EGX Rezzed Diary: Day 3 – Checking Out, Fry Ups & AI

I know there’s been a lot of negativity in these diaries about certain aspects of my time in London, but I can’t help the fact that I’m grumpy a lot of the time. So, with that said, lets talk about checking out of hotels.

I hate checking out of hotels. I quite enjoy checking in, it’s the start of something fresh, but checking out is awful. For starters you’ve got to pack, a process I don’t understand how anyone can enjoy. Packing at home isn’t that bad, beyond the “Oh god what have I forgotten?” factor, but packing when you’re leaving is just terrible. For some reason it’s much harder to get things back into my bag when leaving a hotel, even though I have the exact same amount of stuff.

There’s also the opposite end of the “Oh god what I have forgotten?” panic, which is “What have I left in this hotel room, potentially never to see again?”. I don’t think I left anything behind this time, but it’s a concern that’s not easy to rationalise away.

Fortunately, the utter misery of checking out of my budget hotel was offset by wandering up to a nearby greasy spoon I’ve visited before and using a ridiculously large breakfast to get past my annoyance. There are few mornings that can’t be improved by adding a fry up to the mix, particularly one you don’t have to cook yourself.

At the core of Rezzed’s final day was a lot of time spent not playing games. Instead I took in three panels from the selection of Rezzed Sessions that had been arranged. Instead of showing off a new game, these sessions focus on the development side of the industry, breaking down a variety of subjects in deep detail. Learning about the process of writing a game’s narrative or how tinyBuild crafted SpeedRunners’ characters may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I found it fascinating.

The most interesting talk of the three came from Michael Cook, an artificial intelligence researcher at Goldsmiths University. Gaming shows aren’t necessarily the most obvious place to find academics, but Michael’s work on an AI called ANGELINA is absolutely fascinating. While we’re familiar with playing against AIs in games, ANGELINA aims to create games. There have been similar projects in the past, including earlier iterations of ANGELINA, but the current version of ANGELINA actually aims to collaborate on a game with humans.

In effect ANGELINA will be running a virtual studio, hiring in artists and musicians to provide assets for the game it creates. It will even be sending out emails and judging work by itself, potentially asking for corrections to a piece of music if it doesn’t quite match what ANGELINA was looking for. It’s an idea that sits on the knife edge between intriguing and downright terrifying, but I’m certainly interested to see what ANGELINA comes out with at the end of the process, and how effectively it manages to interact with its human collaborators.

Before I wrap up this final diary piece, it’s probably worth taking a little time to reflect on Rezzed overall. I think what most surprised me about the show was how different it feels to bigger shows like EGX or E3. While there’s certainly a lot going on, Rezzed just has a much more relaxed atmosphere, something that’s helped by the selection of venue.

While I’ve noted this previously, it’s worth stating again that Tobacco Dock is just fantastically well designed. By confining the games to rooms it stops anything from getting too crowded, and gives you clear corridors that make it a lot easier to get around the show. Tobacco Dock also feels a lot more light and airy, which makes the whole experience much more enjoyable.

The games on show also felt far more varied than your average show, with a VR game liteally sitting next to a match three game and exploration titles sharing space with 2D platformers. While I love playing the newest AAA games as much as the next person, it’s great to see what else creators have to offer us.

I think it’s safe to say I’ll be visiting Rezzed again next year, although I hope that the organisers don’t decide to expand it too much. The intimacy of the show is one of the things that makes it feel different, and if it grows too much there may well be the temptation to start filling booth space with AAA titles that already have more than enough exposure at pretty much every other show on the gaming calendar.

So with that said, these diaries come to a close. It’s been a hectic few days, but I’m back home now and my own bed is calling to me.