I am tired, jet lagged. I'm about to do a live interview on camera with a couple of hundred thousand viewers. I reach for the headache tablets and accidentally take a handful of sleeping pills.The week doesn’t start there but that’s how it ends.
How the week starts is with two all-nighters to get a build together for the Game Developer’s Conference, followed by a sleepless 12-hour flight. The cabbie on the ride into San Francisco recommends a brand of super-strength sleeping pills, only available in the States, to get me over the jet lag. I eagerly take some in the hotel bar and David orders a drink. I collapse mid-sentence and need to be lifted back to the room.
Every day at home involves the same three faces of my workmates and the same four walls. I wake up at GDC to see the same faces, but everything else has changed. And there’s a camera crew waiting outside to follow you around for the most hectic three days of your life.
The Independent Games Festival at GDC is kind of the Sundance Film Festival for games. Joe Danger was nominated for three awards and got a booth on the GDC floor. It’s a tiny kiosk, but I've never really been to anything on this scale before. Surrounded by people I admire, I'm just so curious to see what everyone is like. There’s Team Meat; that must be Andy Schatz they're talking to... Guessing that’s NimbleBit...
Back in the UK, we’ve been jealously reading about the indie scene for years and now here we are. At the IGF. We’re the only developer from the UK and there’s that odd feeling of being the new kid in school, everyone already has their cliques and established friends. They cross-collaborate, help each other out and make jokes you don’t get.
Then, as the week progresses, we start to make some new friends. The weird thing is that we’ve travelled thousands of miles to meet people who live around the corner. Terry, Rex, Steve, Alex, Tak, Gordon, Simon, Yacine and so many more good people from back home.
Case in point, working around the corner from Lionhead, it’s here in San Francisco that I end up meeting Peter Molyneux for breakfast. “I think this is going to be an important GDC for Hello Games.” If Peter is saying it, then it probably already is. “You need to use this opportunity to make connections with people, when you’re small, friends are everything.”
He’s a childhood hero, an industry legend and exactly how you want him to be – sensitive, empathetic and with a shaman-esque aura. I explain that I’ve never met any of the press in the US before. He seems to get distracted playing with his phone while I talk, then says I'd better run. He's just arranged me a meeting with the editor of Gamespot.
The editor says he’s never heard of Joe Danger, but if Peter recommended it then it must good. I'm booked on a slot for the live show.
Three problems. Firstly, last time I was live on camera I froze. Secondly I haven’t slept since my first night here, haven't eaten that much lately and have a pounding headache. Thirdly I've just promised I'd do a live demo, but I don’t have a machine to play it on. The only machine with the game running is locked away at the IGF conference hall.
Oh and I've got about an hour to get to the studio.
First things first, I need the bathroom, but I come out looking sheepish.
“Grant? You know I had that headache? I took some pills for it. It was a bad one, so I took a bunch.” I hold out the bottle of sleeping pills. “I feel really, really sleepy.”
We quickly discuss our options. I favour Grant going on the show instead of me. Grant favours making me vomit.
In the end Grant rings some of the UK indies we both met during the week while I rest my eyes on the floor. These people wish to remain nameless, but one provides the world’s most ridiculously high-tech laptop (the BIOS plays an mpeg of an explosion) and then tries to return it to the shop the next day. Another provides something truly disgusting and vaguely suspicious to keep me awake (apparently it saw them through uni).
I'm bundled into a taxi and as I slump into the Gamespot seat at the last possible minute - they call “Live in Five” - all Brian Ekberg has to say is that I look very relaxed. I am, and watching it back later, I realise I somehow gained an American accent.
It can happen to any of us, I’m sure, and when it does you need friends. So, let’s not wait until GDC. If you are an indie developer in Europe please get in touch. I want to know you. Peter is right, if there’s one thing I’ve learned starting out, when you’re small having friends is everything.
Hello Games contributes a when-it-can-squeeze-it-in-during-crunch column to Edge and is a small, new independent game developer based in southern England. Its first game, Joe Danger, for PSN, will be released just as soon as it feels right. Let’s say summer.