(Photo by Vincent Diamante. Here’s his full set from GDC. He also shot the photo inside the back cover of Kill Screen #0. And he composed the gorgeous score to Flower!)
At the Game Developers Conference, you see the games industry at its best. This was its biggest year to date, and yet it still had the “summer camp” feel I remember from my first time in 2006: the biggest talents in the industry are strolling around, and they’re glad to talk to you; the newcomers are eager to crouch in the hall and show you a demo on their netbooks. The panels and sessions range from tutorials on the nuts and bolts of code, to visionary debates over the future of games. (Let’s just hope the future isn’t FarmVille.)
Jamin and I started Kill Screen last year at the Game Developers Conference. This year, joined by new hire Ryan Kuo, we showed up with the first finished issue, as well as our new business cards and our handmade t-shirts. And I’m excited to say that the magazine was a hit. The GDC Bookstore gave us a great spot right on the counter, where the tic-tacs would have gone. We had to restock several times from our stash in Jamin’s big suitcase at the coat check.
That’s me. Working it.
We were interviewed for Austrian public radio. We kept seeing copies under people’s arms or tangled up in the laundry in their hotel rooms. And during his annual Game Design Challenge – always one of the best sessions of the week – Eric Zimmerman gave us a big shout-out and read an excerpt from Jamin’s essay. We still owe him flowers.
And Jamin helmed a panel with Mia Consalvo (MIT), Leigh Alexander (Gamasutra.com), and Manveer Heir (Raven Software) titled “What Color Is Your Hero?”; for a terrific write-up, check out Michael Abbott’s coverage.
Every year, GDC gets a little better as you recognize more people and catch up with folks you haven’t seen in a year. We met up with designers, potential writers, and old friends. I don’t want to name them, because there were too many and I don’t want to leave them out; instead, I’ll just do everything I can to get them in Kill Screen. If you read Issue #0, you’ll see several pieces that were influenced by last year’s conference; you’ll be reading about this one in the issues to come.
This is great, but are they being mailed out yet? Specifically, I’m talking about international deliveries. I made my payment about a month ago and have heard nothing since.
I hear you – I’m sorry that we couldn’t get these in the mail ahead of the conference. US subscribers have been getting their issues this week, so yours should come shortly.
Good to know the GDC attenders got magazines before the subscribers.
I live in Asheville, NC and haven’t received it yet (as of yesterday’s delivery) if that’s any indication on the mailing status. I know they’re being sent out, so I’m not complaining that some US people have it sooner, but I’ll complain next week if I don’t. Just giving a heads up that you’ll receive a stern fist shaking if I don’t have it in a week.
Glad to hear GDC bought a ton of copies, hopefully they’ll subscribe as well.
Also, here’s another subscriber (in Georgia) without a magazine two days after Brandon’s post (actually, scratch that, I think the date-of-comment metadata on your site’s a bit screwy. Who knows when he posted)
Not a complaint though, looking forward to it. Congratulations on finally making it to distribution proper.
@Chris, thanks for the reply – I’m looking forward to reading the magazine.
I’m an international reader [UK], – just got a shipping notification from the US Postal Service today, saying something from Jamin was shipping today [including a label number for tracking the package]…=O…oooh! ^_^ Shouldn’t be long to wait now then, ^_^.
This is great, but are they being mailed out yet? Specifically, I’m talking about international deliveries. I made my payment about a month ago and have heard nothing since.