Zub Tales

After hearing about how good the Sony party was each year at E3, I was eager to see it first hand. As it turned out, luck worked its magic and my boss had arranged a meeting for me with a Sony executive after a mutual friend recommended our studio for an upcoming video game based project. After finally getting a chance to try out the Nintendo Wii, I headed over to the Sony booth to track down my contact. A couple hours later and we met up. The meeting went well. Feeling good about our interaction, I stuck my neck out a bit and mentioned the party. She had one invite left she could give me. She made me promise not to sell the invite or to try and bring extra people along. I agreed and she handed me a wristband. At that moment I wondered what the heck I’d gotten myself into.

That night, my media buddies who had invites of their own and I made our way to Dodgers Stadium. When we arrived, security checked our wristbands and gave us each a glass of champagne while they lead us to shuttle buses. We rode up the hill to a beautiful open field area decked out with giant colored circus-like tents. Our wristbands were checked again as we entered and they double-checked that we’d brought no recording devices or cameras. Once inside the grounds I got a real sense of the scope of this thing.

6 or 7 giant tents surrounding a large music area and stage made up the party grounds. Each tent area had its own bar and multiple food outlets. Pizzas, salads, kabobs, gourmet tacos, Chinese food, hot meat sandwiches, even junk food or assorted nuts – almost every tent had a different variety of eats to choose from and all of it was free.

One of the tents was hot reds and oranges and was called ‘Hell’– the Hell Signature Drink was some kind of vodka pomegranate juice mix that went down easy. Another tent of luminous blues and whites was ‘Heaven’ – the Signature Drink there was some kind of pineapple milky liqueur mix. Like with the food, all booze was free, with tips encouraged as a way to thank the hard working staff.

There were three different DJs spinning a variety of music throughout the grounds, all of it quite kick ass. The central grounds had a DJ doing absolutely incredible mash-ups of 80’s and 90’s tunes together at the same time, mixing grunge tunes into dance music or twisting techno with hardcore rap. At one point we started to leave the center to check out one of the other tents when a phenomenal mix of Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’ mixed with Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ nuked my brain and we had to stay longer.

Sometimes, contortionists or dancers would take the stage at some of the tents and perform. In Heaven these were feather-laden dancers moving to soft music, in Hell they had fetish-esque acrobats laughing and thrashing about to industrial dirges.

Our little crew gravitated towards a bar set up near the center DJ, which we jokingly nicknamed ‘Purgatory’. We asked the bartender there to create a new Purgatory drink on the spot – She crafted up a vodka-citrus combination that refreshed us quite nicely. Behind our bartender a Ringmaster pranced about on a raised platform reciting poetry about the follies of mankind over a megaphone while a toga-wearing man covered in silver body paint posed and spun.

Soon after, the Incubus concert started. No, seriously.

Sony had Incubus play a full concert in the midst of the party. It was downright bizarre seeing multi-million dollar executives, media figures and the video game elite thrashing around to Incubus tunes and screaming.

The only thing that was distinctly missing for the first half of the party was people dancing. With that much alcohol and amazing music it was a damn shame seeing everyone standing around trying to look important. I danced a little bit before the concert, but after it was over I was good and soused and quite ready to shake shit up.

This is something some people know very well about me and others just seem damn confused about. I actually like dancing to good music. I’m not a guy doing the “white dude shuffle” or gyrating like an idiot near every pretty girl in a club trying to impress them. Sometimes I just want to hear some great tunes and have fun. I wish more people would. With enough liquid courage that was no longer an issue, so we started tearing up the dance floor something fierce. Once the tension of that was broken, there was a subconscious “permission” that seemed to quake forth, like everyone realized “I guess we’re allowed to dance now”. I’ve seen it happen a bunch of times at clubs or parties and this was no exception. It always makes me laugh at the weird crowd mentality of it.

The central platform was taken over by another DJ who pounded out phenomenal beats on an electronic beat board of some sort where he actual hit it with his hands as if they were electric bongos. A giant 3-4 storey screen flashed trippy light patterns, video game footage and distorted video of the DJ as he went into a rhythmic frenzy that made the crowd go bonkers. From a handful of people dancing we erupted into dozens, whirling and pulsing to the music and sights around us. Screaming at the end of each set, I knew my throat would be raw the next day but I didn’t care.

As some of the staff wheeled in bags of ice to restock the bar, I realized that I was overheating from the temperature and the booze. With a big smile I snagged one of the large bags of ice and hugged it, issuing forth a surreal-looking burst of steam from my body that made people nearby gasp and laugh. The staff cheered as I thanked them for the well-timed refreshment. It was one of those odd things that made sense then and there but sounds odd as I try to describe it here.

Grabbing the early flight this morning was tough, flying most of the day was tiring and my body is now well and thoroughly beat. My legs ache and my spine feels tight as I’m typing this. Even still, it was a good trip and a memorable night.

2006 has been a difficult year for me so far. All sorts of ups and downs have been keeping me feeling unfocused and exhausted. The Sony party at E3 was one of those surreal nights to just cut loose and try to push into a better headspace. Even if it was only for one night, I just did my best to enjoy the moment.

E3 – Day Two

I woke up this morning and boogied over to the convention centre to try and sprint over to the Nintendo booth once the doors opened up at 9 am. The crowd was massive, a real mob pressing against the security staff, crazily eager to make their way on to the floor. I was honestly worried that there was going to be a stampede. Almost everyone I could overhear was thinking the same thing. They all wanted to hit the Nintendo booth and get a crack at trying the Wii. When it finally began, it was a swarm rushing down the aisles towards Nintendo. When we got there, it was a real shock… a HUGE line had already formed made up of Exhibitors who lined up before the door even opened – it was unbelievable. Over an hour long line already there, full of Exhibitors who just wanted to try Nintendo’s buzz-worthy console. Even still, I had to give it a shot.

A small portion of the Wii line. Mario taunts us.

Waiting in line wasn’t too bad, all things considered. I struck up conversation with the other people around me and the time went by. The other nifty thing was large vertical screens spaced out over the line area. These people were watching the line through cameras and carrying on amusing conversations with us in line or answering questions about the Wii system. After I chatted with one of them, I got her to pose in front of the camera with the ‘rabbit ears’ over my head, which looked really amusing as a snapshot. An hour and a half later we were on the cusp of entering the closed off Wii area.

Virtual social in the Wii line.

So, is Wii the real deal?

From all indications, I’d say ‘Yes’. They had 26 titles that people could line up to demo including Mario Galaxy, Metroid, Zelda, Tony Hawk, Red Steel and many more. Every single game looked great. The Wii controller is easy to use, comfortable and quite intuitive. The feeling of ‘hitting’ a ball in the Tennis mini-game they had on display was surreal and cool. It’s like the virtual play ideas Nintendo wanted way back in Power Glove days finally coming to fruition in the here and now. It had simple virtual movement that you could teach to any age group but was still damn fun and didn’t feel like a “kid’s game”.

Zelda. Zub with the Wii controller. Jim conducting the Wii orchestra. Mario Galaxy.

Panoramic Shot of the E3 entrance hall.

The lines to try the biggest games was crazy, so I committed to the Mario line in the time I had. Mario Galaxy, like Mario 64 before it, looks like it’s been built from the ground up to utilize the new interface style. It plays silky smooth and, even in the 5 minutes I was able to try it, was incredibly fun and interactive. The Nintendo marketing people mentioned that considering video games are now mainstream entertainment, it’s odd that so many people still don’t play video games. Everyone watches movies, reads magazines or newspapers and flips through channels on TV… but video games still repel a sizeable chunk of the population. Considering the ease of understanding the Wii interface and the genre variety Nintendo is pushing for, they really do seem to be targeting the current non-gamers as well as their video game hardcore. It’s an interesting curveball thrown at Sony and Microsoft’s vast and expensive multimedia console plans. Nintendo has got something special on their hands. I hope the system grows and sees widespread success when it launches this Fall. After that, the rest of the day went quickly. Some promising business meetings popped up, I demoed some other games and just generally wandered and tried to go through the show floor a bit more slowly than yesterday. I’d heard rumours of a huge Sony party taking place this evening over at Dodgers Stadium. A couple people who talked about the party said that some executives were selling their invites on E-Bay for $500+. Crazy stuff and I really wanted to go. In my next post, I’ll tell you how I got one of those Willie Wonka-esque invites… I’m currently exhausted and needing sleep. Zub Tales indeed. 🙂 A couple shots of the floor and booths.

E3 – Day One

Holy crap.

E3 is madness. This show is one of the craziest things I’ve seen in my last four years of con-itude. I’m feeling really quite overwhelmed and unsure of how to describe it all.

Outside the Staples convention centre in downtown Los Angeles.

Arriving first thing in the morning, the crowd of media who were let in early was impressive all on its own. By 11 am when the doors opened to the rest of us – pandemonium. Three massive convention floor show areas are bristling with lights, demos and massive displays showing off what the industry has to offer. Almost every single booth area is the equivalent of the Marvel or DC booths at San Diego Comic Con, but they’re electrified with playable units, massive screens showing game trailers and an international mix of industry people and guests. It’s clear here that the video game industry has the budget and clout to propel the entertainment industry to new heights. Craziness.

A USB drink cooler. A giant Pac Man statue. An armored statue from FF12 in front of Square’s area.

I wandered the whole thing at first sort of lost in the sea of people, just moving with the general wave of the crowd from each display to the other, occasionally snapping photos. Eventually fighting the zombie crowd mentality, I broke off and started actually trying to find particular elements. What began as a maze started to slowly make sense as I got my bearings.

The general buzz on the show floor is that while Sony’s PS3 units are impressive graphically, there isn’t a lot grabbing people game play wise. Every game they have looks like a graphically supped up sequel to something we’ve already seen before. Sports games, platform games, first person shooters – you name it. All of them look good, but HD textures and effects don’t seem to be knocking people on their asses like it used to. The Nintendo Wii however, has got people’s imagination stoked something fierce. The playable units are hidden within the fortress of a booth Nintendo’s erected and only those currently willing to brave a 2-3 hour line seem to be getting their hands on them at this point. I’m going to try and sprint over to the Nintendo booth first thing tomorrow morning to see if I can get a crack at it.

Jimbo tries out the new Sonic Rivals game coming for the Playstation 3.

Lunch at the convention centre was expensive, but at least there was a decent amount of food involved. 3 stuffed tacos and a pop ran me an even $9.00.

The World of Warcraft expansion is looking quite slick and I had a chance to give that a spin for a bit. It’ll be interesting to see how the final product comes together when the expansion is finally released.

World of Warcraft – The Burning Crusade is looking sharp.

I played some Disgaea 2 and was thoroughly impressed with their approach of slightly supping up the graphics while keeping identical game play to the original one that I liked so much. Good stuff.

Singstar is a new Karaoke Revolution style game coming out for Playstation that uses the original music videos in the background as you sing for points. It looks really well put together and stoked my karaoke-laden brain.

Zub kicks some ass singing A-Ha’s ‘Take On Me’ on a new game called Singstar.

I ran into one of my students who works at a video game store in Toronto. Given that there are tens of thousands of people at the show it was a nice surprise to find her and quickly touch base. Her bag was filling up with swag to take back to the other students back at Seneca, so they should be pretty pleased.

While speeding through the Ubi Soft area I got swept up in the line forming to get a free comic done by the Penny Arcade boys. I figured I’d grab the book as a “support the fellow web comic guys” kind of thing and was thoroughly surprised when Tycho recognized me. We chatted briefly about web comic stuff and promised to hook up again at San Diego. I’ve met him a couple times but never got the idea he remembered who I was, so the whole thing made me feel really good.

Stopping by the Capcom booth I was greeted by the licensing team and other Capcom staff that I met last year at San Diego. I wasn’t sure if they’d be as receptive without my boss there, but my fears were unfounded and they were super nice.

The Capcom merchandise display… check out the Udon comics right there on the lower left!

I’m not sure what the plan is this evening. I may end up at an industry party or touching base with some friends in the industry. Everything’s still up in the air at this point.

Now that I have a general idea where everything is it’ll be easier to zero in on stuff tomorrow and target certain games or systems I really want to try out as well as looking for contacts at certain companies. The war has just begun.

At the show now… doors open for media two hours before everyone else so that they can get a sneak peek before shit hits the fan. Should be interesting come 11am here on the west coast. Photos and more later on.

Oh God, now this is going to seem like I’m one of those hardcore blogging people as I do a day-by-day recap here. Just woke up and getting ready to head over to the convention centre. There’s four other people in the lobby clacking away on their laptops… this is some crazy tech-geekness in full effect. Almost every person I’ve seen getting ready today and wandering yesterday has the ultimate cliche of geek attire – tan colored shorts, t-shirt or golf shirt and multiple tech holsters at their side. I think I’m the only guy going to the show without a PDA. If their hotel rooms are anything like our own then this whole building is a fire hazard of tangled power cords and recharging gadgetry sucking electric juice from the walls.

Okay, more Calgary memory stuff before I forget:

– I was a guest and moderator on a panel with Takeshi Miyazawa, Paul Dini, Humberto Ramos, Rich Birdsall and Art Thibert where we did Q&A style chatting with the people in attendance. It went well and we kept things amusing.

– Running into all sorts of people who knew me in Calgary back when I was living there. I didn’t get to visit extensively with many people, but even just seeing them and touching base briefly was good. In particular, seeing some of my former students who have found success in the industry was great to see.

In Los Angeles now… tired, way too warm but overall okay.

I am looking forward to E3, but I admit that coming here straight from Calgary without heading home for a bit first is wearing me out.

The Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo was an amazing success, as I said briefly in my previous post. The whole show was smooth, the audience was enthusiastic and overall experience was fun. I’ve always assumed that the bigger the show, the better the experience, but this really flew in the face of that. Being one of the medium-big guests at the show, we had a fantastic response from the fans. Breaking their expectations by quite a margin, the show brought in (at current estimates) over 4000 people, a really impressive amount for a first-time show in a city not known for its love of comics. Some shows seem to have people who want to wander, other shows have people who want to buy – this was definitely a buying type of con.

I had a fantastically geeky moment on Sunday. Peter Mayhew (the 7’3″ actor who played Chewbacca) and his wife were taking the shuttle over to the con and I jumped in to share the ride with them. They’re both wonderfully nice people and I’d met them briefly the day before – Anyways, we’re in the van getting ready to go over. Peter was in the passenger side crammed in and the driver started up the van, at which point I couldn’t help myself and said aloud –

“Punch it, Chewy.”

Peter reached back laughing and gave me a quick noogie with his baseball-glove-sized hand. It rocked.

The flight to LA was okay. The woman to my left was from Red Deer and had never even taken a plane before or left her home town. It was interesting to see her reaction to every aspect of it – I’d forgotten how amazing it was when I first got on an airplane.

The hotel I’m at is in Korea-town (if that’s what you’d call it). The air conditioning is spotty, the wireless only works in the lobby and the hallways smell kinda strange – I think that’s adding to my reservation at being here. Don’t get me wrong, I am incredibly thankful I found somewhere to stay here in LA and that I’m going to the show, I’m just feeling a bit rundown. My friend Shawn (who stepped up to bat with an offer of lodging) and his buddies are hilarious to hang out with so far, but we’re all sapped by the heat and exhausted after maneuvering through the insane traffic.

Anyways, gonna crash here. Photos and other E3 stuff hopefully by tomorrow night.

Ultimate geekness going on here. We’re at a pub in Banff post-Calgary comic convention. I found a wireless internet signal so I thought I’d make a quick post here to let people know how I’m doing.

Calgary show kicked all kinds of ass. Considering that the show was the first of its kind in the city it was unbelievably well organized, well put together and successful. For the first time EVER at a convention, we sold OUT of everything at our booth. The last few comics and posters left over at the end of the show got snapped up by a local retailer. In turn, Omar’s not taking any product home and I have an entire suitcase empty to E3. Unbelievable and cool. The show was seriously crazy and fun, far more than either of us could have imagined.

Today I’m relaxing in Banff chilling out before the flight to LA tomorrow.

More details later.

Take care all!

Grafitti seen under a bridge today when I went for a walk around Calgary:

“Have you spent more time watching people on TV have sex than you’ve spent actually making love?”

Okay, here’s the way things are looking. I’m heading to Calgary tomorrow morning (ugh, early flight), looking to relax for a few days before the Calgary Comic Expo on Sunday.

I would love to see people on Thursday night. If you knew me back in Calgary and want to hang out and hear some funny stories, this is the perfect time for it. Tell people who wouldn’t see this post and let them know:

The Barley Mill at Eau Claire – 7pm to God Knows When

If people don’t have LJ accounts, they can e-mail me through jimzub(at symbol)gmail.com to let me know they’re coming by. Mind you, you don’t have to RSVP if you don’t want to. You don’t have to stay for the entire thing either. Pop in, leave when you have to – no worries.