Well, my roommate and I flew to San Francisco this week for GDC.  Man, it was fun.  We had Expo Passes, so we could only go to the last three days, but it was well worth it.  Lots of passing out business cards, passing out resumes, passing out demo reels, and finishing by feeling like passing out. (as any conference or convention-goer should)

We got to hang out with my cousin and some of the Ensemble crew, which was more than we could have asked for.  It's so exciting to hang out with other people that are doing the job you love.  I can't wait to finish my school (13 months to go...) so I can do the same.

As far as companies go, I got to talk to the people at Raven, Insomniac, Pandemic, Rainbow Studios, Blizzard, EA, Activision, Bungie, Day 1, Lucas Arts, and so many others.  Oh, the meetings.  Oh, the schwag.  I was a little worried that either my Lucas Arts liquid-filled pen, or my Insomniac slinkie might be confiscated by airport security, but they went through without any trouble.  Thankfully, I made the right decision to leave the BottleRocket foam-rubber rocket in the hotel.  That would've been a nightmare.

Well, I'm a bit tired right now.  Sleep...

I just read the discussion thread on NeoGAF about the debate from DICE between Insomniac Games and Epic Games.  ...   more »

I read a new article on Gamasutra last night.  They interviewed Richard Garriott on his thoughts about the industry.  One of the big questions they asked him was, "Is game development art?"  His answer is pretty much the one I thought of too.  It depends on the developer.  Don't get me wrong.  I totally think that concepts, modeling, texturing, lighting, and even programming are forms of art.  If I didn't, I wouldn't be going to art school, now would I?  The part that gets a little fuzzy is the motivation behind the game development process.  Like Garriott says in the interview, the "pull the lever on the slot machine and occasionally get a return" scenario is not so much art as it's science.  I understand the need for a developer to come up with a game that sells and is replayable, but to design a game simply around that with no intriguing formal or dramatic elements to back it up is unfair to the player.  This is why I hope that once I'm in the industry, I can add to the quality of games.

In other news, I turned 22 on Monday.  Yippee.  It's kinda less important when you've already turned 21.

I'm about done with my part on one of my friend's senior project.  We're doing a sort of Ace Combat dogfight sequence between F-22 Raptors and Sukhoi Su-47 Berkuts.  I'm in charge of look development, so I'm working with lighting, shading, texturing, and environments.  My shaders were approved today, so I'm happy.  Our planes are done and once they're UVed tonight, I'll be good to start my texturing.  We're going for hyper-realism here, so it's going to look awesome once we're done with texturing.  My goal is to have 360 turnarounds of both planes by the time I leave for GDC.  I gotta show off my stuff!