Just before heading out to San Francisco, I bought a new camera. So I while I annoyed quite a few people with the ever present lens, I can now also give you a good idea of what our trip was all about! I tried my best to not make it too dry of a story, but in the end this post is still a bunch of photos from people you probably don’t know. :)

It has become something of a tradition to grab food at Lori’s Diner whenever we arrive in San Francisco. Roberto helped us to an all American high fat, high calorie dinner.

               

For us there is a nine hour time difference between Amersfoort and San Francisco, so we needed a few days to adjust to that. We usually go sightseeing and catch up with some other Dutch people in town. In this case we met up with Niels ‘t Hooft, who is helping us with the storyline for Toki Tori 2, and his good friend and journalist Jurjen Tiersma. As you can see we let the journalists pay for our expenses.

               

This year, our GDC started on Sunday because we got invited to attend the Indie/Press Mixer by John Polson. John and the rest of the group invited people from the press and from indie developers to talk to each other at the San Francisco IGN offices on Sunday. This meant we did not have to run and chase after everyone during the normal days of the GDC, which was very welcome indeed!

As usual we worked on the build up until the last minute, burning Toki Tori USB sticks as fast as we could! Quite a few things we added that last day, such as sounds for the waterfalls and better looking shadows in the cave portion of the game.
Reactions were positive and Tim Rogers of Kotaku liked his USB stick so much he let him hang with Chewbacca.

               

The weekdays were filled with meetings on and around the show floor. We showed Toki Tori 2 to the press, caught up with contacts at Valve and had a meeting with Rovio in a hotel closeby the convention center.

               

Since a lot of companies are based in and around San Francisco, we take advantage of that to drop by and show our faces. We hooked up with the guys from the Humble Bundle, played some Runner 2 at Gaijin Games HQ and also checked out Paul Bragiel’s new spot at i/o Ventures. Paul deserves a special mention, not just because of his epic beard but also because he’s the one who sold Toki Tori to Capcom for us in 2001! You’ll notice he’s also on the splash screen as a special thanks when the Game Boy Color version launched on the 3DS eShop.

               

You may have noticed it’s all about the people at GDC, and that’s because people make it interesting and it’s a great place to catch up with old friends and colleagues. So let’s continue with the people shots!

On the left we’ve got Peter de Jong from Codeglue, who we worked with on Worms for N-Gage and several other games. It is interesting that you need to fly 8000 kilometers to meet up with a fellow countryman, but that’s how it is these days.

In the middle we see Martijn having lunch with David Papazian from Mobigame of EDGE fame, and on the right we’ve got a shot of the Potato Dinner, that we organized this year with all the participants of the Portal 2 ARG.

               

Now I’m off, have to finish up the new Two Tribes shop with Toki Tori merchandise that launches tomorrow!