Monday, 19 May - link

E303

With news and fears of SARS in the air, GameSpy offered the most timely, if indelicate, promotional item - the GameSpy branded surgical face mask.

Photos from E3, to accompany Kentia - Where Gamers Fear to Tread

Event videographer Ryan gives a funny frown from the backseat on the long drive down from Oakland to Los Angeles.	Hail to Sony's PlayStation 2 "Eye Toy" a simple camera that turns your physical gestures into game interface. The gameplay is reminiscent of Zack Simpson's Shadow Garden. Here I'm raising my arms to hold off invading ninjas. Ryan took this picture just before he exchanged fists with a computer boxer.	This is Dre, a televisual game reporter from Amsterdam. Jane and I met him sharing a cab from the Player's Village at the World Cyber Games in Daejon. Here, he's wearing a shirt that reads "Fuck the Police" in Arabic.
Award for wackiest peripheral at the show goes to Ideazon's Zboards - custom modular keyboards. For $20 you can get a keyboard that has special buttons just for your favourite game. Pictured here are keyboards for Civilization, Age of Mythology, Madden 2003 and Medal of Honor.	A dancer weilds a sword during a traditional Korean drum dance at the Mu: Continent of Legend booth. Afterwards, a somewhat engaged hostess explained the game to the audience. "There are four playable character-classes in Mu." Then she would immediately follow with a question: "How many playable character-classes are there?" If you responded correctly, you won a keychain. I got my second guess right.	Writer and MMOG economy harvester Julian Dibbell looks weary as Pikachu spreads the Poké-love in the Nintendo booth.
Ryan snoozes under a table in the media room while Jane works on a deadline piece on mobile phone games at E3 for TheFeature.com.	Artiste Randy Smith couldn't keep his hands off the matches at the Cat & Fiddle pub Friday night. Alex lurches in the background.	Jay Kim was our best host in Korea. He was picked up as a panelist on "Smart Games" for E3 and could be seen striding the halls with a smile, introducing new friends to old friends, and acting as a gracious delegate for the Korean educators he travelled with. Jay is a former high school teacher who is working for Interesting & Creative Inc. on "Demiurges" a massively multiplayer online role-playing game that teaches basic gradeschool content to school children in Korea. I wrote about this game in a piece for Edge.org in January.
David, Silvio and Souris. Silvio and Souris are good friends of good friends. After some work in games and magazines and investment, these three are establishing their own game design studio in NYC called Invasiv.	Souris's family Edward and Sharon, a writer and artist respectively, opened up their Santa Monica backyard for a Saturday afternoon BBQ. Why? "Because Souris taught me that kids under 40 can be cool, so now I want to meet them," Edward replied.	Justin hugs Jane who lays on Doug and Robin in bed with Bernie, fronted by Brian. Late night, Saturday. Two of these people missed their planes home that morning so we celebrated with some raunchy jokes.

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