So when I look at most corporate events, I do so through a very different set of lenses than most attendees. I’m typically looking at booth layouts, technologies used to present and promote new products, and anything new and cool — with little regard for the actual reasons for the conference.
This year is a little bit different though. While I still went to check out some of the latest/greatest toys the gaming world had to offer, I was also doing some networking. We have recently had the opportunity to start Livid Interactive alongside our Lead Developer Jacob Pennock — a joint venture whose primary pursuit will be the development and distribution of consumer games. This is a pretty exciting project, and I’ll likely post more about it in the coming months. Needless to say, it definitely affected my show floor experience.
That said, I still took some time to hunt down some interesting things. Of those that were noteworthy, I’d say that the facial recognition technologies were among the cooler things I’d seen. They have come a long way, and I can see a lot of use for them within Helios. I also had a chance to demo the Kickstarter darling CastAR, which has a pretty cool product. Given how hot the VR space is right now, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them get some deeper backing at some point. Also awesome was the combo of the Oculus Rift and an omnidirectional treadmill. That is as immersive as it gets.
After the show floor, networking, and parties (we went to a kick-ass Google event with Diplo, where Aoki just kind of showed up out of nowhere) I was spent… but looking forward to hitting the floor next year and taking an even deeper dive into the industry.