Late last week I headed to Seattle for the 5th annual Game Designers Workshop, which is a group of game designers that focus on story in games.  As usual, it was the most interesting 2 days I've spent in the last year.  I got the chance to meet some of the great people responsible for the Matrix Online and City of Heroes, plus numerous others and it was the first time I've met Al Lowe.

The format of the conference (which consists of 30 people sitting around a large table) is amazingly energizing.  At the beginning of the two days, a sheet is passed around and everyone signs up for a 40 minute session to talk about anything they want.  While I'm sure you could sign up to talk about motorcycle repair or international policy for Antarctic exploration, most people stick to the topic of game design and some even manage to stick to the conference theme of story-telling in games.

When your time slot comes around, you make a quick 2 or 3 minute introduction to your topic and then you moderate a round-table style discussion.  How focused the discussion is depends on each person hosting the time slot.  Some become round-table nazi's, keeping everyone on topic, others just let things go where they go.  Either way, it's hard to get bored.

After the conference, I headed to Eastern Oregon to spend some time with my parents.  Yesterday, I discovered they have a complete collection of every game I've made or worked on, from Graphics Basic to the short lived Maniac Mansion box that was banned from Toys-R-Us because it had the word "lust" on the back.

I've also been reading all the comments about my last article, both here and scattered around the Internets and it's been fascinating.  Once I get home, I'll write a follow-up addressing some of the issues brought up and make some adjustments to the plan.

Go Redsox