GDC is Over!
The swag was flowing freely on Friday. (To my teammates back in Redmond - sorry I didn't have any space left in my bag). I'm sure you'll be surfing the GDC press reports and reviews. Don't forget to check out the GDC rants (there are transcripts posted online).
I thought the plane ride down to GDC was interesting, but I think the plane ride back to SEATAC is slightly more sureal. The gate area was packed with the usual GDC suspects. Lots of game devs, content people, and biz folks rehashing the week. New things learned, new contacts made, old contacts refreshed, karaoke bar heroics, and the normal conference scuttle butt mish mash.
And in the midst of this diverse eclectic sea of game folk, here come an entire class of (I kid you not) catholic school girls in complete uniforms with chaperones in tow. Whoa. Lucky this is not a "5 hour tour".
In the plane, it's not very often that I can lean over and have a conversation with someone 2 seats over about incremental GC algorithms and big endian bugs. The poor lady in between us was obviously not an attendee and had to suffer through the conversation.
All ends well. We arrive safely and everyone (specifically the game folks) behaved themselves nicely.
Over the last 2 weeks we've hinted at, then introduced the XNA Framework to the world. And now the real work begins - execution. Granted we've been working on this for many months now, but now that you all know about it - we truly are publicly committed to deliver a first class CLR for the Xbox 360 in full view of you all. No more Kabuki dancing!
It won't be easy, but I can definitely tell you that I have high confidence in our team and in our ability to build the platform. Stay tuned for information on CTP or beta dates. I'll post the information on as soon as it is available.
I'm not quite sure if the rubber match with Kornelia and her only true challenger took place. I did stroll by the S3 booth and galk one last time thru a couple of frag laced sessions. Kornelia’s cheat sheet that she scribbles on after every match was FILLED with 5's (the matches were to 5 frags). One poor soul lasted the entire 5 minutes. Korenlia was closing in for the 5th kill as the weasel evaded her. He pumped his fist after the match as the crowd chanted “Camper! Camper! Camper!”. There was some booing and hissing seeing that he managed to survive without frag’ing her a single time.
As I stood there it dawned on me that this is just the beginning of our contribution to the gaming industry and community. I'm not sure exactly where we will end up or exactly how we will get there, but I'm hopeful that some day Kornelia's blinding reflexes will be recording frags stored in a System.Int32 instead of an INT32.
Wait – I forgot that she's wicked good. Better make that a System.UInt32.
