The City Of Games

Over the weekend I attended the festival game city in Nottingham, and with high expectations I didnt come out dissapointed. One thing about the festival was that it wasnt as structured as it made out to be. I expected big halls, tons of press reporters and eager gamers/students like myself. But when attending some of the events, it felt empty, like either no-one knew about it or no-one wanted to be there. Saying that it didnt take much away from my experience.


By far the talks that I enjoyed most were the tetris seminars with Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of tetris. I could have sat there and listened to him talk for hours, answering questions, which I have to say were well thought through and really made the most out of the session. So kudos to the lady who interviewed him! Greater kudos to Alexey though, for creating the one of the greatest games of all time.

Unfortunately I didnt manage to get a picture with Alexey (mobile phone batteries aren't what they used to be) and ive got a feeling i'm going to regret that for a long time!

I definitely recommend reading up on the interviews, if you're a fan of the game (c'mon who isnt).

http://uk.gamespot.com/news/6181946.html?action=convert&om_clk=latestnews&tag=latestnews;title;4

This link by the way, is from his second talk which is more about tetris as a game, where as the first talk ventured into the events surrrounding it aswell.

The other seminar that proved to be very motivating and worthy of note, was called 'What's it like to worrk in the games industry'. This featured 5 professionals who literally went through everything to do with the games industry (which took 2 and a half hours, which in turn meant I missed the Haze exclusive, but it didnt bother me since the talk had me hooked). Everything from the structure of a team to how to get into the industry, and even what people were like and the average day were explained from 5 working professionals point of view.

Overall it was well worth it, and I will be returning next year.


Oh and that wii light-sabre joke.......not very funny.