Overview

Most Entertaining Lecture: Probably Splash Damage's post mortem of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, as they regaled us with tales of office nerf gun fights and unicycle races.

Most Disappointing Lecture: The presentation on Game Assets in Rome: Total War. Going in with high expectations, it turned out that neither of the two advertised speakers were able to make it, so they'd drafted in a substitute who didn't really know enough about it to give a full presentation.

Most Impossible To Understand Lecture: I made a brief attempt to watch ATI's presentation on the making of Ruby, the computer generated female star of ATI's demos and advertising campaign. Unfortunately, I was stuck at the back, peering around the corner through several people's heads at the screen, and completely unable to hear most of what the speaker was saying due to the level of noise on the show floor.

Best Booth: Lipsync Creative, for the simple reason that they had a couple of lovely girls giving free massages all day - greatly appreciated after sitting in the GDCE seminar rooms all day.

Most Disappointing Booth: I'd have to say the Relic Entertainment booth. Given the enormous amount of interest in Relic's games, both old and new, they could have put on a bit more of a show, but as it was, the booth was tiny, mostly unoccupied, and empty apart from a battered old Homeworld box and a few job adverts. That said, they were probably the biggest game developer that even HAD a booth, and you could at least play Dawn of War on one of the PC stations elsewhere on the show floor, so I can't be too harsh on them.

Most Bored Exhibitor: The poor chap in the Shmangle booth who seemed to spend his entire time playing around on his laptop, with almost no-one seeming to show any interest in testing out their comfy beanbags.

Most Non-Existent Booth: Too many candidates to pick a name!

Day 1