GTS 2009: Wednesday – Swing batter-batter-batter, swing!

[Edited - Redactions removed]
7:30 PM on Wednesday, April 15th.

Meeting with Bucephalus was postponed from 11:30 AM to 6PM. although the pitch session at 6 PM went well (I pitched 15 games in 75 minutes, averaging exactly 5 minutes per game, with requests for five of them), I ended up missing out on a very special and unexpected dinner. Mike Hummel, a very old and dear friend, has appeared unexpectedly at the show, and I could have eaten dinner with him and some of his industry friends and associates if I'd finished by 6:30. It wasn't gonna happen, though.

It's hard to keep your energy up on a 75-minute pitch. I wish I'd sold RYB better. I think it would have been requested if I had. Cthulbeque was an easy sell. It always is. Duplexity didn't go over as well as I'd've liked. Again, I should have pitched it differently. Fiendish Rivals was requested, even though I totally forgot all of the props for it. I'm still a little baffled by that, but I'll accept it 'cause it's a good game. Requested Twisty Passages, but not Through the Gate, which is odd. I think TTG is the better game, although TP has several differences that are appealing. My pitch for Steamwork Arena was totally incoherent. Understandably, he didn't bite. I thought that Office Gossip was a "sell" but he passed on it too. I totally schluffed off on pitching Terror In Space, but I also suspect it's not really their type of game.

At 10 AM, I helped Andrew Looney find the room he needed to be at in time for his panel on elements of good game design. It was very pleasant and everyone had a good time. I took near-verbatim notes on my computer and sent a PDF of them out to everyone who wanted them (except Andrew Looney, whose email address is very hard to get to from the Looney Labs site. I'll have to get it from him in person.).

Breakfast at the in-house breakfast bar - Nosh - was exceptionally good. It was a ham-egg-cheese croissant. It was huge (and reasonably priced at $5) and easily carried me over to lunch, which was a grilled chicken salad from Nosh (which was unreasonable at $10 for just chicken, lettuce, and... oh yeah - some hard cheese).

It's 7:53 and I'm at a loss for what to do next. I should be hungry, but I'm not very hungry and it's so expensive to eat here. I just ate one of my reserve energy bars (a honey graham Z-Bar), but I don't know why. I should have nervous energy left from my pitch to Bucephalus, but I don't. I feel strangely... nomal? That, in and of itself, strikes me as abnormal. How odd.

Do I hate Las Vegas, or do I just hate not being here with Sharon? I think it's much more the latter than the former.

Meeting with Playroom started only a little late, and went well. Pitched three games. I was only supposed to pitch two, but I snuck another in at the end in a two-minute pitch. (It was a very concise game.) They really liked one of the games, but were afraid that they can't afford to, "produce it to the level it deserves." I asked Marcelo later if that was a euphemism for, "I don't want it," but he knows Elisa and said that if she didn't like it, she would have just said so. The other game was less appealing on a personal level, but appealed because it was a trick-taking game, of which they have none right now. Then I learned the sad news: Their current queue takes them through 2010. 2011 is the earliest possible go date.

While hanging out with Scotty and Aaron at the Studio 2 booth, a retail attendee left with their display (and only) copy of their hard-bound core RPG book (Shard). Fortunately, one of their booth people (who is also a retail game store manager) spotted it and they got the book back. Ironically, I bumped into the dude later and he talked about how he thought it was okay to take it since he was holding it in his hand the entire time he was talking to them in the booth. Thing is, I don't know if he associated me with that previous booth encounter. I seriously doubt it. Whatever helps you sleep at night, dude...

8:10 now. The fountain at Bellagio has gone off twice since I've been back in my room. I'm starting to get hungry now. Hmmmnnn... Walking outside to the McDonald's on the Strip sounds oddly appealing. Not for the burgers, but just to see what a Las Vegas McD's is like inside. I'm in my nicest clothes, but I'd like to change out of them before venturing out alone, but I might go dancing. Also, there's an invite to a wine bar at the Rio with Marcelo at 9:00. I should really go to that, since it helps me make industry connections. Yeah. I have to go to that. It'll probably be another $50. I'm tracking all these receipts, I tell you whut.

Summary: Playroom meeting went well. Bucephalus meeting was unfortunately postponed but went well, resulting in five prototype requests.

11:34: Returned home from a trip to the Wine Cellar and Voodoo at the Rio, encouraged by Marcelo. The view from Voodoo's outside deck was awesome. I certainly left at the correct time.

Bumped into Mike Hummel today, which made me ridicu... Oh. I've mentioned this already. I'll let that be, then. At any rate, It's totally time to hit the sack.

It's been another good day.