South by Southwest Interactive is taking place next weekend in downtown Austin. As we're an Austin area gaming focused blog, we've got our press access lined up. We're planning on heading down and checking out the Gaming Expo and the Geek Stage March 14th through the 16th. I've been doing my customary pre-convention research, so let's see what we're excited about!
Panel Highlights
There are a few panels that I've earmarked and would like to see, if possible:
- The Casual VR Scene - We met Alex and Neal at Game On Austin last year. The VR demos there were quite compelling! With all the talk around VR from Valve, Oculus, and Google Cardboard, this is definitely a hot-button topic.
- Star Citizen: Making Space Sims Cool Again - EB and I both have fond memories of previous Chris Roberts games. Star Citizen is still under development but hopefully it reignites gamer interest in this genre again. It would be cool to see the panel, but I think Star Citizen also has a booth, so if we miss the panel we may still get a chance to play...
- Linear vs Nonlinear Narrative in Video Games - Lord British himself will be on hand to discuss the role of story in video games. Ultima is a legendary series in the course of the Western RPG, so hearing Richard Garriott speak would certainly be interesting.
- Telltale Games: Interactive Storytelling in 2015 - Telltale has been rocking the house lately - Both Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead were killer story-driven games that grabbed me and refused to let go. These guys are at the forefront of video game storytelling and this panel ought to be worth checking out.
We'll have to see how the panels work out - at PAX it was an hour long wait to get into practically any panel, and we have a lot of other stuff to do while we're at SxSW. Speaking of...
Gaming Expo Booths
I've compiled a list of the video game-related booths that are on the SxSW site:
Alientrap Games,Apelaw,Behold Studios,Blank Media Games |
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c3sk,Consala,Dead Mage,Devolver |
Down to the Wire,Dreadbit,Echostone Games,Elevator Entertainment |
Funktronic Labs,Gambitious,Golden Ruby Games,Heart Machine |
Honor Code,House House,im8bit,Ink Stories |
Kabam,Made With Monster Love,Media Indie Exchange,Newmark Software |
Nod Labs,Numimous Games,One Degree Games,On the Level Game Studios |
Osome Studios,Pop Sandbox,Q-Games,Quickfire Games |
Radial Games Corp,Ragesquid,Rip Studios,Robot Loves Kitty |
Self Made Miracle,Shield Break Studios,Ska Studios,SongArc |
Sound Self,Spacetime Games,Star Citizen,Steel Crate Games |
Team 17,The Good Mood Creators,The Mollasses Flood,tinyBuild |
Tipping Goat,Toca Boca,Pencil Test Studios,VooFoo Studios |
Zanrai Interactive,Zombie Night Terror,, |
Wow, 54 booths! Apologies to anyone I missed - we're probably going to be walking the entire expo floor, so we'll probably see most everyone's demos as long as we don't run out of time.
There are a bunch of these studios that look like they've got some interesting games to show, and a few of these booths are going to be people we met at PAX or at Game On Austin. I never can predict what's going to blow me away and grab my attention until after the con is over, though.
Getting in Touch
During the expo, we'll probably be around on Twitter, so follow @agent86ix and @EBongo to stay in touch. Afterwards, we'll be posting to our SxSW category on WOTS, and probably to Indie HYPE over on Kotaku.