The Mail Owl Scrolls

Rocking Party

So with Tech-Ed out of the way (I’ll post more on that as the memories resurface) I can tell you about the rock party I went to last Friday at Vagabonds.

Firstly the bands roX0r’d! On the playlist was: More Than Likely, Re-Play, Knave and er… I can’t remember the last one.  The beer was cheap; and although they ran out of Castle towards the end of the evening, they lowered the price of the Windhoek to make up for it.

What was incredible to find though, was how many people were exchanging blog, website and email details (although with the obligatory “What’s your number and I’ll call you tomorrow”).  I was chatting with the photographer who was going “bos” over the bands and he told me I could get the pics on his deviantART page.

Knave was awesome and I was excitedly informed that the band has the best South African vocal artist; so make sure you catch their next gig.

I also got told to monitor anteater.co.za for gigs and other info on South African Rock Music.

So see you at the next party!

Monday morning at Tech-Ed, Johannesburg South Africa 2005

Just a quick message before I head for the Key Note.

WOW!!!

From the time I arrived I’ve been amazed and impressed.  After my arrival and registration I headed for the Valley of the Waves, Royal Pool where I was greeted by the sight of topless Russian babes.

Then my hotel (the Cascades) has the most awesome view of the golf course.  I’m on the 11^th Floor and my room mate failed to pitch so it’s all mine!

Dinner was a beerfest with John Vlismas as MC and Everyone was pissing themselves laughing.

Breakfast was a buffet at the restaurant and again, the quantity and quality was huge!

Anyways gotta run ;)

P.S. I took pictures but I don’t have a USB port here, so you’ll probably only get pics after Tech-Ed unless I get hold of a speakers laptop.

The game development industry and Bollywood

When I talk to some people about my ideas for growing the game development industry they try to drown me in reasons why I won’t succeed.

These people will never achieve anything worthwhile in their lives with that defeatist attitude; and while their advice is welcome, their cynicism is ignored.

But one comment stuck, and the fact that an evident alternative was available didn’t hit anyone.

It was said that the game development industry is like the movie industry; besides needing lots of money to produce and market the games, you’ve got to capture the public’s attention with big and unique effects.

I want to reply to that comment by saying; let me have the success of Bollywood!

There, is a local industry that reportedly produces a new movie every week, and draws millions of people across the world to watch (in fact they have more ticket sales than a Hollywood movie).  You’ve never heard of the actors and they’re CGI budgets are, if not non-existent, next to nothing.

When I talk about growing the game development industry, I’m not talking about producing the next block buster or making people and companies famous.

My goal is to increase the number of commercially produced games in South Africa by bringing together the different parties in the industry and create a venue (like a cinema for movies) where local games can be demoed and talked about, and the different people in the industry (developers, artist, sound engineers, trainers, marketers, produces and a whole host of others) can network.

P.S.  I just want to thank Vic Gundotra and Danny Naidoo from Microsoft for helping to instil me with the fevered dream that it’s possible, with passion, to grow an industry.

"Chopping off a man's fireman is NOT cool!" - Eric Cartman

You know, society can really find some fucked up things to get excited about!

The latest in South African parliament is the proposal to ban male circumcision.

Now I’m not going to get into the fight about whether we should, shouldn’t or need to have circumcision; nor am I going to go into the “sexual abuse” that these people are claiming that parents inflict on their 8-day old sons which leaves emotional scares all through the child’s life.  I don’t even want to get into the cultural infringement that the government encourages by morale lobbyists.

I want to point out that by letting these controversial topics in parliament and wasting time with Zuma and other “public interest” politics, they are side tracking the large, difficult issues like housing, unemployment, crime and AIDS.

These topics get glossy, fashionable morale issues are being filtered through to the media who blast it to the public and overwhelm them so much that real issues have to be rendered down to a back page footnote.

Maybe it’s because the “real” issues are old issues.  Governments across the world have been fighting the same basic problems for 100’s of years.  Maybe the population at large has grown to accept the problems “There’s always crime! There’s always unemployment” and they don’t see it as an issue any more.

Anyways, those of you who are awake will appreciate the uniqueness of this topic’s diversion for masses and the rest of you will tell me your view on a man’s foreskin.

DirectX Hot Lab #5 - Johannesburg, South Africa

Microsoft's Halo to be turned into a movie

Now I’ve seen the trailer for DOOM Movie starring The Rock, but have you seen the news that Peter Jackson is Executive Producing Halo!

I don’t think the concept of basing a movie on a game is exactly new, but focusing on First Person Shooters, especially a game with a minimalist storyline like Doom must be a challenge; although they’re going to score 10/10 for action and explosions.

Personally, I’d like them to make a movie on the adventures Roger Wilco from Sierra’s Space Quest series (although the original 3 and not the later ones which sucked ass).  I can SO see Owen Wilson playing the part!

Content not worth the presenter

I must admit that I was a little disappointed by Steve Ballmer’s presentation.  It was a sales pitch for Windows Vista and Office 12, and could easily have been done by the excellent South African Microsoft team.

But this is a rant at the content, not the speaker.  Steve Ballmer is clearly well spoken and passionate about his company, the venue (while simple) was well setup and efficient and the intro movies, slides and sound was all good.

Maybe it was expectations that lead to a mass feeling of disappointment; I, personally, was expecting something like his “Developers! Developers! Developers!” pep talk and to come out excited about being a developer.

Yes, yes, I know; he’d already done something like 6 talks that morning and was tired by the time he got to us; but I can’t see that as an excuse.  If you’re the owner of, probably, the most powerful company in the world, you can afford to plan your schedule and content a little better, especially if you want to create hype.

In short, I was expecting a session that only the CEO of Microsoft could give.

Rant over, I have to feel good about myself because my question about the X-Box 360 made it to the short list for the presentation and I was personally mentioned on stage.  For those not at the talk, the X-Box is going to be available in South Africa, not for Christmas though.

The look, feel and features of Vista and Office are pretty cool (although companies are going to have to buy their accounts and staff 3d cards to use any of it) and with adoption, it’s really going to change the way 3^rd party applications look and work.  Real effort was put into intelligent user designs and interfaces.

I'm back, baby!

Yes, it’s been exactly a month since I last posted, and I’m sticking with the excuse that my old job tried to get every last drop of ability out of me before I left.  I spent most of my time at customers without internet connectivity.

A lot has happened in the last month; from learning “Beer Good, Fire Bad” playing fire poi with my friend Peter (you can see he’s much better at it than me) to Microsoft sponsoring me to run an SA Developer event in PE, which rocked.

There was also Rage last weekend where I helped out at the Microsoft stand, playing AOE3, Fable, Flight Simulator 2004, Dungeon Siege 2 and Zoo Tycoon 2.  I hooked up with guys from the Game.Dev community on the NAG forum at the presentations they had and met Danny Day who’s a huge advocate of game creation.

Pieter Germishuys was also up here in JHB for Rage and I got to spend some time with him, which was cool.  Unfortunately I’d already handed in my laptop so we couldn’t go over any code :(

While I’m on the topic of game development, I got threatened into organizing another DX Hot Lab.  The date is set for the 29^th October, and I’ll post all the details a little later this week.

Today is my second day at BB&D and I’m all pumped up and ready to go.  Yesterday was setting up my new machine and, of course, I had to go to Steve Ballmer’s presentation (which I’ll talk about in the next post).  It looks like I’ve been thrown into the deep end, being asked to create a couple of the DRP’s snippets, but apparently it’s not that hectic and I needn’t worry; so we’ll see.