Posts for 'Events'

Sorry for the complete lack of updates. Busy busy work makes for hard blogging.

So, Supanova, the pop culture expo is on this weekend!I last went to Supanova in 2008, and had a pretty awesome time.

This time, I’ve decided to take things further, and I’ve volunteered to help run the event!

I’ve heard a few varied things about volunteering at this event so far though… The majority of people I’ve talked to said it’s great fun and definitely worthwhile. A few others have told me that there are sometimes some hinks in the schedule, where you might end up not having anything to do on your shift. But then again, considering the scale of the event, and the number of volunteers, this is understandable.

Either way, I thought to myself that rather than listen to the opinions of other people, I should go out there and experience it for myself.

In any case, since the internets came up dry on people posting their own thoughts on how it truly is to be a volunteer at Supanova, I thought I’d have a go at reporting back here on how it goes.

I’ve been a volunteer for RFLAN for 3 years now, and I volunteered at this years WAICON as well, so I’d like to think of myself as having a pretty good range of experience at Perth events… so with that in mind, I want to try and contrast this event against the others…

In any case, there’s an awesome guest list and plenty of fun activities, so it looks like a totally fun weekend all round!

Hope to see you there!

P.S: OMFG! Apple shop opening in Perth this weekend!

I was really thrilled to hear this. So much so, I think I might put it on my blog and break into the world of using my blog to comment on current gaming events.

So I’m a little behind the 8-ball here, but the Tokyo Game Show for 2010 was announced recently, and will be held from the 16th of September. Of all of the game shows out there, TGS is probably the best of the high profiling ones that I can actually afford to go to, and so this year, if all checks out, I’m seriously considering going.

After a little bit of Googling the topic though, I’m a little wary of one interesting tidbit that Kotaku raised… it seems that being held in September, TGS is less than a month behind the Gamescom event in Germany, which will most undoubtedly force the majority of games companies to choose between presenting at either one or the other. Since Gamescom is much higher profile, it is quite likely that TGS may get shafted by a lot of companies as a result of this.

That being said, I’m still happy to give it the benefit of the doubt. Since I’ve been hearing that Japanese games companies do prefer to announce new projects in their own motherland events more often, I would bet that a lot of those companies will still be presenting at their main content at TGS. And even if many companies decided to pick Gamescon over TGS, I would still assume the event will be huge, and definitely worth the trip… especially since I can’t really afford a ticket to Germany haha.

And, there’s always the off-chance that all of this discussion about Gamescom might convince the TGS organizers to push the date back as well. To that end, I’ve decided to hold back and wait before doing any bookings.

Either way, I’ve already spent my life up until now not going to any huge game development events. This is something I definitely want to change.

Is anyone else considering doing TGS or Gamescom or both?

Way back in ye 2007 after I arrived back in Perth from Japan, I did some looking around for a job. One place I got an interview with was Perth’s ‘flagship’ game development studio Interzone games. The position was a junior programmer and the pay rate was going to be an epic 13 bucks an hour. Slightly small I know, but it being games programming, I didn’t care.
While the guys were all cool and they were impressed with my demo of RPG-X, they told me that without being awesome at Python scripting, there’s not a lot I could really do for the company. They said I could come back later after I’ve learnt Python and try again, but the very next day, I got a job at Tourism WA (which paid a LOT more) so I let it rest.

Turns out I dodged a major bullet there.

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Well, after months of rumor and speculation, it finally got announced last night… Apple’s iPad.

But right from the get-go, sadly, I’ve found the whole thing totally underwhelming. I was expecting this thing to be totally awesome and to totally blow my world apart like the iPhone did… but sadly not so much.

Firstly is the name. I was really disappointed that they called it iPad. It is just too close to iPod. Period.With so many people out there, all with different and unique accents, I can so see myself having to clarify iPod and iPad at least once.

In addition, as per the Twitter feed, I’ve noticed a lot of people think it sounds very much like a tampon name as well, which definitely isn’t helping (Possibly the Wii all over again XD)
I’m not sure what the branding marketing strategy was behind that, but it failed. Epically. The rumored name that was floating around ‘iSlate’ sounded so much cooler, and definitely did not suffer any of the above problems.

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Whew… would you believe I’ve been so busy that this is the earliest I could get around to doing this was now…?

Anyway, the second day of Wai-Con was really interesting too. A lot more panels were being held on Sunday, and I think for this reason, the place seemed slightly more crowded than before. I spent most of the morning keeping watch in the game room, venturing out every now and then to just wander around and see what was happening.

Come the afternoon, it was time for the Japanese 101 panel. @jetha, @deathwombat, and myself had volunteered to be the panelists with @sonictail hosting it. The point of the panel was to introduce some facets of studying Japanese as well as some points of Japan itself, and answering any questions. Overall, I think the panel was a resounding success. We were going head-to-head with the Eminence panel so I was reeally expecting the room to be empty. But that was not the case, with a very impressive turnout. Overall reaction to the panel seemed quite positive with a few people coming up afterwards and telling us what they thought.

To follow up on the panel for anyone who still had questions or for people who missed it, I also created this continuation thread on the Wai-Con forums:
http://www.panic-wa.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3803

Finally, at the end of the day, as we were all packing up, I was pretty sad to see all of it go hehe. I caught the last few minutes of the closing ceremony and it was really cool to see all of the main committee members get recognition for all of their hard work.

After everything was finished, all of the volunteers and committee members went and had dinner together. It was all a great deal of fun, and I was even lucky to get a photo together with Yasunori Mitsuda from the Eminence table. He was a really cool guy and he said he was loving Perth very much.

So overall, Wai-Con was great fun. It takes a ridiculous amount of passion and dedication to pull off an event this huge and it was definitely cool to help out in some small way.
In the aftermath, I made a few new friends on Facebook, a few new friends on Twitter and have been having fun hanging out on the Wai-Con forums.

Can’t wait until next time.

Well Happy (slightly belated) Australia Day folks! In 1788, the English First Fleet landed at Sydney Cove and started the first British penal colony on Australia. My, have we come a long way since then.

Since I was out in the countryside until the evening, I didn’t really feel like traveling out to the river to see the fireworks. When I talked to my friends, they all said they had the same feeling.

I’m getting the feeling that a lot of people are starting to think you’ve seen one fireworks display, you’ve seen them all. I wouldn’t be surprised if the only people visiting the foreshore these days are either tourists or families with young kids… particularly after alcohol was banned.

On that note tho, I’m quite glad that alcohol got banned this time around. The amount of violence that occurred at this Australia Day was actually extremely low. Lack of alcohol is a small price to pay in exchange for that.

Anyway, I thought I’d do the ‘patriotic’ thing and just wish everyone a Happy Australia Day. Be proud you’re Australian and do your best to uphold our morals.