The name tags are laminated, the business cards are in hand, and the free swag to hand out is ready to be handed out. Agenda's printed, meetings booked, invites to invite only parties in hand. Passports, check. Tickets, check. Ugly GDC 07 swipe card, check.

Getting ready for a major conference is a lot of work. Since this is going to be our first GDC, we have been scrambling around trying to figure out what to do and who to see. It is really exciting to get to go to an event like this. I do wish the entire company could come along, but these gigs are costly to attend even if you do not have a booth. ( We don't ).

So, San Francisco here we come in less than 72 hours.

Nothing beats riding up and down the escalators at Moscone West handing out stickers. We spent a good twenty minutes riding up and down the escalators between the ground floor and the third floor, where the Indie Game Summit is going on, handing out our promo stickers. Nothing like the sense of urgency when you lean over the rail and hold a hand out and ask 'Want a sticker?'

I think we'll do it again tomorrow, so if you want to score some stickers, best be quick to grab them as we pass by in the opposite direction.

The IGS is going okay. An interesting mix of things we knew, things that are not applicable to our company, and a few nuggets we never thought about. So here are some of the things I picked up, and of course it is a top ten list.

Top 10 Things I Learned from the Independent Game Summit, Day One:

1) Surprise, the food was okay!
2) Some people are very frightened of a sticker that says 'Sticker'.
3) Pirate hats.
4) Play-test early and often.
5) There is no excuse for not pushing your brand, especially if you want to move from a garage developer to doing game development as a business. Why are we the only ones doing guerrilla marketing and handing out shwag on the third floor?
6) Play-test early and often.
7) Like every industry, there are academics and there are business people, and as usual, they tend not to 'get' each other.
8) There is a serious skill gap between the people with really good ideas, and the people who can run a business.
9) You can turn the little card in the pass badge around to indicate what you do!
10) Hi, my name is Marcus... I'm from Verse Studios...

Day 2 at the GDC was actually much more interesting for us. We're in the Independent Game Summit on Monday and Tuesday, and while Monday featured some really fascinating speakers, it was largely a lot of academic discussions about gaming and independent game studios, and while that's absolutely fantastic and I LOURVE that these guys are living and breathing the Tao of gaming, it wasn't actually what I came for. Tuesday had more speakers that had advice which was more geared towards what it is we're most interested in, which is largely concerned with how to successfully run an independent game studio. A lot of it was lessons we've already learned, but there was some more practical advice that fell in that middle ground of where you go after you've started the company but before you've launched the product that we gained a lot from.

Mostly it was a fantastic networking environment. Something about wearing our Verse Studios name tags give us the courage to just walk up to anyone there wearing a badge and go, "Hi, I'm Travis Savo from Verse Studios..." and just strike up a conversation, and by and large people are very willing to do so.

You get this incredible mix of people and talent there too... Tonight was the International Game Developer's Association mixer party, so we basically went to a huge party with 1,500 of our closest friends, and while there I schmoozed with people who:

Work for Intel, writing Object Oriented drivers in C++ for hardware they have to deny exists.
Dropped out of a University after 2 years and signed up to get a bachelors in a year from a highly intensive course at a dedicated game design school.
Place students fresh out of game development schools in unpaid internship programs at independent game studios so they can get a title under their belt and work for big companies on big titles.
Build synchronized simulation middleware for MMO's that uses P2P for it's networking.
Place game developers at well established companies.
Does great 3d textures and design.
Was sent to GDC by Autodesk to officially deny rumors concerning the merging of their two 3d products Maya and 3DSMax (apparantly they'll be separate products for a little while longer).
Are building a framework to help humans tell dynamically evolving stories.

And I gave every one of them a sticker that says, "STICKER". See, one of the things that we already knew coming into this is you gotta hustle if you want your business to get ahead, and I'm the designated hustler. That's why we completely blew our GDC budget on our guerrilla marketing campaign: $40 dollars worth of Avery labels run through a laser printer, and a pair of scissors that we borrowed form the front desk at our hotel. And it's worked fantastic: they're a really awesome networking tool because when people see a sticker that says "STICKER" in big bold letters on it they laugh, and other people want to get in on the joke so they come over and see what people are laughing at, and people totally remember that more than they do just a business card and a hello. On occasion, they even find the link at the bottom of the sticker and make their way here.... HELLO GDCers, hope your having a blast, because we sure are!

My point is what Eric Zimmerman said was bang on: You have to have an honest hustler out there pushing your company forward every day, in every way, because if you don't, your missing your chance. And this was one HELL of a chance to hustle!

My head feels like an over-ripe melon ready to burst, and when it does I am going to run around screaming random sound bytes from the last three days.

Today was our busiest day here at GDC. We spent our day running around to round-tables and lectures. The caliber of discussion and presentation definitely has gone up a notch yet again. Particularly interesting to me were two of the round-tables, one on funding disconnect and one on how truly tired everyone is of Fantasy based MMOs. Mixed in were some serious lectures about funding a business and running a company.

It was a zoo today as well as all the expo pass people begin showing up, filling the escalators to the brim. Makes it a bit hard to network, I definitely ran around the Moscone center like a chicken with no head. Eyes glazed, tired, but oh so willing to contribute to discussions.

So, to continue with my theme of lists, because they are just so hip, here are random sound bytes from the last three days:

"For the love of GOD PUSH THE BUTTON!!"

"We give the developer 60% off the top..."

"We don't have a solution for managing an art pipeline..."

"Hire a producer!"

"Hire a lawyer!"

"Hire an accountant!"

"Hire me!"

"Welcome to the industry, get a T-Bill."

"Get a good game lawyer. I can give you the name of one."

"Hi Marcus..."

"What do you do?"

"BEWARE SEC LAWS!!"

"The first deal is almost always the best deal you'll get."

All right, enough of this tom-foolery. If anyone is looking for Verse Studios people, we'll be running between round tables and missing lunch yet again tomorrow. Oh, PS: Moscone Fruit Salad is so not worth $9.50

Edit: Travis Savo actually posted this. Marcus Riedner is no where near this technical.

Tonight we were invited to a in-crowd party sponsored by some of our closest friends. A totally different venue, a completely different crowd, and by far and away the most important networking contacts I've made yet. Just a fantastically fun event that opened up my world another 6 degrees, and put us in touch with some really incredible people who will change our business for the better, and probably make a lot of money themselves in the process.

I was approached by gentleman named Al who was a very interesting person to begin with, and had a fantastic idea for how to use OpenID in gaming, and how the future might look. This lead to a lengthy discussion with an agreement to sit down tomorrow during a break between lectures tomorrow and really hash out the idea, because the idea was just crazy enough that it could be amazing. OpenID has such amazing promise as a both a standard and as a technology that the implications are, quite frankly, just a bit scary at times, but Al had it right: if the gaming industry were to embrace it that would push adoption of it as a standard at an incredible rate, and online gaming is exactly the right venue to embrace it.

Anyway we're going to sit down tomorrow and put this stuff on paper. I'll let you know if it's worth moving on, and if it is, what that plan will look like.

When we shelled out the price for sending two members of our company to GDC we were more than a little concerned. It was a bit of a hit on the budget for a small indie studio. It turns out to have been some of the best money our company has spent to date.

If you are an Indie developer, or wanting to become one ( that means you Derek ) you ABSOLUTELY MUST attend GDC. It just is too big an opportunity not to come. You can not afford to miss out on GDC as a developer and business person. If money is really tight join the CA program, you get a Giga Pass for putting in 10 hours of volunteer work, you get free lunches and breakfasts. Our company is all going to try coming in on the CA program next year.

The big catch to coming to GDC as an indie developer: you do not get to go to anything you probably think is fun.

I am an artist, and there were a ton of art related things I wanted to go to. But what I, and our company, needed was for me to go to everything and anything to do with getting money, building a company, and managing teams. You also need to get involved in the round-tables, they are an amazing way to get vocal, get heard, and get noticed by the right people. You may not be terribly interested in lectures on business management and development ( lucky for Verse Studios I will sit and soak up anything in a lecture ) but you HAVE TO DO IT!! You have to network your ass off, meet anyone and everyone. Talk to all the speakers, talk to all the CAs, talk to anyone who is sitting at your lunch table. Join the IGDA and go to all the mixers and networking parties!

GDC gives you what you put into it.

Friday, the final day of GDC, found us attending our favorite round-table with our favorite industry people: Free to Play, Pay for Stuff. The past 2 had been fantastically awesome and insightful and the third promised to be no different.

Marcus and I got seated around 10:15am because the place definitely fills up real quick, and we're just talking to the other people around us, when a guy in a green shirt came up and sat his computer down next to me. I glanced up at his name tag and read the words, "Steve Jackson". Perhaps it was just a little too early in the morning for me to be thinking, because my only thought was, "Oh sweet. Someone from Steve Jackson Games" so my eyes wandered down a little more on his name tag to see what else it said... and read, "Steve Jackson Games". Still not wanting to believe what was happening I looked down at his GDC badge, and read, "Steve Jackson, Steve Jackson Games".

Before my brain could properly engage my mouth he noticed my bagel and drink and said, "Oh good, there is hope for coffee. Stevie go get coffee." and ran out of the room, leaving me to watch his computer bag. When he returned with coffee and got through talking to people and sat down next to me, I leaned over and said, "Steve, long time fan of yours, I just wanted to thank you for your incredible and continued contribution to the industry." and he replied, "Well I want to thank you for your continued contribution which has kept me from getting a real job all these years.". We both laughed, and I said, "I'm happy to contribute. Sticker?" and handed him a sticker. He took it and looked at and chuckled and said, "It says Sticker!", and I said, "Yeah. We completely blew our GDC budget on our guerrilla marketing campaign: $40 worth of avery labels run through a laser printer, and we borrowed the scissors from the front desk of our hotel.".

He laughed at that, and then he closed the lid on his otherwise unmarred/unstickered titanium Macbook, peeled off the sticker, and placed it on his lid at a jaunty angle, and carefully smoothed it out. I turned to Marcus, with my heart leaping through my chest, and said, "Marcus, Steve Jackson just put his sticker on his Apple", and Marcus said, "Now there's some real irony in that." and I turned to Steve and said, "Yeah, real irony in that because I remember Illuminati on my Apple 2." to which he nodded knowingly.

Talk about sitting with kings...

I must shamefully admit to being a Dance Dance Revolution fan. Ever since it first came out way back in the late 90's I've been secretly pretending DDR is teaching me how to bust a move on the dance floor. I even did a video advertising project in school on a knock-off product, Bust-A-Groove.

I have the dance pads.

I have the sound track.

I have friends from around the world come to my house and force them to play DDR while on web cam.

Now I can have the gym membership!

Getting ready to publish a white paper is an awful lot of fun. Hunting down avenues to publish, getting Slashdot to pay attention to you, talking to peers before tossing your paper into the wild. It takes a bit of doing, not like back at university where all you did was hand your paper in to the professor and hoped for the best.

One also has to resist the urge for perfection with a white paper. These creatures are designed to change and alter over time, to be revised based on new studies and information. To grow and change, and some times to be scrapped by the authors when they get side-swiped with a bit of reality.

So why talk about the white paper publishing process in a video game company's developer blog?

Well, while we were at GDC we took in a lecture from Eric Zimmerman. In his gregarious manner he talked about corporate culture, and how to instill a healthy creative atmosphere in the work place. It is something I am particularly dedicated to, and it is a concept that has grown on the rest of our group. This notion of 'corporate culture'. Eric Zimmerman talked about what he called a 'culture of research' and this really twigged with Travis and I.

Now, a 'culture of research' is a tricky beast. It is more than a direct just going out and doing a bunch of white papers. That is a very literal look at something that is far from literal. The real essence, as I see it, is building an environment where people go out into the world and soak up the things they enjoy, and bring that back into the work place.

If you love the arts, go to concerts, plays, and art exhibitions. If you love music, got to concerts and live on iTunes. If you love technology, hang out on Slashdot. Do what you love, and bring it with you to work. That is what I see as a 'culture of research'. That energy is critical to any creative work space, especially in the video game industry where what we produce is a big part of popular culture.

For those interested in the topic of economics as they play out in MMOG's we have written a white paper (pdf) on the topic. We feel that this issue is becoming increasingly important to players and companies dealing with online game worlds, and the nature of economics in these game worlds.

Our approach is to look at the problem from a sustainability stand point in which both the player population as a whole, and individuals, are able to achieve the goals and desires they set. It is also geared towards a relationship where the developer can benefit and profit from economic relationships in online games.

If you have questions or comments, please feel free to give them. We are all about peer review.

Greetings one and all. We have decided to release Fool's Gold a few days early, take a sneak peak at the first Gold-Farming Role Playing Game ( GF-RPG ) ever made. You can download it free of charge off the Fool's Gold download page.

Questions? Comments? Reviews?

Post them in the comments section of this blog!