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GCA Blog #1: Arrival

Published: Wed 17 Sep, 2008 | 19 Comments
Tags: singapore, gca, travel

NOTE: Before you start reading this, be warned that it's just about my first experiences in Singapore, and only becomes gaming-related around the half way mark.

 

Initial impressions

I'm in Singapore! Sweet! And good god it's warm outside!

 

My flight went surprisingly smoothly - everything was on time, and my luggage even turned up too! Hardcore. And I had one of those typical "it's a small world/New Zealand" - I was sitting next to a guy from New Plymouth on the flight to Singapore, and he was heading over for a few days for a conference on hospital beds. That's right, hospital beds - cool, huh?

 

Anyway, towards the end of the flight, it turns out he was staying at the same hotel as me. And THEN it turned out his convention was in the same place as the GCA convention. Funny how things work out like that. At least I've found a drinking buddy...

 

Those who've been here now all about it, but it's amazing stepping out from an air-conditioned building into the outside heat. It's literally like a wall of moist.

 

I also bought a DS game called Lunar Knights for the flight over, but got annoyed at it after 10mins. Has anyone else played it? Is it worth playing more?

 

My wonderful girlfriend included a package of misc food stuffs I like to eat:

 

 

Mmmm, Tiny Teddys. :)

 

The conference proper starts tomorrow, but today I went to a media luncheon. It had guys from Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, and...me from New Zealand. Four top people of the GCA spoke about what they're trying to achieve for the Asian region, and it was actually quite interesting - beyond a few pieces of knowledge (like Koreans and StarCraft), I don't think we really know what the market is like.

 

So I felt like a bit of an outsider, but it was still really interesting - in some ways, the market is like the New Zealand or Australian gaming scene. While you've got some big shots like Sidhe here, or a couple in Oz, many people are struggling to put together money for a project. Anyway, I'll expand on all that in a feature or something, just to provide a bit more than simple hands on impressions of games (but those will be coming also...).

 

Shopping!

 

Look! Pretty!

 

 

I went to Funan (sp?), a building that is 6-7 floors of ELECTRONICS STORES. Plus a sports store, where I picked up that shoe. I even got the other shoe as well.

 

Tech seems to cost much the same here, but those shoes were much cheaper! Maybe I should go buy another dozen pairs...

 

Oh, and apologies for the lack of 'real' photos - I also had to go buy a memory stick for my camera, and didn't put it in till I was back in the hotel.

 

So, tomorrow: it's a-gonna be a jampacked day. We've got press conferences coming out the wazoo, from EA to Peter Molyneux. I'll endeavour to get impressions online as soon as possible (via the magic of the Shaun).

 

Oh, and for Kate:

 

Smelly Gamer Count: 1 (me)

Weird Person Count: 0. Although there was a shop assistant who was trying FAR too hard to sell me a DSLR camera, and was pretty damn annoying. Expect the weird quota to get upped tomorrow...

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