It's VideoGame Expo Time again.

Not as exciting as the Game Developer Conference or E3 but...a heck of a lot closer and more affordable. And still pretty exciting in its own right.

Videogame Expo: http://vgxpo.com in Philadelphia October 9-11

I went last year with 3 students - here's a link to a post from there and some photos I took  . Going again this year with some students to check out the classic arcade games and retro videogame section and the career seminars. They may take part in some tournaments too, and hopefully, meet some other game development students.  At least one group will be videotaping tings at the expo for a project; if they like how it turns out, I"ll include a link to their project in a future post.

Last year there was a little bit of anime and a room with a giant multiplayer DDR set up - multiplayer as in 30 or 40 people at a time. It was a hoot.

New Game Designer Makes Good - Inspirational Tale

Check out this post on the Lost Garden blog - about a game prototype called Little Girl Fishing that is being developed. The developer was paid $4000 and a performance bonus.

There is a good discussion of the process, the tools (he used flash). It's interesting background reading - and inspirational.

You also find out about the prototype experiments on the Lost Garden site. If you're ever at a loss for a game idea, check out these experiments.

Interesting blog post

from an indie game developer on what it really means to be an indie game developer - he gets to do a little of everything (he's the only full time employee of his company) including talking to the media and promoting his games. There's a discussion of distribution channels and the current state of the casual games market.

Blog: NotesonGameDev.net, post written by Andy Schatz

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