Tony and I met Matt and Patrick at the convention center around 10:00 and were greeted with an hour and a half long line just to get to the point where you pay to get in. Ever trustworthy and resourceful, matt has held us a place in line, only about an hour back. Ever devious and worldy tony and I conspire to bribe our way in. We prey on the young; after all, when you're 16 $20 seems like a lot more money than when you're 27. They happily let the four of us in line ahead of them and quickly begin dividing up the money. We're in.
Initially presented with a crush of humanity we make our way upstairs to the exhibition room which seems less like a technology demostration area and more a teaming mass of barely washed flesh in too large t-shirts. Tony accepts the unwanted sales pitch of a man hauking some new line of miniatures so the rest of us can escape to track down the one and only attendee in a cape. For his sacrifice he gets his picture taken with "the caped one", some form of metalic wizard, and a women dressed either as a valkarie warrior or well armed bar maid:
This presentation is actually pretty good. There are some interesting comments on where reps from microsoft, nintendo and some third party dev house think gaming in generally is going. Nintendo and microsoft exchange barbs, it's all good. At one point they talk about increasing costs of development and the pressure to drive down prices causing some retailers to fold. They list a few examples and with Toys 'R Us comes a lone plaintive cry of "nooo!!!" from the far corner of the auditorium. Tony says he can hear the true despiration in the voice all the way over here. The lecture adjourns and we head down to the tabletop area.
Meeting a guy named Dante who regularly runs demonstrations of various games just because he likes them so much (he's a fellow microsofter and apparently there's a regular board game night there) we settle in to try out Chez Geek. I now own Chez Geek. A good addition to munchkin and ninja burger. At one point we each look up and notice a crowd has gathered around our table, jealous of the fact that we get to sit and play something fun. People even begin watching from the balconies above. The 7 other tables dedicated to miniature based gameplay are all but empty and their owners are visibly envious of Dante.
We break for lunch and return to dante's table for one more game for the day. It's a racing game that involves flicking wooden disks around a track but that's not really important. What is is red shirt guy. Red shirt guy's voice instantly reminds me of the skinny computer specialist from Wargames - the one with the pinched nasel sound and thick glasses. There are two women at the table and it's obvious red shirt guy would give anything to be with either of them, the problem is he hasn't yet learned how to approach women. Or, more importantly, not to insult and mock women you're interested in. Any time one of the girls' "cars" fell off the track he'd give a little laugh and say "so sorry, bye bye... bye bye.." with a little wave then wait for laughter. None ever came. I wanted to take him aside and offer some friendly advice. Patrick wished him pummeled. Same reasons I think.
A stop at a few stores on the way home; I picked up Chez Geek and patrick got a god awful CD of brent spiner pretending to be data pretending to play jazz with other startrek players singing backup. At $3 I think it was overpriced.
And yes, we're going back tomorrow.
May be important to note that Red Shirt guy was at least 27 or 28...his excuse for that level of social ineptitude disappeared about the time his wisdom teeth came in.
That be no bar maid...that's got to be Sophitia from Soul Calibur 2.