Damn, only a few more days to go before E3. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been looking forward to this for a while, but I need to rework my resume and try to flesh out some Design Docs and add to a Game Bible before I take the trip out to L.A. You see, while I’m definitely going to enjoy the games on the Expo floor, I really want to land a job in the industry, or more realistically, make connections that will eventually land me a job. For me this, this is pretty much a business trip. Of course, I’m sure it’ll be a really fun business trip, but a business trip nonetheless.

Unlike most of the other PlanetN2000 staff, I’ll be spending most of my time in the various sessions that go on through the day, away from the frantic gaming bliss of the Expo floor. These are basically lectures and discussions by people in the industry about a number of different topics; conflicts between marketers and developers, what girls look for in games, the future of hand held gaming, collaborative game designing just to name a few. And as much as I’d love to spend hours playing Perfect Dark, Conker, Zelda, and other games, I’m really looking forward to hearing from some of the speakers at these sessions (besides, I already played Perfect Dark at GDC J). So while the Expo floor will be oozing with tons of new games, industry names like Sid Meier, Trip Hawkins, Gabe Newell, Jim Merrick, and Warren Spector, and many others, will be speaking at various sessions…and I can’t wait to hear what they have to say. I think it’s a pretty good trade-off.

To the average gamer who just wants to play games these names might not mean much, but to someone who wants to make games, it’s an opportunity to get some great ideas and insights into games. These are the minds behind the games that you and I love so much. And who knows, maybe I’ll talk to a few of them afterwards, make a good impression, pump them full of drinks…and “pow” instant job offer! Or for those readers looking for Dolphin goodness, maybe I can get some juicy tidbits on what we’ll see in the next year or so.

Me- “So Jim, what games can we expect to see for GBA and Dolphin? And how exactly will the two systems work together?”

Jim Merrick (in drunken slurred speech)- “Well, Ed, I rilly like yous alot so I’ll tell ya. The Dalfin and the gBa are gonna totally gonna do their thing and like Dalfin’ll say, ‘hey, what’re ya tryin’ to do to my pants!’ and the gBa’ll say,‘pants, what pants, go away! I don’t even like toona!’ and then Dalfin’ll go find Shiggy and start to…hey isn dat Gary Coleman over there!?! See ya later, Fred, I gotta go hang with Arnold…”

Well, maybe not. But if it does happen, PlanetN2000 will have a hell of an exclusive. Either way, I’m sure E3 will be a blast and as a contributing writer biach for Billy, you’ll get a glance at some parts of the show that most other media don’t cover.