Last week I had the immense pleasure of attending the Game Developers Conference held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California. The GDC attracted more than 336 exhibitors including names like IBM, Playstation, WII, CDC games, Walt Disney Company. The GDC also welcomed more than 25,000 attendees from all around the world and continues to be the premier professional conference for the creators of games and interactive entertainment.
After negotiating a highly discounted rate on the recommendation of a client, Xxtreme Support Services of Guyana was able to rent a small display booth in the quest of getting our name out in the developer world as another support option. Too bad at the last minute, I had to change my marketing material to say Xxtreme Support Services of South America rather than Xxtreme Support Services of Guyana in English Speaking South America because of the recent tragic events happening at home. That’s as much as I’m going to say about that however.
My booth was next to a group of four youngsters who created a game called Guitar Rising; in the basement or garage or some small place, certainly wasn’t an office, in their homes. Guitar Rising, allowed a user to plug in a real electric guitar via usb port to a computer. The team’s programme then allowed the player to choose their favourite rock song and instructed “wanna be rock-and-roll stars” to play certain strings indicated on the screens. The players then heard themselves playing along to their favourite songs on a real guitar like a “real rock star”. To hear most tell it, this game will be an improvement on the very popular Guitar Hero for Sony Playstation game currently out, but which does not use a real guitar. Guitar Hero for Sony Playstation was created by a company called Harmonix which was recently bought out by MTV for $175 million cash (USD).”
Why did I go into such detail about this guitar game? Well these four kids all under 30 years old did it all in one year (will be two years of sacrifice by the time they’re finished). One is a musician, one a programmer, one an artist and one handled business management and promotions. They were all dressed in jeans and t-shirts, didn’t pay themselves for the year, created something with tremendous value and judging from the popularity of their booth will be offered upwards of US $20 million for the rights to this game once released in December