These GDC announcements almost feel like a formality at this point, but, once again, we will be at GDC in San Francisco. This year it falls on the week of March 14th, and if you’re a reader, strap in for what’s typically an avalanche of game previews as all sorts of developers pile in to show us their new games. To give you an idea of what to expect, last year we pumped out fifty eight GDC stories covering game previews for things like Crashlands, Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon, Space Miner Wars, Does Not Commute and a ton of other stuff. Who knows what we’ll see this year, but GDC 2016 has a lot to live up to with how rad GDC 2015 was.
If you’re a developer attending GDC, we’ve got a couple things to let you know about. First off, as always, we’re taking meeting requests. There’s always a bit of confusion surrounding this, but ideally we’re only looking to see new and unreleased games or updates to existing games. If you don’t have something new to show off and just want to say hi, that’s cool, just come to our party or follow me and/or follow Jared on Twitter, which is usually where all the organizing takes place for which bar everyone’s hanging out at on any particular night.
If you do have something new and unreleased that you’d like to show us at GDC, and you’re cool with us recording some video and sharing it with the TouchArcade community, click here and select the time slot you’d like. Keep in mind, available times are in local Pacific time, the time zone of San Francisco. Time zones are weird, so pay attention to how whatever calendar you’re using handles them. We’re booking all of our meetings at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis which is on 55 4th St. Typically, we hang out in one of two areas in the lobby- If you walk straight in from the front doors, through the front desk area, passed the bar on your left, and get to the back wall, there are tables back there we try to be at. If that area is totally packed (which it often is), we head up the escalators to the upstairs lobby atrium area where there’s more sets of tables. Look for the TouchArcade logo, or just keep your eyes peeled for the two idiots from the photo to the left of this paragraph.
TouchArcade Sticker Swap Party!
We’ve been doing the same thing for years now, and we keep doing it because it’s awesome. On Wednesday the 16th of March, please come hang out with us as we slowly take over Bin 55 at 7:00 PM until around 11:00ish when they start doing last call. It’s the hotel bar inside of the Marriott Marquis, which, as mentioned, is on 55 4th St. Our parties are always awesome for a number of reasons: First off, the Marriott lobby has tons of room, so you’re not packed into some tiny dingy basement bar with poor lighting and loud music. You can actually talk to people! We don’t do any kind of invite list, drink tickets, or open bar, so everyone is welcome and by not offering free booze we never have any of the typical GDC party surfers who don’t even know what the event is for beyond the fact that there’s free beer. Everyone at the TouchArcade Party is there because they love iOS gaming and want to hang out with other iOS gamers and developers. Hell, even if you don’t even order a drink, you’re still welcome to chill out.
But, say you’re not great in big groups, or are a little socially awkward, well, that’s the great thing about sticker swapping. We keep encouraging it year after year because it’s such a great ice breaker for people to get to know each other. At our parties you’ll hear all the time, “Hey man, want to trade stickers?" Someone will trade you their sticker, and you’ll recognize their app icon (or vice versa) and suddenly you’ve got something to talk about. Particularly rad ways to use cocos2D, great shaders in a Unity game, clever implementation of ads, or anything else. We’ve once again teamed up with Sticker Mule to get stickers on the cheap. For $29 (usually $53) you’ll be able to get 50 2" by 2" rounded corner sticker which perfectly fits app icon art.
Of course, like getting anything printed, it’s not that much more expensive to order way more than 50, so don’t think you’re limited to just getting the pack of 50 if you want more to hand out. Also, Sticker Mule has a ton of other types of stickers, so if you want to think of something more creative, go nuts. I got some kiss cut stickers made a few years ago that turned out really great. The other thing that’s fun about the sticker thing is that a natural level of sticker rarity typically seems to evolve. Backflip, for instance, (or other big studios) might just get tons made, so by the end of the night everyone will have the Dragonvale sticker… But not many people will have the super-rare Ow! My Balls Apple Watch sticker, as only 50 were ever made. The promotion to order stickers on the cheap goes through March 8th, which is really the latest you should order stickers to get them in time for GDC.
…That’s about it! So, just to recap, if you’ve got a new and unreleased game or update, book a meeting with us. Otherwise, get some stickers made and come to Bin 55 at 7:00 PM on the 16th!
