Some really quick, brief early morning Game Developers Conference hits.
NOTE: San Francisco Hotel Parc 55 has a GDC Bar Special - 55 percent off the second drink for GDC badge holders. Go to the hotel at the corner of Sacramento and Battery in SF's Financial District. The Parc 55 sent out a Twitter Tweet to inform folks including me.
First, before I get to the other GDC stuff, I'm complaining about my Samsung Galaxy's photo app. Normally it's supposed to upload photos to my Flickr account, but for some #$$% reason, it's freaking not working. I took five photos at GDC events last night - none are in the smartphone or on Flickr. I don't like that, man.
Anyway.
Activision and Radical Entertainment took over much of the lobby at the W Hotel, the unofficial hub of GDC activity, as always. The gaming company roped off a little rectangle of space, set up finger food, had a check-in girl, and the usually overly nervous security guy checking for wrist bands, and held court as Studio Hesd Ken Rosman fielded questions about the new game.
If you don't know it, Prototype is best described as the basic "angry loner bald white dude looking to get into a battle" game, of which there are so many variations they're all starting to blur into one. In this case, it's about Alex Mercer vs. Sgt. James Heller, who is set out to destroy him because of the BLACKLIGHT infection that Mercer has caused to spread, and kills Sgt. Heller's family.
But I gotta say, Sgt. James Heller, and Alex Mercer both look like Eminem. Still, the graphics on the game are KILLER. It's virtually 3D, which means at some point it's going to be 3D.
Just saying.
It's a also a great candidate for a movie of some kind, but the storyline has to be deeper than the video game, if it's to be successful. Watch for more on this at Comic Con 2011 because I'm informed the game producers have been in talks about Prototype as a movie - nothing solid as of this writing.
Oh, and a video interview is coming. But...
Beyond that, I'm still steaming about this Zeevex "little people" marketing crap. Here:
And on a good note, the Blacks In Gaming event - held at the same time as the GDC Developer Awards, so guess what I missed - was a rousing success. While my video will come in a few hours, it must be said that with 300 people in attendance, and about a 50 percent black makeup, "BIG" proves that people of all stripes will come to such a gathering.
Look, it's got free food, Microsoft's sponsoring it, and the people are fun. It's really cool to meet black men and women who are real tech heads with a story to tell.
Ok. More later.