VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

Deirdre

Quite a bit of the finesse of attending one of these events is knowing what to blow off. I spent most of the first day, Wednesday, hanging about with George Sanger and meeting audio guys. I did go to a couple of presentations, to wit: Sex in Games (George was there for that one!) and Women in Game Development.

That night there were a zillion parties in various bars scattered about downtown San Jose. There were puzzles and board games at the first one—tres fun and I met some guys from England who are working on a nifty Treasure Hunt kind of game with cards and clues and stuff. Then on to the IA-SIG party: Interactive Audio Special Interest Group. Wild times, loads of drinking and an experiment to see if sneezing has a particular affect on one's anatomy that would be more obvious on a woman than a guy, whereby The Pepper Club was formed. Everyone was in audio somehow—guys from Sony, John Reekes—one of the originals from Apple, Guys who create musical ringtones for cell phones, Musicologists etc.

Then a bunch of us went to the San Jose Museum because the creators of the game Half Life were having a party there, then onto a massive Sony-Sponsored Invitation-only party. w00t. Talk about hedonistic—trance grooves blasting, models in silver outfits dandcing on platforms, liquor and food in lit-up semi-spheric tents. The best part was the battle bots arena!
That was some kinda awesome.

The next day I attended a lecture about moderating online game tourneys—it turned out to be a Powerpoint-heavy bore. They were supposed to show the way the scoring structure worked by having 4 guys play rounds of Quake but the games wouldn’t display because someone forgot to bring the right cable.
Good Lord.

Will Wright, inventor of the Sims series, gave a keynote presentation about the future of game design. Then the Game Design Challenge—design a game around the theme “The Nobel Peace Prize”. The fellow who made the Katamari games—Keita Takahashi-- was there along with Cliff Blezinski and Eric Zimmerman. The guy who “won” the challenge came up with the idea for a game called PEACEBOMB, which motivates civil gatherings and dissent against war by using the flash mob phenomenon.

There was one VO-specific talk and Jerry Merrill was the speaker. http://www.jerrymerrill.com It wasn’t a really well- done presentation, but the information was good to know. Just how much goes into “asset management” of sound events, how much the audio designers are beginning to care about VO quality.

The best talk of all was by the guys who create the audio design for games like Quake and Prey. wow-- such a huge amount of thought goes into the soundscape and they showed how they created the mapping that allows for the "immersion" experience.

I passed out a couple of dozen cards, met some of the people who are marketing the GoPets game I did the cat and doggie voices for, played a French version of Guitar Hero. We’ll see what pans out as people get home and get back to work. If anything good comes of this experience, I’d love to get a bunch of us to go next year. I was the only VO person there.
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Tom Greenlee · Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 11:41 am Post subject:

Deirdre.....Nothing about that sounds boring. By the sound of it, if I was gonna blow off anything, it would be the presentations and I would just hit all the parties! Hahahahahaha Sounds like you did a good job of hitting the parties. Seriously, sounds like it was alot of fun and like you made some good contacts, unless you already knew most of those people. I would love to do something like that, but unfortunately, my "day job" wouldn't just give me the days off to go to something like that. I used all my remaining leave days to transfer out here to Colorado. Anyway, sounds like you had a blast.
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SoundsGreat-Elaine Singer · Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 11:59 am Post subject:

Sounds like a fun time Deirdre - hopefully some of those contacts will play out into some work for you.

Thought this was an interesting article on VO and acting for games. It appeared in the weekend Globe and Mail up here.

http://tinyurl.com/z3as9
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Deirdre · Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 12:41 pm Post subject:

How perfect!

Jerry Merrill, the guy I mentioned with VO seminar, was the audio director for the Godfather game.

And TGG-- I didn't know anybody but George when I first got there but he's one hell of a guy to know.
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Tom Greenlee · Posted: Sun Mar 26, 2006 2:52 pm Post subject:

Damn.....Deirdre, how bout introducing ME to George! I could use all the "good people to know" friends I can get....hahahahaha...plus if he knows where all the parties are......bring it on baby! Inoccent

too funny. I am really diggin this site.
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"Communication without intelligence is noise; Intelligence without communication is irrelevant."

Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
Former Commandant of the Marine Corps

Deirdre · Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2006 6:26 am Post subject:

On the final night, Friday night-- Charlie Channel came into town and we had drinks and dinner. Then Charlie came with me to George and Linda's "Guerilla Jam". I had brought my sticks and a tambourine. I managed to find something to beat on with my Hot-Rod stick bundles

--a rectangular hard plastic bin-thing that ice is kept in on a buffet table. When someone else tried that setup out, I got my regular drumsticks and beat on a folding table that had a cloth over it.

George was playing a Fender resonator guitar, Peter Drescher of Danger.com was on piano, and there were some other guitars there.
Linda had an acoustic mariachi-style bass and Charlie had a bad-ass turn at that. I faded to black at around 10:30, but George tells me Charlie stayed until 1!!

When I find pictures of this romp, I'll post 'em.
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Diane Maggipinto · Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2006 7:49 am Post subject:

<Yawn.> I'd like to go to conferences of this sort if I could just hang tough through all the boring elements of them. What did you do for fun?!!
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Mike · Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2006 8:42 am Post subject:

That sounds SO much more fun then I have making the damn games.

I hate you Deebs......

....In a loving kind of way

Maiku.
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If there is one thing I love in life more than playing video games, it's... wait, playing video games is what I love. Doing voices for a game would be soooo much fun.

LUCKY! I'm just getting started in the VO business and this would be my dream come true.

Do they do this once a year? Did you get invited because you did voices for one of the games? Can anyone go to this?

Deirdre · Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2006 2:14 pm Post subject:

I think anyone can go to the GDC.

The E3 thing is closed to the public-- only people with game-dev, entertainment bona fides can attend that one.
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dhouston67 · Posted: Mon Mar 27, 2006 2:28 pm Post subject:

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Deirdre · Posted: Tue Mar 28, 2006 9:44 am Post subject:

And trust me-- "LUCK" has nothing to do with it. In my case, anyway.
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