Okay, so I've got this phrase that I use frequently. It is "Cheese-Dick". When I say it, I mean "trite" or "fluffy" or "dick and jane". I bring this up because John gave me crap about using it today. (Dunno. The WordWare guys seemed to like it....)

On day four, I've just been kind of cruising the expo, grabbing tshirts, pens, and other trinkets. It seems to me that the expo is a little light on the trinket department this year as compared to last. I did win a drawing that PBC was holding. I won a vintage copy of the Tunnels and Trolls RPG from 1979 (yes, before many of you were born). I've been officially labeled Paul Schuytema's "Groupie".

This morning I had the priviledge of attending a lecture by Kent Quirk (of CogniToy, the folks who made MindRover), a business-track talk about how to start a game company from the ground up.

I was a bit skeptical, walking into the conference room. I've attended a great deal of business-track presentations over the past three years of attending the GDC. Traditionally, I'd been dissapointed by these talks because they all say the same thing, and it's all very generic - "get a good royalty rate, get a lawyer," etc. Rarely is there mention of any hard data; usually the best you'll get is a range so huge it's basically unhelpful. One presentation told me that game developers typically get anywhere between 5% and 30% royalties on their titles. Great, but that's like saying "most people earn between $1000 - $1,000,000" per year. Not exactly helpful.

Kent's presentation, on the other hand, was full of great advice backed up by actual facts and exact numbers. He explained what went right, but more importantly, he had no reservations about admitting where things went wrong. This is in sharp contrast to "rock-star" presenters who wouldn't dream of admitting their failures, let alone explaining the reasons behind them.

In a conference so saturated with mindless hype and empty promises, it is incredibly refreshing to hear a talk that gives it to you straight. I was happily surprised.

Way to go Kent.