The Windleverse

I’m on my way to Las Vegas and got to ride the new Sound Transit connector to SeaTac airport that opened today.

Two out of three of my favoret modes of transportation in one day what could be better.

Long line is LOOOOOOONG!

Panels:

• Keynote
• PA Panel 1
• Pitch Your Game Idea!
• Red vs Blue
• Assasin’s Creed
• PC Hardware
• Politics in Gaming

Exhibition Hall:

• Played: Metroid Prime 3
• Played: Geometry Wars on the Wii
• Killed Time All 3 Days

Main Theater:

• Concert A: OneUps
• Concert B: Jonathan Coulton
• Omegathon Final Round

Annoyances:

• Chris Erheardt (Digipen)
• Brittany Marie Aubert (Failed Omeganaut)

PS: Brittany you weren’t just unlucky at Jenga, you lost by your own accord.

As you well may know last year I went to Denmark. While my trip was wonderful Danes turned out to be much like Seattleites and very shy so I didn’t end up meeting very many people. Out of these few people I managed to stay in contact with one of them named Louise.
So as I’m talking to Louise this evening she starts telling me about her new boyfriend named Carl. I ask her for a picture and she sends me this.

Not only do I recognize this guy but he is the Fona (An electronics store kinda like BestBuy) guy! In Fona they will let you open any CD on the rack and let you listen to it before you buy. This guy must have spent a hour with me letting me listen to Danish artists. He also sold me Depeche Mode concert tickets.

So a girl I met in Denmark and still talk to is now dating a guy I met in Denmark. While Denmark is a small country the probability of this happening is mind blowing.

Here are the pictures from my Denmark trip back in February. I was originally going to post a story to go with these pictures but I never got around to writing it. Needless to say I loved Copenhagen and need to go back soon.

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Things I did at PAX this year.

Day 1:

• Met up with Jeffrey Kalles before Keynote Started.
• Attended Keynote Speech
• Attended PA Panel 1 (Won Penny-Arcade business in d20 roll off with Tycho)
• Attended Half of Concert A (Optimus Rhyme sucked)

Day 2:

• Explored The Exhibition Room (Decided that Fury sucked. Developers still don’t know how to mix a mmorpg with a FPS.
• Attended Pitch Your Game Idea Panel
• Won 2nd Place at Pitch Your Game Idea Panel
• Attended Half of Community & PR Panel (Boring)
• Attended Omegathon (Round 4) Guitar Hero
• Failed miserably to make fun of two enforcers at Concert B
• Attended Concert B (The Minibosses Rocked. Still not sure that Nerd Rap/Hip-Hop is a good idea.)
• Half way through Concert B scored side stage seats with media pass. This may have contributed to Minibosses rocking.

Day 3:

• Explored The Exhibition Room. (Decided Castle Crashers was the best game in the exhibition room.
• Attended Half of I’m getting Old When Life Cuts Into Gaming Panel
• Attended The New Media Panel
• Attended Penny Arcade Panel 2
• Attended Omegathon The Final Round
• Went Home

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I took a day off from work to visit the Skagit Valley Highland Games Saturday. A day of Scottish traditions being celebrated by Americans on a miserably hot summer day.

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Last Monday the 17th I had the opportunity to take a private tour of Nintendo’s Redmond headquarters. The tour was facilitated by Jeffrey Kalles (aka The Nintendo Guy at PAX) who is the Associate Producer for Nintendo of America.

Nintendo had a much smaller area then I was exspecting. Of course my only other corporate tour has been of Microsoft. Needless to say Microsoft’s headquarters are much like their operating system, ridiculously bloated and large. As far as I could tell Nintendo consisted of only two buildings which were connected by a nifty suspended walkway.

Our tour guide Jeff seemed very much out of place for a guy holding such a high corporate title as Associate Producer. His personality type fit that more of a geeky IT gamer then a corporate hardass. During the tour he told us that after 11 years with Nintendo he was leaving soon for a much smaller company. I think this would probably be a good thing as it seems like he needs to get out of the office a little more.

The highlights of the tour included an awesome glass case display of Nintendo game systems, a demo showroom floor to help vendors showcase Nintendo products, and of course last but not least the Nintendo employee store. There were a couple things that bothered me durning the tour. One was the pictures of land that Nintendo owned. In the Windleverse ownership is not a well understood concept anyway but why we allow corporate entities that could possibly live forever to own something as valuable as land is beond me. Not that I’m naive enough to think that this sort of thing doesn’t go on all the time, it’s just something that bothers me. The other thing that bothered me was the secrecy surrounding everything there. It’s one thing to protect yourself from piracy by implementing some simple security measures but it’s quite another to hide information. The leaking of information is only going to lead to hype about the product thus improving sales when it is finally released.

For those of you interested I did ask Jeff a little about the Nintendo Revolution which I will provide commentary on in episode 10 of n37radio’s the hardware show.