GDC - Booth #2002

It’s hard to believe that GDC 2010 is less than 3 weeks away. We’ve been busy and time is flying.

My first GDC was in San Jose and it was a blast. The crowd was much, much, smaller. Indie games were not $1 million dollar funded efforts. I hob-knobbed and waited after presentations to talk to guys like Sim Dietrich, Richard Huddy, Mike Abrash, Noel Llopis, and others that I admire. I prevented my boss at the time from getting hit by Paul Steed ( true story ). I scouted for business cards ( which I collected in a baseball card binders ), free food ( which I hoarded so that I could pocket my per diem ), and fished for leads and gave presentations in our suite upstairs. If you wanted to be seen, you drank scotch in the lobby of the Fairmount. I was only three hours away from winning a $16,000 dollar Arctic Thunder arcade machine and the Microsoft tutorials covered bleeding edge techniques like hardware accelerated vertex transform and lighting –wow, we’ve come a long way.




Overheard: So I've got this great game idea about this place called Azeroth.


At my first GDC, Lou Castle presented a talk on CLOD and Mark Frohnmayer and Tim Gift presented a talk on the network architecture of the Tribes Engine.

Man, those were the days....

Torque 2010

This year, we will be helping you make memories. You will find us in booth #2002. If you don’t have plans to attend, maybe we can tempt you with a last minute promotion?

GDC Expo Pass Contest

Want to attend GDC, but cannot afford the full cost of travel, food, and registration fees? The Torque Team wants to help you get to San Francisco by removing the cost of the expo pass. How? Show your support by creating a video explaining how Torque is turning your idea into a game. Let us, and the rest of the world, know how our technology is the canvas for your art. Once your video is ready, post it on YouTube or similar and send the link to gdc@torquepowered.com. We are looking for passion, positivity, and clear examples of how our tech is helping you. Use the following information when preparing your video:

Video Contest Guidelines

Topic: How is Torque helping you turn your idea into a game?

Time Limit: two minutes. If you are interesting, go for three.

Deadline: 1 week from today ( Feb 23rd )

Suggestions: Increase the chances of being picked by showing enthusiasm, using visuals such as pictures and embedded videos of your project, and engine focus

Rewards: Winners ( we will have multiple ) will receive two (yes, TWO), GDC 2010 expo passes and have their video looped on a monitor at our booth. Our favorite video will get the passes as well as a free copy of Torque 3D Professional.

Disqualifications: Swearing, slander, rude gestures, and inappropriate discussion, anything that hurts animals.

Community @ GDC

This year, the community is getting its own dedicated space in our booth tricked out with a video monitor, couches, and goodies. Video streaming will return, but much more organized. We will be scheduling events, such as interviews and private demonstrations. Michael Perry, will organize the schedule. If you would like to participate, show off your tech, etc. e-mail Michael at gdc@torquepowered.com If you are attending GDC and looking for meeting space, let us know, we will let you have your meeting in our booth ( limited availability, first come, first serve ). The community pit was our way of representing our commitments to you.

Here we come GDC!

We’ve been working hard during this transition time and as a result, you may notice that our booth is more modest than years past. This is intentional. The strategy team has been working very hard and we are conserving some for our bright future. I thought it was important for us to also mention that we will not be releasing Torque2D. That’s a whole other topic that I am covering in another blog that you can read about here. We can’t wait to see you this year and we can’t wait to return so that we can hit the ground running on some new ideas with some strategic hires.