From now on, my blogging will be at gabusch dot net. Vox has been kind to me, but the power of custom WP plugins has just been too alluring. See you there!
Tried to think of a wittier title, but just went direct to the point instead. Last week, the crew at Hackenslash - Joey Alarilla, Alex Villafania, and Jayvee Fernandez interviewed me at the latest episode of the Hackenslash.net podcast. Enjoy! (I hate listening to myself or watching myself on TV, though.)
Another four-letter acronym! The website of the Game Developers Association of the Philippines is up. And what exactly is the GDAP, you might ask? It's the trade organization made up of Philippine game development studios that aims to promote the young but rapidly-growing industry the Philippines. That's quite a mouthful!
I was tasked to put the site up. Without much in the way of initial resources, we got hosting and a domain and installed Wordpress. It'll do for now, but as budget permits we'll probably have a professionally designed site in there. At least, now it has a presence and we can make our voice heard.
There's going to be a lot of activities for the GDAP starting this year, we'll let you know about them soon.
Got back from Singapore Monday afternoon.
Haven't processed my thoughts into a blog post, but you'll see the pictures on the right hand side of this blog.
The event was a blast. Looks like Danien's retiring from AGDS though. Does that mean we won't be seeing any more Obsidian / ex-Black Isle guys on the speaker list? I definitely hope not.
Cheers to the AGDS organizers for staging another successful event. Let's make it even better again next year
Here's a quick summary of what happened to me last night: link
I was with the INQ7 folks, hence the very quick news story.
Police wasn't very helpful, I reported the incident to them but it looks like they cannot investigate due to a lack of suspects.
Fortunately, I had a strong password on my Windows account, which will at least prevent them from taking a look at my files.
Oh well. The laptop is ultimately replaceable, although some of the files (personal pics etc) there aren't. At least, the car was still there and no one was hurt.
This isn't going to detract me from going to Singapore though; nothing's gonna stop me from going to AGDS!
See you in Singapore, and be safe!
PS Jace, I owe you a book. Just take your pick. :)
The second AGDS is almost upon us, and I'm leaving for Singapore on Thursday. It's really exciting because the inaugural one last year in Malaysia was a big success, and this one promises to be bigger and better thanks to organizers Allan, Terence and Danien.
There will be a major Filipino contingent to the AGDS, with an estimated 30+ Pinoy game developers attending. And with a really good lineup of talks and their respective speakers, it's really worth the cost of going down to Singapore. For those that don't have the means to attend the GDC in the US, it's heaven-sent :)
Of course, we still dream of moving around the AGDS and having the Philippines host it (SEA Games style!), but it looks like Allan has promised the conference sponsors to stick around in SG for the next few years. We'll talk about this further when we get there.
Since I'll be covering the AGDS for IGDA Manila, I'll have my camera and will actually be using it this time around. You'll see the pics here after the event :)
TV: not much
Internet: Healthy doses every day, with visits to Gamasutra.com, Gamesindustry.biz, Next-gen.biz, ESPN. I go to Gamespot or Metacritic for game reviews, Fortune.com for business news. I still like the magazine a lot more than the website.
Books: Slowed down from buying/finishing 1-2 books a week, and improved my financial position as a result :) Hopefully my brain has not suffered from the lack of reading. Currently reading these:
Marketing Playbook: Thanks to JC!
Fragile Things: Somewhere in the middle, haven't finished this yet. Love the short stories though.
Mavericks at Work: I'm midway, but have lost my voracious appetite for business books at the moment. This might be a good thing.
Games: Currently playing Rome: Total War. And loving every minute of it. Buying this game actually curbed my unhealthy (for the wallet, that is) appetite for buying 1-2 books a week.
Also bought Neverwinter Nights 2, because Obsidian made it. That should be next on my playing list.
I just learned today that Google has Google Alerts, which alerts you if there is a new result for any given topic. Which led me to Google my own name, which I do every once in a while to see what comes up. I was surprised to find that this blog was #1 on the list!
Well, I probably shouldn't be, since Google ranks by freshness and seem to have a preference for oft-updated blogs. Still, I was pretty surprised that Google found me so quickly :)
Since this blog is shiny and new, I'll just post some of the exciting stuff that's been happening.
- I am now the Chapter Coordinator of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) Manila Chapter. Hooray!
- I'm attending the 2nd Asian Game Developers Summit in Singapore this December 9-10, 2006. The first one was a blast, it was like witnessing the birth of GDC from the other end of the world (Not that I was there on the inaugural GDC...) The first AGDS was tons of fun, made a lot of friends from around the region and from everywhere else in the world.
Vox has been pretty easy to use so far, if this keeps up I might start blogging again for real. :)
Trying to blog again. This time using Vox, Six Apart's new service. Got the link from Joi Ito's site. Let's see if this little experiment of mine lasts!
on In the news, for the wrong reasons