8am - After a nice jaunt over to the conference center I went up to the IGF floor to chat with whoever might be around.  Seeing a crowd around Revolved I sat for a second and started playing.  50 minutes later I was finally fired after scoring over 14 million points...a personal record.  I had a combo of 53 on the board that I failed, my best of those as well...

10am - Having mastered Revolved and wasted some precious time I walked over and started chatting with N developers Raigan Burns and Mare Sheppard.  N won the audience award last night to no surprise as the game has become something of a web phenomenon.  The game is a great example of gameplay over graphics as the nearly Atari 2600-esque graphics don't usually get anyone immediately excited, but the advanced moves you can make in the game play once you are more familiar with the game keep players playing for hours on end.  Speaking of amazing game play, I also chatted with Simon Hallam, developer of Wik and got the treat of watching him take on several levels of the challenge mode.  The developer taking on his own game.  It was unfortunate that time was passing so quickly and that it was time for me to move onto the Grand Ballroom to hear Satoru Iwata.

10h30 am - After Microsoft's keynote yesterday that gave 1/3 of the audience a brand-new 23 inch flatscreen high definition TV it doesn't seem likely that Satoru Iwata of Nintendo will be able to wow the audience.  There seems to be plenty of skeptics in the room, wondering about the DS vs. the PSP and wondering at a whole about the ability of Nintendo to delivery a next generation console that will be able to compete with Microsoft and Sony.  Iwata delivered a fun presentation that included more recorded footage of the next Zelda, audience members playing Mario Kart DS on the stage, and the voice features of Nintendogs being shown off as a developer called his dog over and told it to sit, very interesting to see.  Will the public buy it?  I don't know, but it was interesting to hear Satoru tell the developers that they need to take the challenge of making a game for the members of the family that don't play games.  They need to make a game that they themselves wouldn't play.  It was certainly a different angle than we heard from Mircrosoft yesterday, who spoke about reaching the un-reached audience through making the current games more consistent in their interface as well as making the characters more customizable.   I believe Nintendo's approach is better, but that doesn't mean either group is going to win.

11h30 am - Fresh off of the Nintendo keynote I made my way down to the Expo floor and visited the Nintendo booth.  Two Nintendo DSes just happened to free up as Bryce and I got there so we sat down and started playing each other.  A nice nintendo greeter offered us fruit smoothies and shirts and I got the chance to blast my brother in Metroid Hunters, but unfortunately didn't get to check out the Nintendogs DS. 

From there I went to the Sony booth to see if I could get in with the PR department and have some questions answered about the PSP.  Previous to the GDC, I had asked Sony for an interview at the GDC in regards to the PSP, but had been turned down and told to talk to the PR person at the show.  At the Sony booth I was referred to the PR person who I hoped would be the answer to my questions...and the question?  I wanted to know what Sony was doing to make it so that developers could make innovative games on the PSP.  The Sony person looked at me like I was from another planet.  I attempted a second time to explain the question and this time he said he was more of a business pr guy and didn't know the dev side (read into it: "I don't want to answer that question.")  After a minute he decided that he should come up with something better and he said that "the PSP gives the developers the palette to create whatever game they wanted to create."  In the end I can only ask this question, 'Is there any game you can create on the PSP that you couldn't have already created on the PS2?'  Other than great graphics it doesn't seem that the PSP offers anything new...however that may be enough in itself to win the handheld war.

After talking with Sony I went to the TryMedia booth as I've had a lot of trouble getting Game Tunnel to become an affiliate.  They told me they could get me 12% and acted like I should turn my website into a complete TryMedia game front.  Thankfully I have more sense than that.  I walked the few steps over to the GameTrust booth and was unable to find the people I was looking for there and so I moved on.

After the 'fun' of those two, I moved onto the GameDev.net booth and found one of the cooler Indie games that didn't make the finals, Sector 13.  I got to see this game in action, and though it may end up as a mainstream title, for now it is still in the world of indie goodness and it is definitely good!

1 pm - Lunch - Real sandwiches, though notably I was burping up nasty stuff for the rest of they day.

2h30 - Conflict time.  We had planned our own Indie Round-Table at 2h30, but there was an actual session at 2h30 called "Indie Power."  So I convinced Josiah from Chronic Logic to go with me.  Unfortunately I had to apologize afterwards as the session was all but useless.  No wait it was useless.  As soon as it was clear that the presenter hadn't even heard of DIYgames and Game Tunnel it became clear how really oblivious they were to the whole Indie scene, which would have been ironic if it wasn't such a waste of time. Anyway it made me feel much better about the session that we ran yesterday as it certainly was much more useful even if we didn't have a room.  After the roundtable I chatted with Josiah and Simon more about the Co-op idea.  I think it would certainly be useful, though I think it is still more in the conceptual arena than anywhere else.

After chatting I saw that the Steer Madness developer was available so I went up to see if we could get a review copy of the game (I had emailed about it before, but hadn't gotten a response).  To my great joy we got one, so that is something to look for in the near future.  I also then had a chance to the talk to the Indie developers in the next booth, who made War! Age of Imperialism.  They didn't know exactly who I was or that they had already sent me a review copy, but they promised to get me a review copy of DD Tournament Poker 2 when it is released this August.

4pm - With Simon I started the Experimental Gameplay workshop, but I hadn't realized it was going to run for 3 hours!?  Unfortunately it started late so I didn't get to attend all of it.  I was able to sit through the indie game jam round-up which showed the games that were made there.  Each was based on human interaction, such as high school girls, a murder mystery, being a comedian, and a dozen other really cool games, each made with the Sims characters.

5 pm - Meet with Bryce to figure out the course of action for the rest of the night and catch u on the day's events. 

5h30pm - I had intended on going to the Puzzle Pirates session as a support to them, unfortunately, after sitting down in the session I started to realize just how tired I really was, and I knew I'd fall asleep if I stayed.  So I made my way back to the IGF to try and connect with a few more of the developers.  I talked to the Protöthea developer who really only speaks Spanish, so unfortunately there wasn't much more we could say to each other.

From there I went back over to the Steer Madness developer to thank him for the review copy again and watch a little of the game.  I get the feeling that the 3D will make me a bit sick, so unfortunately I will have to send that one out to one of my reviewers.  As someone at the boot mentioned, it is definitely a game that has a lot of character.

I moved on down to the Hyperbol developer Nicholas Lawson was demo-ing Hyperbol.  I watched and chatted for a bit and then was given a chance to play.  Unfortunately I was only just getting the hang of it again when I was blasted to pieces.  A tutorial will be a very helpful thing when the game is released as it is really a blast once you get the hang of it.  Nicholas is looking for a mainstream developer to pick it up, so like Sector 13, this is another game you're not likely to see in the indie world in the end if they succeed (but that certainly shouldn't stop you from checking it out and picking it up).

Greg Micek from DIYgames had suggested that I check out Dynadin, who in addition to making one of the more interesting conceptual cooperative games I've played in a long time also have done an amazing job of updating their website with IGF pictures, so I made the trip over and gave the the game a spin playing with one of the developers.  Again, this is definitely a game worth checking out.

After Dynadin I walked over to Detective Brand Golf.  This very stylistic game has had me intrigued for quite awhile.  There is clearly a lot of reward in moving through the different environments as they don't match the worlds you are really used to seeing.  I had a little trouble with the controls, but Josiah, of Chronic Logic came over and helped me out...and laughed at me a little about my struggles.

7 pm - At 7pm we were getting a group together to go out for food when I was told that there would be an indie meeting at 9pm.  As exhausted as I was I didn't think there was any chance I'd make it until 10pm or later so I eventually bowed out of that later meeting.  However, we did get a group of 7 together to grab some hamburgers around the corner at a local diner.  Well we got food after playing 4-player Gish with me, Bryce, Greg and Ivan Weiner (Creatrix).  I wish my stupid camera had been working.  The 4 of us together playing the game was a blast and we got a few lingering people to watch our exciting outbursts while trying to push the ball past the goal-line.  I can still hear Ivan saying "Must not merge with other Gishes."

We went on from the game to the diner and talked everything about gaming for awhile, but mostly centered on Indies.  My part of the table included Dan Paladin, the artist on Alien Hominid, and so the discussion naturally gravitated towards the good and bad, but mostly good of that game.

A sad farewell with the group as the evening drew to a close for me.  This has really been the most enjoyable IGF I've yet been a part of and the reason has been the people and the interaction with them.  Indie developers have a passion for creating their own thing, and it's really a privilege to be so close to so many innovative minds and to discuss the creative process.