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This is the only day I’m able to drop by the Philippine Game Development Festival 2010. Day 1. That gives me enough time to spread the word, as it ends on September 17, 2010. This first day is all about the Game Development Expo and it was held at the UP Bahay ng Alumni.

I consider this a stroke of luck, since I also had to meet up with Dr. Pernia to submit my paper at UP Mass Comm. I love it when members of the Game Developers Association keep choosing UP for their venues. They literally make my life easier. Hehe. Anyhoo, first day focused on this:

This was why I got confused at first. I was expecting Cine Adarna to announce their Kurosawa Festival, which also started today (alas, today’s feature was by invitation only). I didn’t know that the Youth Congress in IT was part of the Game Dev Fest.

I still went inside Bahay ng Alumni despite the question marks hanging over my head. There were droves of people!

Those people seated were merely a small sample of the crowd this event drew. More were lining up for  the booth activities. I actually had to go to the second floor of Bahay ng Alumni just to get a bird’s eye view of the entire hall.

Speakers for the morning program — They were discussing game development in general, and the industry needs in particular. The most I can remember was this part about stories making games interesting but isn’t the best thing that a game has to offer…or something to that effect. I know this by heart because this is what I teach.

Boy, was I glad I climbed up the second floor because I finally spotted our booth.

Asia Pacific College seems to be the only school (with a booth) in the entire hall.

It was near the stage, but getting there was like going through an obstacle course. Or a maze. I had to find other means because there was hardly any space to get through between booths.

Later, some high school students came up to ask for “autographs”. Hehe. Actually, I think they were participating in a raffle here and that participation required signatures from all the booths. (Which I think was a splendid idea. Marvin got to interview some of the kids who were interested in Asia Pacific College.)

This queue got longer and longer and the people asking for signatures got younger and younger. There even came a point when we ran out of paper for the registering high school students. That should be a good sign, right?

I took a photo of this AVP. I’m guessing it was done by one of our students. I hope that tomorrow they showcase some of the games and animated features we have come up with, like Oleo and Mayi. I’m sure School of Multimedia Arts Director Robert Besana has copies of those.

I went around and took photos of the more interesting sections. Like IBM’s. I was surprised to see that they’re using the color orange now. We’re still using the traditional old blue that IBM and SM use (since they’re the co-owners of Asia Pacific College).

IBM’s booth has this attraction where you put your face into the mascot’s figure and have your picture taken. The mascots are cute so I can understand why the kids seem to be having lots of fun. I wanted to have my pic taken, too.

Here are some of the kids lining up for freebies. Companies gave away magazines, artistic brochures and portfolios. Some even distributed nifty bags and unique IDs. These freebies are the reason why the kids wouldn’t budge from their places even though they were already occupying the pathways.

This one seemed interesting enough. People playing darts. I wonder what the prize was. I wouldn’t mind getting free USB flash drives. *hint hint* LOL!

The queue at IP-EGAMES. Wow. I was hoping their crowd would trickle over to us. They gave away CDs of their games and other interactive merchandise. This booth was, hands down, the most popular. The volume of students never diminished.

After lunch, A band went up on stage while the everyone was getting back into the hall. You can actually guess the band members’ ages from their repertoire. (If Life is So Short by The Moffats? More Than Words by  Extreme? Hehe.) They started playing Taylor Swift’s Love Story but decided that it was much too girly a song. Aw. My mind was actually daring them to do it. Do it! Do it!

I left just in time for my consultation with my COMM311 professor at UP Mass Comm. But before that, I had to take a souvenir shot from the second floor. (There was actually an exhibit on this floor but I’ll leave that for another entry.)