Meh. I'm fucking tired as hell.
Africa was fucking cool. We were in Johannesburg for a couple of days doing the Rage game show there. Thanks to all the folks at Megarom (our S. Africa distributor) who made the trip so easy on us and thanks to the team from the UK office who joined us and organized everything. Special thanks to Jason and Jeep (ie: Jason's awesome truck) for unfucking my stuff when I forgot my devkit in my hotel room before the last stage demo.
Lots of big crowds around FC2 on the show floor, and it was great seeing all the South African fans who seemed to really love the game. They unanimously were very pleased to hear the AI swearing at them in Afrikaans, and I saw a lot of jaws hit the floor... people telling us that we 'got it right' in terms of the visuals and the overall feel. Mission accomplished on the authenticity front.
After Joburg was two days on safari in Pilanesburg. Elephants are awesome. We saw some lions consider taking down a baby rhinoceros. I'll remember that for the rest of my life.
After Joburg, we had the nightmare trek from South Africa through Singapore to Tokyo for TGS. Planet Earth is big. It was about 22 hours of travel. We were demoing for the press in a hotel room and out of fatigue I never even made it to the show floor, I just stayed in the room demoing and between interviews I played with the map editor and built myself a MP map. The Japanese press seemed very impressed with the level editor (no surprise, it's fucking impressive).
I'd never been out to TGS, and in fact have never been to Japan, so it was great that we again had an extra day to wander the city and check it out. We wandered around in Shinjuku mostly, checking out the little shops and restaurants. The food was amazing and I really enjoyed the city. Hopefully I'll get to go back there one day and spend a couple weeks there.
We left Tokyo for the 'shortest' leg of our trip, a simple nine-hour hop down to Sydney. We did a demo of the game in front of about 80 press and vendors and community folks at a movie theatre, and then did some demos and interviews at the Ubi office. This morning we hopped on a plane for the Gold Coast - as of this writing I am in my hotel room. We have a demo at a big EB Games vendor conference tomorrow, and then we're back to Sydney and soon off to Shanghai.
More news to come when (if) I have time.
Oh, and by the way, for those anxious, Far Cry 2 officially went Gold on all platforms yesterday (I'm not really sure what 'yesterday' means right now, but it wasn't 'today' and it wasn't 'a few days ago'... so yesterday east Australia time will have to suffice).
It's over and I am almost done.
Congrats on going GOLD on such a massive undertaking. Wow what a trip you made. I imagine you'll be sleeping it off the next couple a weeks! Great site btw. I'm checking it regularly since I saw you presentation at GDC08, which was for me one of the more impressive ones of the conference. Keep it up!
Posted by: Tj'ièn | October 16, 2008 at 02:58 AM
Congrats man! Can't wait to check it out.
Posted by: Christian Allen | October 16, 2008 at 09:28 PM
Congratulations Clint :)
Posted by: Jurie | October 21, 2008 at 03:14 AM
Hi Clint
Loving the game :) Cant say the Wife is too happy :)
Was also awesome having you guys in SA!!
Well done on a game that in my mind has taken gaming another step forward.
Cheers
Jason
Posted by: Jason | October 29, 2008 at 12:10 PM