A Couple of Gamers

Gamercamp was like Regular Camp, only Fun and slightly more Co-ed

Posted on Nov 22, 2009 by Lori in Events

Of course, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention the demos that took place between the main speakers. Miguel Sternberg (pictured at left, looking like a hot indie DJ) showed off Spooky Squid’s upcoming Guerrilla Gardening: Seeds of Revolution, Drinkbox Studios showed off the prototype of their newest title About a Blob, Daniel Steger rocked the crowd with his upcoming XBLA rhythm-based strategic defence offering Battle Beat and, when Benjamin Rivers had to bow out of his showing of the interactive party game Drunken Rampage, John Josephson of Pixel Pirates stepped in with his Vortex Competition-winning entry Colour Coded. I mention Miguel Sternberg specifically because, when Dave and I caught up to him at the 1UP party afterwards, he had a couple of 360 controllers hooked up to a laptop and was letting revellers try out Cephalopods Co-op Cottage Defence, a two-player version of his 16-bit survival horror game Night of the Cephalopods. Two-player, you say? And co-op, no less? Interesting.

All told, you’re probably thinking that I’m some kind of PR whore for Gamercamp, what with all the selling copy I’ve written lately for the event (well, in the interest of full disclosure, Jaime did buy us a beer). However, the day did not come without its share of disappointments…

For one, many of the arcade cabinets brought in for the 1UP party took some finagling to get going—though, to play devil’s advocate, I’d like to attribute it to the fact that the kind purveyor of said machines, Gerald Darcy of the soon-to-be-realized Replay Arcade Museum, is likely not used to having to schlep mad amounts of units rigged to free-play status downtown to a bunch of adult gamers who are going to touch them inside and out repeatedly with pizza- and beer-soaked fingers. But what was The Hand Eye Society’s excuse for not having the Torontron up and running as promised? Perhaps we should ask Jim Munroe at this Thursday’s “World Premiere of Something Cool.” Seriously—I know I will…

To make a long story short (too late), a good time was, ultimately, had by most (and yes, said majority included Dave and me). And for those who didn’t, they were likely not there. Oddly enough, it was an event that appealed to developers and gamers (and ironic-t-shirt-and-horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing-Ossington-denizens) alike. So if you end up going next year (and weren’t there for v1.0), you’re just not that cool because you weren’t there for the first iteration. Or does that make you more cool? Christ—I don’t even know anymore.

All photos by Gavin Hay who, by the way, totally rocks for letting us use his Flickr pics for this post.