Five days, lots of friendly faces, and one bikini-ed booth babe later, I’m back from San Fran. So much bay, so much fun. Check out Flickr for photos, Wired News for coverage, and home sweet home (over the next few days) for commentary. Nice to meet you, San Francisco.
Also, just a side note: If by chance you’ve tried emailing me in the last week or two, try, try again. My account should be working now. Fingers, as always, crossed…
June 12th, 2006 at 7:03 pm
Bonnie I fucking love you.
Hey, I heard that no “mainstream” game developers singed up to speak at the conference. You think if I wrote up a proposal to talk about dramatic NPCs and sex games that I might bet to spout my hot concepts all over the audience next year?
Answer with the assumption that by then I’ll be working as a writer/designer at a company I’ll have co-founded.
June 12th, 2006 at 7:33 pm
Nice pictures. I love the shot of the elk, and the “girl-on-girl” shot really tickled my fancy. Is the Wired story up yet?
June 13th, 2006 at 12:27 am
Cool pics, nice to meet you in person Bonnie.
Patrick, I don’t think you get more “mainstream” than Dave Taylor, Brenda Brathwaite and Sheri Graner Rey. Three name brand developers in 2 days is quite a lot for a con this size. Especially considering that much of what mainstream games are doing is irrelevant in a space with our budgets and our users (mostly non-gamers) at this time in the genre/market development.
I thought it could have used more speakers from the porn online and adult chat community side. I would have loved to get an inside view of Adult Friend Finder, the literotica.com community, etc. The companies there knew how to make games but really didn’t know how to make them sexy or build adult communities so I was glad that the focus was on sexologists, Regina and Marty, etc.
I also liked that Bonnie had her boy along (like all the girlfriends you see in tow at GDC)… I probably should have brought mine too but he had fun exploring the city while I was conference-ing. If you guys didn’t get a chance to explore the sex fun in SF, I can’t recommend the Lusty Lady enough for couples. We had… lots of fun there. ;p
June 13th, 2006 at 6:01 am
I agree with Kelly’s comments here. The gaming industry was fairly well-represented — it was the adult entertainment industry that seemed to be lacking in presence (the biggest exception that comes to my mind was Peter Payne of J-List).
June 13th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
I was reflecting what I heard over at GGA (which I guess is a competing sex and games website, or a parrallel one, depending on your perspective).
Kelly said: “much of what mainstream games are doing is irrelevant in a space with our budgets and our users (mostly non-gamers) at this time in the genre/market development.”
Very true, however, I’m confident this market condition is going to change dramatically (pun, or something, intended) over the next five years. Its going to start with material that simply encourages social reasoning and NPC empathy in the player as a part of interacting with an unfolding drama, but once politics, religion, Columbine-level social issues and more traditional issues of the human condition become subject to procedural rhetoric, it’ll be a matter of course for sexual content to be integrated into a portion of mainstream games. I personally won’t be making anything as explicitedly sexual as you, Kelly, for quite some time, because I’ve slowly been corrupted by market pressures. But when I do, and hopefully it won’t be more than a few years from now, you can bet games like Naughty America and Rapture Online (but probably not Virtual Jenna) will be the foundation I stand on.
June 13th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
You think if I wrote up a proposal to talk about dramatic NPCs and sex games that I might bet to spout my hot concepts all over the audience next year?
Who knows where the idustry will be next year. Hopefully we can look forward to many such conference… on which you can spray things, I suppose :-).
GGA (which I guess is a competing sex and games website, or a parrallel one, depending on your perspective).
We’re hardly competing - to the best of my knowledge, at least. As some Heroine Sheik readers may know, I’ve got mixed feelings about Game Girl Advance (so much potential, so often under-developed), and about Jane. To be honest, every time I’ve tried contacting her, I’ve been left listening to the white noise of cyberspace — but Scott did talk to her at the conference, and said she was nice, so maybe internet etiquette is misleading. Anyways, I’d love to be proven wrong about both the person and the site.
Ah, Naughty America (/me shakes her head slowly and smiles)
Lusty Lady? Do explain. We were down at Good Vibrations, but that’s about all the sex-exploring we did… unless you count an orgasmic cookie experience.
June 14th, 2006 at 6:06 am
google the Lusty Lady (San Francisco, not Seattle) and you’ll find it’s a performer-owned cooperative peep show (who knew such an awesome thing was possible? I
June 15th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
Heroine-Sheik leaves Game Girl Advance in the dust.
I suspect Jane Pinckard’s sole actual talent is self-promotion. I could be wrong, of couse; I don’t know her personally. But my suspicion sure as Hell isn’t going to be disproved based on the content of GGA.
The case-closing evidence is that despite Jane’s efforts towards intellectual/critical depth and “journalist” credibility, GGA is famous not for anything she’s ever written there, but for her posing in underwear with her legs spread for the infamous “vibrator” story.
June 16th, 2006 at 6:32 am
google the Lusty Lady (San Francisco, not Seattle) and you'll find it's a performer-owned cooperative peep show.
Sounds wonderful! Re: the google thing -there seems to be this assumption, especially in the blogging world, that anything you don’t know about should just be googled. Which, of course, I (and anyone else) are perfectly capable of doing at any time. But part of having a conversation (even if it’s a virtual one) is sharing thoughts and info with other people, even it takes more effort and time than googling. Not that I’m trying to be defensive, Kelly, it’s just that some people get testy when you would rather hear what they have to say than what google does.
June 20th, 2006 at 7:11 am
So you want to hear what I did with my boyfriend in a private peep show booth with a hot and personable nude young lady on the other side of the glass? Hehehe, well, unlike most women writing about sex online, I’m not much of an exhibitionist so I’ll have to leave you with the lone detail that our girl thanked *us* several times. We had fun. We also tipped very well. :D