GDC 2017

After the great road trip to Monument Valley we made our way to San Francisco to showcase our next game, Trolls vs Vikings 2!

We went to the Herbert Hotel which is right in the city centre. Jørgen had made some error with the bookings so there were somewhat fewer beds in the rooms than expected, but the hotel staff was nice enough to add in extra beds.

At Mel's Diner with Thomas and Mikael.

The first two days were spent at at the Game Design Workshop. Of course I am not actually a game designer, but still I need to try to figure out what is going on in their twisted minds and convert designs like "we need a some kind of timer system" into working code. We had several exercises where we took a game and "skinned" it (changed the theme), combined various smaller games into bigger games, and made a card game version of Overwatch. It was quite interesting!

Turning "Sissyfight 3000" into game about dueling gentlemen

Merging a dice game, a card game and a dominoes game into some unholy monster

An attempt of writing down the rules.

Turning Overwatch into a card game.

After the game design sessions there was some late night panic trying to get our latest build installed on our new demo iPads. How they can still not get xCode to download certificates properly after almost 10 years of iPhone is a mystery to me. Every time they change it is broken in some new and non obvious way.

For some inexplicable reason all the Norwegian game developers ended up in a carousel for a photo shoot. I am sure this is somehow symbolic of game development.

You know you are in for a rough time when the name of the presentation is an entire paragraph unto itself.

Progressive San Franciscan transgender-friendly toilets. They had not actually remodeled the bathrooms though, so if any females want to experience for themselves the deathly smells of long rows of pissoirs they can do so here.

Lots of people at the expo hall! To the left is Agents vs Villain, which pits three players against one. Fun and frustrating - this is one game that can ruin friendships! :D

Our booth in the Nordic area. Fingar is showing our creation! He made quite an effort manning the booth almost all the time.

In my opinion the most interesting game project the last few years in Norway, a game about raising one of the Lebensborn kids in Norway after WW2. These innocent children were treated quite cruelly, and event today there are people in Norway who hate them foe who their fathers were.

They are going to a have a Kickstarter soon, and deserve your support!

I did not get much time to explore the expo itself, but I got to try out Nordic Trolls' new VR game, Karnage Chronicles! It was good fun to run around and slash at goblins with the HTC Vive controller!

After the expo we had no way to get our TV home. Hopefully some lucky person got a new TV!

I also went to the Nordic party, forgot to take any pictures. It's always super nice and a great opportunity to meet other devs and former colleagues!

After GDC was over all my friends from Megapop went back home, but I spent another couple of days checking out San Francisco.