I spent the past two days in LA, where I was attending E3. Thank you everyone who came out to see my panel discussion, "How to Innovate and (still) Succeed"!
For the thousands of visitors who don't follow NG lore - I teamed up with some friends and created a console game known as Alien Hominid. It has practically sold out in the US, where it was released for PS2 and Gamecube. It is being released in Europe for the PS2 and XBOX on May 27th - just a few days away!
I met a lot of new people at E3 this year. We were lucky to be on the front cover of Game Developer magazine this month, as they were giving away 20,000 free copies at the event! This helped make us surprisingly popular in the industry, as lots of people came up to congratulate us and tell us how much they love playing Alien Hominid!
We had the chance to pound some beers with Zoo Digital, our European publisher for Alien Hominid. They have been doing a great job of promoting AH prior to launch and we are infinitely pleased with them. They sent out hundreds of promo-packs to stores, one of which has found its way onto E-Bay! If you are in Europe and want to grab Alien Hominid before the official European release date (May 27th), here is your chance! It comes with a t-shirt and press sheet!
We are really excited for the European launch. The Sun (the UK's #1 newspaper) just gave AH a score of 94% and named it their game of the week!
As for E3 highlights... Well, we spent most of our time in meetings. I did get a chance to play Gunstar Super Heroes and the new Castlevania for the Nintendo DS, both of which rock! Castlevania makes use of the touch screen, which is feeling more and more gimmicky every day. I still love Castlevania, though.
This year was all about schmoozing and access; I got this badge for the Atari lounge, which was an entire club hidden behind the scenes at E3. I never would have known it was there, I'll have to post some pictures! It was huge, with a central bar and individual lounge areas. Also, the CEO of AtomShockwave slipped me into the very exclusive Gamespot party, which rocked! You know I love free booze. I didn't take enough pictures as usual, but I'll try to put together a picture page. I can be kinda slow with those.
Overall it was a fun experience this year - I saw E3 from much more of the business / insider view instead of as a casual spectator like the years before. Everyone kept asking what the next game will be and I still don't know for sure!!! We hope to have something solid chosen for our showcase at Comic-con this July!
