The soon-to-be-unemployed Creative Concepts team is very proud to present our swansong event… organised, as usual, with not nearly enough time.
A few links ‘n’ things I thought you might be interested in….
Pre-Leipzig we gave an exclusive Aion preview to PCGZine, who visited the office and got loads of ’stuff’ from us that they’ve put together into a six-page preview. In case you didn’t know, they’re a PDF-based online magazine, so you don’t even have to go to the shops to read it.
Anyway, you can grab the PDF file right here and have a peruse. It’s supposed to be ‘interactive’ with rollover videos and stuff, which might work in Acrobat, but I’ll tell you right now doesn’t work on a Mac.
If you’d prefer a preview that isn’t in PDF format, you might enjoy this look at Aion from The Escapist, who aren’t generally known for their hyperbole. They like what they saw at the recent press preview in San Francisco, which is all good news.
We spent a lot of our time during GC on our feet, but we never made the commitment to distance that a few of our more dedicated Aion fansites did. A number of them banded together to basically walk the length and breadth of Leipzig (as in, the town) and get pictures of every Aion billboard we had there.
Apart from being proof that yeah, we spent a bit of money on the game’s promotion, it also proves undeniably that our fans are mad, crazy people who we love to bits. See the photographic proof of this true ‘Quest for GC’ in this Flickr set.
While we’re talking about “things our fans do for us”, here are two photos with things that make me happy:
Yep, that’ll be Martin with a shark tank, as presented to him by a fan during the show. (Our Marketing Manager, Mirko, is on the right.) That’ll be a direct reference to my dialogue, then….
Last but not least - AionSource’s t-shirt of GC, featuring fan art based on The Shark, as modelled by Martin, constructed by Chris, and conceived by me in Episode 6.
Fan-made merch. Love it.
Before I forget, a few pics that ended up on Flickr…
Images by Mat, of course. A few more (just a few!!) are on the official Flickr feed for us.
So, Games Convention 2008 is done. I would say “We came, we saw, we kicked ass” but I’m too tired to muster the energy for that sort of hyperbole.
I’m tapping away in the hotel restaurant, picking away at breakfast while surrounded by a mix of American flight attendants, youth football teams, and hungover colleagues. Last night was, well, the last night - so there will probably be a few sore heads on the way home. The last thing I wanted was a hangover threading through a long trip home, so it was a relatively early - and booze-free - night for me.
In lieu of having much intelligent commentary at this point, here’s some lazy list writing.
Tagen Funf? Funf Tagen?
Day Five, anyway. LAST DAY! WOOOOOOOO!!!!
Not quite a guitar gently weeping, is it? Trust me, it’s better than last night’s ‘dying caribou moaning over the sound of a biplane crashing’ noises I barely managed to sleep through.
So, Day Two (of FIVE) is done, and it basically feels like we’ve “done a Memorabilia” only with more Germans. A lot more Germans. Tomorrow the show extends from today’s 9am to 6pm stint, to a staggering 11-hour opening time - 9am to 8pm. While we do have just about all the catered food and drinks we can ask for (don’t get excited; I’m talking sandwiches and soda) the sheer physical endurance side of things starts to really come in now.
Hence all of us collapsing into bed early. Well, early-ish. Having working Internet is too good an opportunity to pass up.
Anyway. It’s going well. It feels like an odd mix of our ‘usual show’ (especially as we’re here with some familiar faces) and something much, much larger and crazier. Also as we don’t have one big event as we did two years ago (the Guild Wars Factions World Championships) the spotlight is much more on the community team, who I’m proud to help soar to new heights.
If yesterday was really the early rehearsals, and today was full dress, then tomorrow’s the first performance. Let’s hope we’re good.
Ye Gods, you have no idea how good it feels to be in a prone position with my feet up. Aaannd… relax.
Busy - and then quiet - first day at the show. As a result, looked like a blockbuster of a day first of all, then settled down so that it ended up in the ‘decent’ category. Still, if the same happens tomorrow I’ll be happy with the weekend as a whole.
Draw the World Together went really well it seemed; Karl Kopinski took to the process like a duck to water. Neil and Andrew both of course did great stuff too. Karl did a knockout sketch of Callista that I’ll share soon enough. Suffice to say it contains three figures… but simply looks amazing. We were all green with envy.
Right, now it’s time to get off to the curry house with artists and a few players in tow. (I can tell all the ‘regulars’ are here because my hits today are so low!!) I’ll leave you with me and a box of money.
Late Friday. Not a helluva lot to say, but egads, why not post about it right after it’s happened eh?
Today started with forgetting something; my driving licence, to be precise, but as my flat is five minutes from work it just meant a slightly longer walk for the three of us from the office to the care hire place. With van duly hired, we returned to the office and loaded things for a couple of hours, taking special care not to forget anything else.
We were off almost exactly at midday (which is becoming a pattern, I noticed), and made good time to the M25… then crawled intermittently as a mysterious ‘obstruction’ slowed us down (which never revealed itself to us). Pulled into the Clarendon Suites car park a tad before 5pm, and ended up unloading and setting up the stand until about 7:30pm.
Not much has changed about the Expo since last year, although our stand looks a bit more swish - if you ask me - and also we of course have space for artists this time, where we didn’t last year. We’re all looking forward to a couple of days raising cash, but also selling loads of games. Bring your wallets, people!
Strolled across the road after setup to book into our hotel, then wandered around for a bit through a maze of corridors trying to find our rooms. Then off out, a decent enough meal at TGI Fridays (What can I say, it was in walking distance) and a nightcap in the local pub, The Garden House.
That’s that. Pretty standard fare so far. Tomorrow it gets interesting. Night!
G’morning. Slept like crap; you? Came home last night with that sticky, ready to burst feeling in the air - and we had a mother of a thunderstorm overnight, that woke us up several times. It’s nice to fall asleep with rain on the window. Not so great to get woken up by thunder which sounds like the building’s collapsing.
Anyway, so this weekend. We’re off to the UK Games Expo as you know. I know a few of you reading this are going to come down, which is lovely. I will again attempt to do some updates from there, but the likelihood is I won’t be able to sit and blog very much - at least I hope not to be able to. If I can, it means we’re not busy, which I won’t be happy about. If you want to keep tabs on me you’ll be better off with my Facebook status updates.
In the interests of transparency, or sharing, or some sorta thing, I thought I’d let you know our general plans for the weekend too. Really only of interest to those of you attending, I guess. Unless you know an awesome curry house in Edgbaston. Read More
