Wherein I attempt to engage in thoughtful discourse about the South By Southwest Festival while watching the movie Bubba Ho-Tep.
Well, it's been six days since I returned from supporting and promoting Pure West's feature documentary, Second Skin, at the South By Southwest festival in Austin. Suffice to say, it was a uniquely amazing, surreal, and exhausting experience to see my best friends court their first big success.
Better to show the roller coaster than to talk about it: There are six videos documenting the Austin trip here, and the reviews of the film (mostly very flattering) are collected here.
But the Pineiros are far better equipped to write about Second Skin (and they've been doing it). I'm writing because I worked a secondary purpose into my trip: I was checking out the Interactive Festival, which has been gaining traction to see whether it's the sort of thing the IMD should be looking into more seriously.
Bubba Ho-Tep update: Elvis has been narrating the story of his life, focusing mostly on an unidentified venereal disease. His nursing home roommate just died.
The Good, The Bad
The major draw of the conference, in my opinion, is the city of Austin. It's not a huge town, but it has an amazing vitality to it... pleasant people during the day, great place to go out at night. I particularly recommend the cabbies: in nine rides, no two were alike. Home-schooled British guys, rastafari, bearded punkband frontmen. You will not regret the trip from your hotel.
The trouble I had with South By Southwest Interactive, however, is that it doesn't seem to know what it's offering. I have it on the authority of Justin Hall, who is a reg'ler at SXSW, that the Interactive Festival/Conference started off as a web-design-centric event. At its core, that's still the focus... but in deference to the games industry, it is trying to branch out.
Bubba Ho-Tep update: Elvis is fighting a scarab beetle. It is the worst special effect I've ever seen.
South By Southwest != GDC
Thus far, that branching out looks better on paper. The major game-related events were the "Screen Burn Arcade", which turned out to be a series of small booths from local game design programs and FPS competitions, and Guitar Hero III. There was an EMBARASSMENT of Guitar Hero at SXSW... there was a playable copy of the game at literally half the trade show setups. Not that the proffered products, companies or services were related to Guitar Hero, mind you... the booth bros just figured they could talk to you more easily while you were playing "Barracuda".
Most of the interesting game-related stuff had to do, once again, with the city itself. I learned that Austin is a surprisingly good town for game development, with branches of Bioware and NCSoft, Gamecock, (the company that made Dementium: The Ward for DS) and id Software just down the road in Dallas. Each of these companies had a good presence at SXSW, and while their representatives didn't loom large in the panels, they were approachable at the screenings and the after-parties. While it was a shame that the games-industry conference fare wasn't more developed, it was nice to have a more manageable venue than GDC in which to make connections.
Bubba Ho-Tep update: Elvis and Ossie Davis (a black geriatric JFK) are arguing about whether or not mummies need to take dumps like regular Egyptians, or whether they just hang out in bathrooms for fun.
Conference Panels
There were a few good sessions during the day, but most of the panels seemed to be, directly or indirectly, focused on marketing and promoting interactive products. I was already inundated with these concerns through Second Skin, so the "how to pimp your social network" discussions weren't as appealling as they might otherwise have been. The highlight of the talks was the Henry Jenkins/Steven Johnson keynote, not only because they're great speakers, but because there were two caricature artists drawing visual interpretations of the entire hour-long talk. A snapshot such as the one below could therefore serve as a no-effort universal set of "notes".
Overall
I'd say that's the strength of SXSW, despite the fact that it's currently a little confused: it's still a young festival, and it feels like they're willing to try anything. Some of the things they're trying, such as Screen Burn, didn't really work for me, others are offbeat enough to provide inspiration.
In that way, SXSW was a lot like Bubba Ho-Tep, which is quickly approaching its conclusion - as a game-focused academic, I can't decide whether it's good or bad, a proper or improper use of resources but it's engaging enough to make the difference moot. Now if you'll excuse me, I think JFK's about to make the ultimate sacrifice... again.
Ahh, Spring Break. Hasta manana.
