Last night's IGDA-Wisconsin chapter meeting!

I had a great time chatting with folks before and after the meeting, especially Jeff Spurgat, a programmer with whom I worked at Evermore Entertainment about 12 years ago! (We both did a, "Wow, has it been that long?" :)

The Raven chaps were predictably excellent hosts and it was good to see such a large turn out. We filled the main conference room then brought in 20 extra chairs and still had people out in the lobby.

While I enjoyed hearing Rob Martyn's assessment of the state of the games industry, I found John Bergman's talk to be most intriguing. He spoke on Guild Software's ongoing Android development for Vendetta Online, which is Guild's MMO title. Some of the points I took away from his presentation:

• While the hardware is similar to iOS platforms, there are more bundling opportunities with Android
• Tough to design UI for touch-based devices
• Likes Tegra as a development target, mainly due to NVIDIA's history of working with game developers
• Sees the mobile development war heating up in mid-2011

It turns out Guild Software is based in Milwaukee, apparently not too far from the hovel I rented while attending UWM. Keep an eye on Mr. Bergman and his crew. Thanks for the great presentation, John!