San Francisco Game Design Meeting?
If anyone is interested in having a semi-regular San Francisco Bay Area game design meeting, drop me a line. It’d be every 2 weeks or every month, and focused on advanced (or at least non-standard) game design thought. If the logistics of recording the meeting work out, I would also edit it into a podcast.
This would be a semi-private meeting: attendance by invitation, but you could email and get an invitation as long as you’re not a random person.
July 19th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Hey, you may already know about these, but we’ve already got a few regularly scheduled game dev meet ups in the city.
IGDA San Francisco has a meeting on August 6th at Dolby Labs http://blog.iphone-dev.org/post/42858313/thanks-for-waiting
Bay Area Video Game Developer Meetup meets on the 19th at Jillians http://gamedev.meetup.com/35/
And the next Game Theory meet up is July 28th at Muddy Water’s on Valencia and 16th. http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/918363/?ps=5
I haven’t been to an IGDA meeting yet, but I went to the last BAVGDM and had good time. Lots of experienced individuals there which made me feel a little out of place, but everyone seemed to have a good time. In terms of our group, Game Theory, we started it because we couldn’t find anything else on Google, but now it turns out there are several more established meet ups so we may decide to cancel it. Game Theory is much more of a hobbyist get together and we are just as likely to chat about board games and social games as console titles.
July 19th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
One of my goals is that this would definitely not be a hobbyist event (hence the invite-only). That’s not to say that attendees need to be working professionals, they just need to have implemented some kind of tangible, interesting game design.
The discussions that tend to happen at the existing meet-ups aren’t the kind of thing I am looking for. I want to have a forum for something much more focused. And, in a place conducive to discussion (i.e. not a bar or restaurant).
July 20th, 2008 at 1:21 am
If you can get something together, I would really appreciate you recording and posting something. I’m always on the lookout of intelligent discussion, even when I cannot participate.
July 20th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
I’d be interested in something like that. Contact me with a bit more detail on what your looking for. There’s a lot of other locals I can think of who I think would be invested in focused discussion.
July 20th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Jonathon, when will you be able to announce a release date for Braid? (It seems silly there might be a release date announcing a release date.)
July 20th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Never underestimate the amount of silliness that happens in the game industry.
I cannot announce a release date yet, but I can say it is pretty soon. And I can point you at this if you haven’t seen it:
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/07/17/castle-crashers-galaga-legions-more-on-xbla-in-4-6-weeks/
I am told Microsoft is going to make a more detailed announcement in the near future, and I will link that from here when it happens.
July 20th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
This sounds interesting; I would be interested. But maybe you could explain a bit more specifically what your goals are? What size group would be ideal? Would meetings center on discussion of a particular work, or theme? Would participants be expected to share their own work?
July 20th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Hopefully not too big. I’d probably cap it at 16 people but I doubt it would get that large. It would be mainly about talking about things that the participants themselves are working on… just because if it’s about discussing whatever game you played that week, it’s very easy for that to backslide into the same stuff you can read on every forum on the Internet.
July 20th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
If you do a meetup, let me know - I’ll try to make time to come.
July 20th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Am I a random person? If not, I’d be interested.
July 21st, 2008 at 7:51 am
I’d certainly appreciate a podcast if you can swing it
July 22nd, 2008 at 9:27 am
I’ve got enough response to this (here plus private emails) that it will definitely happen… I’ll post something in a couple of weeks.
July 22nd, 2008 at 9:39 am
Sounds extremely interesting. I wish I could participate, but the travel distance is a bit too extreme. So another vote for the podcast.
July 24th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Same here, another vote for the podcast thing.
Eventually I’d love to come, but as I am currently still living in the Netherlands, there’s just no chance… at least at the moment.
July 27th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
I’ve seen around the web Braid releases in September, very late? I know you said you’d post this on the blog, but is it true? And if so, why so late?
July 28th, 2008 at 3:49 am
“September, very late” does not sound accurate to me. I would suspect that whoever reported that information is just guessing.
July 29th, 2008 at 12:18 am
Add +1 to those (if there even is anybody) that would love to have a recording/podcast of these proceedings. You’ve got some very interesting thoughts and philosophies that I’d be interested to hear what comes out of putting together a group that would talk about such things (coming both as a gamer and as someone in the biz).
July 30th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Hi Jonathan,
I’m in San Francisco as well and would enjoy some stimulating game design discussion. Check out my resume and game design experience at http://game.rbkdesign.com and my thoughts here http://blog.rbkdesign.com/.
August 11th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Are you looking just for videogame designers, or are you open to folks doing boardgame, cardgame, tabletop rpg, etc. designers as well?
August 11th, 2008 at 10:27 am
I am keeping it just to video game designers. Not because I am prejudiced against board games, or anything like that — just to keep the meeting focused.
August 11th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Totally cool. I look forward to hearing about what comes of them!
February 17th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Are these meetings still occuring?
February 17th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
I haven’t started them yet. Still up in the air about whether I really want to do it. Probably will start them after the GDC sometime, if I do.