threadnaught

This weekend I braved the freshly BORISed transport system to attend GameCamp 08, an informal do up at 3Rooms to give people who do stuff with games and technology some face time together for pretty much whatever purpose we like (within the limits of acceptable decorum and the fire code).

The session schedule was pretty packed and I couldn’t make it to everything I fancied due to things happening concurrently, but I managed to pick many awesome brains, eat 17 brownies and sun my translucent arms for the first time this year, so I wouldn’t dream of complaining.

The first talk I went to was about brainstorming game ideas. That attracted a lot of interest. It involved hashing out timed exercises on paper, and it wasn’t the sort of group exercise I expected but it got some lazy synapses firing ahead of the rest of the day, which was good.

A small, standup discussion on MMO guilds was next, led by a lovely gal who leads a kinship in LOTRO. There were only four of us, all experienced MMO gamers, so most of it was friendly eggsucking but towards the end it took a neat turn towards how to recruit for the kind of guild you want to develop (which reminds me to try to figure out exactly what’s going on with GamerDNA).

Dan and Katy joined me for a lovely lunch by the window, and then I wandered down to the Rock Band. There seemed to be a queue so I nested on the sofa, enjoying my raised blood sugar level while perusing RSS feeds. Back upstairs to join my guild master in ruminating about whether ARGs are FISHed. They might be. :) Two other interesting people contributed to that talk, and I found out later that one of them was Justin Hall – a person I’ve been told I should meet at some point. That would have been a good point. Whoops!

The last session I went to was a discussion about how to properly wrap up Virtual Magic Kingdom, so that the kids who spent time and money building presence there can maintain social ties with one another and take away nice mementos of their experiences. Knowing how the closing of a game can affect adults, as with Asheron’s Call 2 and one a bit closer to home, the little players of VMK plucked gently at my heartstrings all the way home. I think the discussion yielded some good ideas, and I hope they’ll help.

This GameCamp was made of win. I had a really fun, thought-provoking day. Already nursing a couple of ideas for stuff to talk about next time.