was...really just depressing to see how devistated they looked.

Our excuse for losing has been that we're a team of 9th and 8th graders against freshmen. However, those 2nd and 3rd graders beat 5th graders. Our other excuse is that we went 1st, which puts us at a disadvantage. Eh...I can't really seem to cling to those.

What's also terrible is this means DI is over....for way too many months. I'll be able to see two people on my team, since they go to my school, but the other two are still in middle school, so I won't see them often. It's really depressing knowing that.

Ah....sorry for the long post. I'm just....not in the brightest of moods. Kinda really gloomy. Wish my team was here. I need hugs from them..... Ah....just back at the ceremonies....they call out 3rd. When you don't hear your name, you get excited. They call out 2nd. When you don't hear your name, you get more excited. When they call out 1st, if you don't hear your name, you feel totally crushed. Like you just wanna go in a corner and just stay there. On the other hand, if you do hear your name for 1st, it's the greatest feeling in the world. I really can't think of anything better. DI has been one of the greatest things that's ever happened to me.

Wow...that was really long...and probably belongs more in the rants thread than here, but I don't think it's quite a rant...more of a vent. Gee...I'm depressed...

[auragongal]

Hey! I'm still alive, just been busy with Ban's pups, working on sprites and things like that!

[Cheezdude]

Yo. It looks like the Ottawa Senators won't make it to the playoffs this year, which means that I will be able to go downtown without fearing for my life and can instead cheer on my other two favourite teams: Detroit and Calgary.

=D

Yay, Flames! Was at the game last night. Flames won, even though the ref made a lot of horrible calls. >>

[Siranae]

Sorry to hear that, Saber. I'm sure you guys were great.

In other news, I was kicked out of the TV room yesterday by my younger sister because I was giving Pittsburg bad luck during their game. She also kicked out my mom. We would have gone back in there, but my mom was to scared to watch what was happening, and I didn't want my sister annoying me all week if I was in there and they lost.

[Blue Fire Cyndaquil]

Yeah, Saber. Sorry. I'm not on.

[Josiah]

Hi! Just catching up on things today. I've got a short paper to do and various other things to work on (such as PV strips) but I should be all caught up in another day or two.

Too bad you didn't make it all the way, Saber.

[Saber Knight]

Arg...most disappointing weekend ever.

So...we had a hockey playoff game today. Guess what? We lost. There goes my season. Everything is ending in this one, stupid weekend. DI, hockey....it all died in the course of two days.

What's really depressing is next year I can't play town team, only high scool. I'm still not even quite sure if I'm gonna do high school. There's only varsity team, and it's hard to have a life and play varsity hockey at the same time. It's really demanding.

A buncha people on town team are actually from out of town, they just go to a private school in town. Like our goalie. She's been on my team since 5th grade, and she's probably my best friend on the team. I'll probably see her once more at our end-of-the-year party, then never again. Both of us were really upset today after we lost because of that (and 'cos we lost, of course).

Man...I really hope next weekend is better. It'll be hard to be worse. Unless a meteor hits the softball fields and there's no more softball. Or sudden budget cuts come in and there's no more band/jazz band. Even so, I don't think that'd be worse than this weekend.

Normally, the end of the season isn't too too bad. We're all sad, but it's all "we'll see you next year!". Not this time. I'll see a bunch of them, but a bunch of them I won't see. Actually, most of my close friends are the ones that live out of town. Why?!

...I need a hug.