VEGAS: THE WRONG WAY

as a game journalist, i'm often sent out on the road to cover events hosted by game publishers who are keen to show off their upcoming line-up for the year. most of these companies are based in san francisco, so we can often simply hop into a car to reach our destination. but more often than you'd imagine, the events are held in alternate locations; the venue of choice is determined based nearly solely upon which town the pr group in a given company wants to travel to. as such, i'm in vegas once again. and once again, i will see next to none of the city -- except what's visible from the window of my room.

IF YOU SQUINT, YOU CAN SEE THE MGM GRAND...

unfortunately, it's really just the video teams who need to work as often as we do on the road; writers -- even those who work for online publications, and are thus required to work in a similarly timely fashion -- tend to be able to crank out text pretty quickly. but video work requires additional time to capture, render, & compress. editing, of course, takes the bulk of the time... but that's the fun part.

so yes, we often are required to leave promptly after our work on the event floor has been completed. and while we're there, the work comes even more briskly. i shot around 8-10 interviews in the span of 3 hours yesterday; the finished products from the event are meant to serve two websites, mind you. i was busy, to say the least.

those of you who know me well are now thinking, "what do you care? you don't like parties?" and that is generally true. i guess i was mostly annoyed by the fact that there were a bunch of really cool developers wandering the floor yesterday, including much of the ex-ion storm talent that midway has been grabbing up. i would've loved a few moments to chat with some of them. our industry needs more visionaries. i also wish we had pointed our camera at more of said fine folk and less at marketing types who are so far removed from the creative portion of the development process. we didn't even talk to romero; an experienced interviewer could really have a good time with him. oh well, hopefully at some point in the future i'll have more time to network at these events rather than simply work. then maybe i'll get to ask mr. smith if he wants to grab a beer and talk about games. Posted by ryan at February 18, 2005 09:18 AM | TrackBack