No, I'm not showing off here - I do have friends. However, this weekend I met my girlfriends friends boyfriend (that make sense?) - a top bloke who works for a major games developer. On the serious side, it was fascinating to find out a bit more about the development approach they take, particularly in terms of specification. This seems to be a single, long spec (100's of pages) rather than a set of more discrete requirements. I'd expected something far more "agile" and less formalised but talking to Rob at work he made the valid point that the level of accountability is such with games manufacture that this formal approach to specification becomes a necessity. I need to confirm this, and hope to get the chance to (I hope didn't make too much of a prat of myself and get an invite back, especially as he has a wall projector - Star Wars Lego just ROCKED!). Long term aim - to maybe get a look at one of their older specs, to meet some of their developers, even to get opportunity to get some of their lot and my lot together to compare notes on dev practice. Don't know how feasible that will be, but we'll see...
On a more "non-professional" approach, got the chance to play with some new gadgets, including the Playstation Portable (PSP). OH MY GOD - I WANT ONE! This is a serious marvel, the screen being the biggest shock with its incredible detail/clarity and no-messing size. But being able to drop movies and pics and mp3s on there just makes it better. Also got chance to look at the Nintendo DS. I'm not a big fan of Nintendo, as find the games childish, but I love gameplay/originaility and this is something this had in spades. But the thing that stood out was the stylus. Just like EyeToy, this provides a unique way of interacting with games which is excellent both in conception, and in implementation. This whole area was one of my "pet projects" at work, which may get realised one day - trying to find new ways to interact with a library catalogue both in terms of physical manipulation (eyetoy, joypad, etc) and creating a UI to facilitate that (I'm also interested in visual representation of metadata - like Touchgraph or MusicPlasma. Oh, and getting somethign like the PSP to interface with our library catalogue - not sure why yet, but leave me pondering that). Finally, the b*st*rd was at E3 for the Playstation3 launch. I've checked some of the videos out now - and reviewed some of the stats that I understood - and this is a teriffyingly powerful piece of kit. Roll on Spring 2006...
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