Dave Gilbert’s gamedev blog

Hi everyone. I no longer use this website for blogging. Instead, I have decided to move house over to blogger.

Click here for the new blog!

I’ve kept all my old entries here for archival purposes, but I am posting all my new stuff at the link above.

Thanks!

-Dave

Did that get your attention?

Well, as dubious as the subject heading might be, it is actually relevant. Last weekend I was walking past St. Mark’s Church, when I came across an innocent looking glass cube in the middle of the square:

There was a largish crowd gathered around the cube, just staring at it. Being a curious pedestrian, I was about to ask someone just what was going on when a group of girls – dressed in North Korean schoolgirl uniforms – marched in single file twice around the cube and then lined up behind it.

The crown was quiet. Then one of the girls marched over to the cube, opened a door in the back, and entered it. She positioned herself in the front and began marching in place.

One by one, the other girls followed suit…

…until each of the girls – all 24 of them – filled the cube.

I soon found out that this event was a piece of performance art entitled “Bodies of Pyongyang”, and was supposed to represent the oppression of the North Korean school system.

To quote the information I got, “these tightly packed schoolgirls will try to move within the confined area expressing their emotional pain and struggle. Red strings symbolizing their dual inner states of suppression and resistance entangle the girls, further restricting their freedom to move inside this already constricting and hermetic space.”

It was an interesting experience to say the least. This all happened 3 blocks from my doorstep. There are days when I absolutely love this city.

-Dave

So, I work in an office now.

When I first started this game development gig, I loved not having an office. I was free of the standard 9 to 5 drudgery that plagued most of mankind. I had total flexibility. I could work when I wanted. And if I was sick of working from home, I could pack up the laptop and go to one of the many cafés in my neighborhood. For three years I worked this way. But I had to admit, I was getting a bit tired of it.

Three years ago, I thought it was so cool that I could make games from a café. I wrote Shivah from a now defunct café called Cima in Tribecca. I wrote Blackwell Legacy from the Cosi’s in Union Square. Blackwell Unbound? Any Starbucks within a 5 block radius of my apartment – of which there are many. I felt cool. I was the Guy Who Made Games From Cafés. It was, I have to admit, very indie.

But, lately, the whole laptop-in-a-café thing has become absurdly common. And I’m not saying that it became so trendy and thus not cool, but rather it’s become a bloody chore to work in those places now. You walk into a Starbucks and the place is crammed with laptop-users. Past 10am, you can hardly get a table, let alone one near an electrical outlet. I found myself rushing to get to a café early so I could snag a good spot, which totally defeated the point of having a flexible schedule.

Of course, if the cafés became a pain I could always work from home. Whenever there was administrative stuff to deal with, I would always work from the desk in my apartment. But even this had become tiresome. I could never really “leave” work, so I was always stuck in work mode. I would look over at my desk and see my laptop and my design notes and tons of paperwork and I wouldn’t be able to relax. My apartment is a one-room studio, so it wasn’t like I could go into the next room.

Then my gamedev buddy Julia told me that her company, Arkadium, was renting out some of their empty desks. The price seemed right, and after some deliberation, I decided to go for it.

I’ve been here for two weeks and so far… I love it! It’s ten blocks from my apartment, so there’s no commute. They’ve got DSL, so my internet connection is wicked speedy. It’s reasonably quiet. I know a bunch of people here. I get access to the Arkadium coffee machine. I can come and go whenever I want. They let me bring the dog. I can leave all my paperwork and documents here. And, best of all, when I’m done for the day I can leave it all behind and just enjoy being home. Then I’m fresh and energized the next day.

I was always an advocate of coffee-shop game development, and I not saying that I’ve given up on it entirely. When I first started out, it was awesome! But now? I need to keep my personal and professional lives separate. For a long time, they were becoming interchangeable and that’s never a healthy place to be.

It’s back! Again! With a fancy new theme!

So, wow. Lots has been happening. Emerald City Confidential has been released. I’ve got three games in-the-works. Life’s never been busier. You’d think there’d be a lot to blog about, but the blogging software decided to start spouting errors at me and I was too daunted to sort out what was wrong. Turns out it was very simple.

This weekend i’m heading to Icon again, which I’ve attended for three years. I’ll be speaking on various panels, so if you’re attending feel free to look me up!

I’ve also moved into a real office. Well, a desk really, but it’s all mine! I’ll write about that later. In the meantime… anybody have any tips on how to decorate a cubical? Mine is quite bare.

-Dave

So I’m in my hotel room, finalizing dialog for the recording session tomorrow, while watching the election returns on the room TV. Barack Obama has just been announced as the 44th president of the united states.

My hotel is located in Union Square, a pretty populated area of San Francisco. For the last several hours, I have heard cars honking, music playing, people shouting with joy and dancing in the streets. I actually opened up my window and shouted “Yeahhhh!!!” into the night. This city is erupting into crazy mad joy.

It’s pretty amazing to witness such a historic moment. As lame as it is to blog about it, this has been the most inspiring campaign I have ever watched. This is frigging history. I’m a bit overwhelmed.

Not much else to say, really.

So. Finally! After ten months of working in secrecy, the infamous PlayFirst game – a noirish take on the Oz universe called Emerald City Confidential – has been announced! After much fanfare, hype, and being deliberately enigmatic you’d think I’d dedicate several hours to updating my website with all the news.

Instead, I became stupidly stupidly ill.

After the last recording session on Friday, I found myself mega exhausted. I thought it was just jetlag, but I was wrong. I crawled back to my hotel room Friday evening and collapsed into bed. A few hours later, I awoke with a definite fever was radiating off of me. So, I basically spent my first free Saturday in San Francisco alternating between my hotel bed and bathroom. Fun times.

Anyway, I’m doing much better now. But even so, I’m sure you don’t want to read details about my germ infestation, you’d rather read about the game instead!

Greetings from San Francisco. I arrived here Tuesday night beleagured and jetlagged but otherwise none the worse for wear. The nice folks at PlayFirst hooked me up with a room at the Westin St. Francis, in Union Square. Interestingly enough, it’s a block away from the hotel I usually stay in while at GDC so I know the area well.

The room is one of the nicest I’ve ever been in, with a gorgeous view of the city.

I wasn’t in much of a state to appreciate it though, since I had been travelling for 7 hours and was stupidly jetlagged. I crashed early, and woke up at around 4am. One perk to getting up early and being on the west coast is that I can see the sunrise.

I met up with my producer Jared around 9 who took me over to the Somatone office. Somatone is the audio house that is handling half of the voiceover recording. A studio in NYC is handling the rest.

For my little indie games, I usually handle voice acting by connecting a headset microphone to my laptop, giving the mic to an actor, and then handing the actor the script. My apartment is very quiet, and I’ve never had any major problems with the sound levels, but now that I’ve experienced a professional studio it’s hard to take my little ghetto setup seriously anymore.

Two actors came in yesterday, each performing two roles. It was nice to finally meet them. Several weeks ago, Somatone had sent me several dozen audition samples to listen to. They were all so good it was difficult choosing which actor to play which role (and to save money, we’d often give an actor two or even three roles depending on how versatile they were). Can’t say what the roles are yet, obviously, but here’s a pic of one of them in action:

JS Gilbert (yes, Gilbert) came in and totally owned the roles. He’s also a bit of a standup comedian so he improvised a lot, which had us all laughing.

Sarah Trancer has this really deep, slow and sultrey voice that suited one of the major characters perfectly. She also proved her versatility by doing another character with a completely different personality. More on that after the announcement.

Anyway, things are busy here but I’ll be sure to keep updating this site with news. Till next time,

Hallo everyone! Long time no see. Yeesh it’s dusty around here. It’s been awhile.

So, what’s been going on and why have I been slacking on this blog? Well, mostly because my life has been taken over by game development, and I usually talk about that over on the Wadjet Eye Games website. Truth is, my life has become incredibly boring! I’m basically spending my days tap tap tapping away into this laptop like a good little nerd, watching my new game get bigger in inverse proportion to my social skills.

Lifewise? I’m engaged to an amazing gal named Janet who I met at GDC 2007. I actually mentioned her in my report, although I didn’t know at the time that she’d become such a huge part of my life. See if you can guess who she is!

Anyway, we’re entering the home stretch on this PlayFirst game. I’m going to San Francisco this afternoon to help direct the voice acting sessions, and I get to meet all the folks who I have been emailing and instant messenging over the last 8 months! Assuming all goes well, the game will be announced by Friday. Cross your fingers.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I spend most of my work time with my laptop in various Starbucks around my neighborhood. A few months ago, I wandered up to the one closest to me only to find it locked with its windows soaped up and a “BUSINESS SPACE FOR SALE” sign on the door. No big deal, since there was another Starbucks two blocks in another direction.

It was, however, a sign of things to come. It appears that Starbucks is shutting down 600 of its stores.

I can’t help but wonder how this will effect the game industry.

So, FINALLY!!

Several months ago, this website was infected by malware. In a nutshell, it’s something used by spammers to put ads and other assorted nasty things in the comments area of this website. It also triggered warnings on users’ home anti-virus software as well as Google, who labelled my site as “harmful.” So, I shut the website down for awhile.

To make a long story short, I downloaded all the files to an external drive and ran a virus-checker on them. I found the file that was causing the problem and removed it. The malware file was one that exploited old versions of the wordpress blogging software (which I hadn’t updated since 2005!). So I upgraded wordpress and uploaded everything back onto the site again. I ran several checks and everything was fine.

Unfortunately, it took much longer for Google to catch up. I submitted my site for re-evaluation, but it took a few months before it finally went through. Now, finally, the site is back online and the nasty malware is gone.

Yay technology. My standard life ramblings will follow shortly. In the meantime, you can read about the new Stalk Dave Gilbert game that some folks in the New York IGDA scene have made up.

The site’s a bit bland and sparse now. My old settings were lost. I’ll fix it soonish.