GDC: Ah, San Francisco

By Steven Crews | March 25, 2009 | | Filed under: Editorials | Tags: GDC 09

I’ve come to the conclusion that this microblogging business works best when you have something micro to blog with–like your phone, or a netbook.

Not like my laptop, which weighs over 9lbs, leading me to take it out of my bag sparingly at best.

My posts will likely be not quite so micro from now on. So much for my grand experiment. I wouldn’t last five minutes on Twitter.

Anyway, here I am at day two of GDC. Already I can feel the sleep deprevation begining to kick in, the sore shoulders, the sweat that may or may not be a fever from one of the thousand different Pandemic II-style parasites being passed among the convention attendees trickling down my forehead.

And then of course there is having to contend with San Francisco itself. The rampant, aggressive homeless, the drug addicts, the people who drive even worse than the ones in LA, which I wouldn’t have thought possible.

I’m sitting here now at Sony’s free bar in the W Hotel. I was talking to the barman earlier, because he seemed like the only relatively normal guy in the place. He asked how my day was going, and I told him pretty much what I just told you above.

He smiled and said, “Here, this’ll cheer you up!” and poured me a tall shot of Jack Daniels.

Always a good sign when a con drives you to the bottle.

I’ve been waiting for 7PM to come around so that I can attend my last appointment of the day, which was billed to me as a “REVOLUTION IN THE GAMING INDUSTRY!”

I recieved a call from a random PR firm a few weeks ago inviting me to this event, saying they could supply no details, offer no hints of what was to be announced, only telling me that the guy who was in charge of WebTV had something to do with it, and it was going to be REVOLUTIONARY!

I asked if they could send me an email with additional information. They said sure, no problem, they’d send me an email confirming my attendance.

Whatever it is, they rented out a substantial portion of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for its debut. Walking past it on my way to the bar, the front entrance was roped off with PRIVATE PRESS EVENT signs stationed around the perimeter.

I’m sure it’s going to be disappointing, a major flop, or both.

I’ll let you know.