Well that was one of the busiest and most tiring weekends of
my life, but what a weekend it was! I had been eagerly anticipating the
Eurogamer Expo for a number of weeks now, virtually counting down the days
until it happened. Finally though, the moment was upon me and I was on the train up to London, and found myself standing before Earls Court, the majestic blue banner waving in the wind, seemingly welcoming the thousands of eager gamers, developers, and journalists.
I plan to do a series of articles to cover all of my
experiences at the Expo, however it is the people I met which stuck out the
most, and as such shall be the subject of the first article. Over the course of
my adventures at the Expo, I would get to meet all kinds of interesting people,
from the gamers themselves to a varied breed of developers (one of whom has
earned “Legendary Status”... read on to find out who, and why!), while trying
out a large number of interesting games and listening to the best of the
business discussing how they make the magic on our screens.
But first, there was a queue. A really, really long queue,
and this would unfortunately serve only as a warning for how much waiting one
would have to do before the weekend was out. I was one of the lucky ones, with
an early entry “Super Pass”, giving me the chance to arrive on the first day
(Thursday) and to get in early to the expo (I never did, it takes me about an
hour to get there, and I *hate* mornings). It amused me to no end however that
the usher was patrolling up and down the line shouting “Ten O’Clock Entry only!”
despite it being past eleven before I got even remotely close to the entry.
Eventually, I did get inside however and while I had been
prepared for something big (I had been to the London Book Fair held in the same
venue), I was not quite steeled for the sheer amount of noise, both from the
rat a tat tat of distant machine gun fire, to the continuous chatter of many
excited gamers. Writers are after all known for being quite a quiet bunch,
gamers... not so much!
The first booth I visited was Dust514, a game I had been
watching despite my dislike of console games, for one primary reason; it had
the really interesting concept of merging two separate genres, on two separate platforms,
to link players together to work towards a single goal. Basically the console
gamers work as the soldiers battling it out on the planets of Eve Online, with
the Eve players providing orbital support from above, by bombarding the surface
of the planet with targeted strikes, and by shipping in new equipment produced
in Eve Online itself. I immediately flagged one of their representatives down,
unfortunately he was less than helpful, even rolling his eyes when I asked
about the connections between Eve and Dust... this impression would change
later however when I re-visited the booth on Friday with a friend.
We got talking another developer who seemed more versed in
how Dust and Eve worked together, however when we began asking more queries
about the planned scope of the game (would Dust battles take place on space stations,
and other scenarios like that), he admitted he didn’t know. Just then, another
man ducked into the conversation wearing a very cheeky grin and clasping half a
pint of beer in his hand.
“Maybe I can help?” he offered.
“Err, maybe. Who are you?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I’m Jonathan, the executive producer of Eve Online, I
basically run it all...”
This led to a very informative discussion about Eve, about
Dust, about CCP and their plans for the Eve Universe in general. During this we
also talked about how CCP interacts with the Council of Stellar Management (or
CSM for short; a group of players elected by the players to converse directly
with the developers to air grievances and to make suggestions);
"We basically fly them out to Iceland and lock
ourselves in a room with them for three days and argue like mad men, often
throwing insults and swearing at each other. Afterwards we all go to the pub
and become best friends again." (slightly paraphrased as I cannot remember
the precise wording, it was something like that though.)
So yeah, legendary status awarded!
Anyway, back to the topic! One of the developer talks I had
missed at Rezzed was the Creative Assembly talk on Rome Total War II, so I made
absolutely sure I got to see it at Eurogamer, and I was not disappointed.
Seeing the newly released gameplay trailer displayed on a cinematic screen was
incredible, and the speaker was a shining example of how to do one of these
sessions, talking first about how the game was made.
This included a run down of all the different roles, and how
each interacts with the others and what precisely they contribute to the game.
These went from designers (and how they have to think), artists (and a quick
time helm being made), animators (showing off the very snazzy motion capture
studio), sound creators (and a guy suffering for his art by being belted with a
broom while wearing Roman Segmenta armour, and being recorded while they did
it).
I deeply regret not staying behind to have a word with him
afterwards, but I did immediately make my way down to the Creative Assembly
recruitment booth to have a word with their staff there, and found them to be
just as engaging as their speaker had been. If you ever have a chance to hear
Creative Assembly speak, I very highly recommend attending it.
Still to come is an overview of the different games on
offer, and my perception of them, and an article on the Indie Game meet-up that
occurred on Saturday evening (and the personalities met there, too many to list in this article too). Stay tuned for more!
Image courtesy of; http://www.eurogamer.net/expo/
