by Cody
“Micajah” Bye
Deep in the state where oil tycoons kick up their cowboy boots and lean
back in their plush leather chairs, you’ll find a gaming
convention that’s just beginning to strike it rich. The event
in question is the Austin Game Developers Conference (formerly known as
merely the Austin Games Conference before being acquired by CMP Media);
a five day shindig that features lectures, seminars and keynotes from
some of the most respected leaders in the video game industry.
border="1">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/11498" title="AGDC Logo">
src="/image/view/78292"
width="250">
style="font-style: italic;">The Austin Game
Developers Convention Logo
Each and every day, you’ll rub elbows with big name
individuals like Richard Garriott or Mike Morhaime, or you might be
spending your time in Austin applying for jobs and doing last-minute
sort of interviews. In a spectacular venue with terrific
accommodations, the Austin Game Developers Conference certainly
attracts the sort of individuals that the Ten Ton Hammer staff loves to
interview.
This year’s Austin Game Developers Conference is particularly
important for Ten Ton Hammer and our readers, as the unofficial
“theme” for the 2007 AGDC centers squarely on
online worlds and the marketplace behind them. Austin is becoming one
of the central hubs for online gaming as Bioware, Sony Online
Entertainment, Vigil Studios and Destination Games have all made their
home in the area, and it seems only appropriate that the AGDC would
revolve its programming around the online space. A vast majority of the
seminars in this year’s programming focus on online gaming in
form or another, and the entire Ten Ton Hammer staff is interested in
what sort of news will be coming out of the conference.
As we always do before an event of this magnitude, it’s time
to give you a little sneak peek into what you should be expecting out
of this year’s Austin Game Developers Conference.
border="1">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/11440"
title="Sleek and sinister">
src="/image/view/11440/preview"
width="200">
style="font-style: italic;">EVE Online fans
should expect a whole mass of coverage from the Ten Ton Hammer staff at
AGDC.
With the event season slowly wrapping up, our list of staffers
attending this show will be a bit smaller (at three people) than what
you’ve seen at the other conferences this year. The
exceptionally talented author (*coughs snorts gags*) of this
“AGDC Preview” article and Ten Ton
Hammer’s managing editor, Cody “Micajah”
Bye, will definitely be in attendance with my wrists firmly chained to
my laptop’s keyboard and my typing fingers flashing away for
your enjoyment. Aside from Mr. Micajah’s attendance, Ten Ton
Hammer is sending the very talented, beautiful and intelligent Katie
Postma to serve as Cody’s handler and whip-cracker. Keep him
chained up for too long and he starts to get squirrelly. Finally, the
ever thoughtful and creative Bill Pirkle will be rounding out the team
with laptop and camera in hand. I don’t anticipate anymore
“body-paint-only” booth babes, but if there are,
Bill’s all over them.
Expect a large amount of coverage on the online industry even for the
short time amount of time that we’re going to be there.
Honestly, I’m booked from 10:00 am till 5:00 pm Wednesday,
Thursday and Friday with at least one interview an hour, sometimes two.
The press room will become my humble abode and I plan on sticking my
not-so-thin ass into one of their nice comfy
“press-only” seats. Unfortunately, I’ve
never been in a press area that could be deemed
“comfy”, so I’ll probably be out of luck.
Couple the busy interview schedule with the obligatory social
functions at the end of the day, and you’ve got the recipe
for some sort of permanent organ failure. Thankfully, my kidneys and
liver are in tip-top shape!
border="1">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/10315" title="Take aim!">
src="/image/view/10315/preview"
width="200">
style="font-style: italic;">Tabula Rasa
exclusive will also be coming down the pipe later this week.
Speaking of interviews and demonstrations, we have the whole gamut of
developers and games lined up in front of us. As I’m writing
this, we have concrete engagements made with CCP|White Wolf, K2
Networks, NetDevil, Acclaim, Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, 38
Studios, Vivox, NCsoft, Funcom and Icarus Studios. You should
definitely expect to see some brand new information out of a few of
these studios, if not all of them, but we’ll be keeping a
watchful eye on the developers to make sure we’re not missing
anything. I’m sure this list will change as it gets closer to
conference time, but you can rest assured that the Ten Ton Hammer crew
will have an incredibly full load.
And if that’s not enough, all of our community sites will
definitely be kept up-to-date will all the latest news and events from
around the industry. Our World of Warcraft site will continue to be the
best in the industry, while the Vanguard community site and forum can
be expected to remain as active as ever. The Lord of the Rings Online
community site will definitely be pushing out amazing amounts of
content, and our Dungeons and Dragons community remains the source for
guides and statistics for that online world. As I said, you
can’t get premium content like this anywhere else on the
Internet.
All next week, make sure you keep your browsers pointed directly at
TenTonHammer.com! We’re always your #1 source for MMOG news,
entertainment and guides on the Internet. On top of that,
we’re a bunch of fine-looking specimens too.
Ten Ton Hammer taking you to the next level, baby.
