L.A. comedy, wining and dining

After GDC I flew to Los Angeles (CA) to visit my brother and his girlfriend Julia. They have a house in Studio City and a bunch of cats, despite my brother being allergic, which means that Julia cleans the place basically every day and it’s spotless. Cats are lovely but there are currently seven of them (!) and Julia’s mother aims to bring another two to the house… She is a cat rescuer, you see. Fortunately the house is quite big and there is a nice backyard so there is enough space for all these cats. Besides, they were very well-behaved so you hardly noticed them except for when they jumped on your lap to be patted.



On the night of my arrival, Urban and Julia took me to a nice Mexican restaurant in the Valley called Casa Vega. This was a very popular spot with excellent food and a singer walking around among the tables with his guitar, performing old Gipsy Kings melodies. I learned that you always have to wait at the bar, sipping huge margaritas or some other drink, for quite a while before you get seated, due to the restaurant’s popularity.




On Friday night a friend of Julia’s took us all to see a stand-up comedy show, Ester Goldberg (you can also read more here), at the Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. It was promoted as "the Hilarious Outrageous Big Swanky Musical & Comedy event of the year", and I must say that he/she (a drag character similar to Dame Edna, named Ester with a huge, red hair-do, performed by Michael Airington) deserves a much bigger audience than what was attending this show. Ester did a combination of jazz, cabaret and comedy improv acts with Jewish-American slur. She shamelessly made fun of people in the audience and was probably grateful for an older couple from Oklahoma who were good sports and laughed heartily when she referred to cowboys, UFO spotting and homofobia. I was quite impressed that one person can captivate and entertain a whole audience for a couple of hours. There were only a few moments where Ester lost me. Urban & Julia knew several musicians in the Archibald Leeches Orchestra supporting Ester with sound effects, comments and accompanying her singing. If you get a chance to see Ester Goldberg perform - don't miss it! It was hilarious!

Chris, Julia, Urban and I at the Comedy Store

Following the comedy show, we went to Red Rock, a popular bar further down on Sunset Strip. The review of this place by Stephanie L. Smith on Citysearch is spot on. But we actually got an incredibly fast (and rather good-looking, I must say!) waiter who took our drink orders and delivered them in a heart-beat. As we walked in I remembered having drinks here after a dinner date with a Swedish game producer a couple of years ago when I was in town for the E3 tradeshow. The place was very lively and loud also then.

The weather was lovely in L.A. during my visit. On Saturday, we went to lunch with one of Julia’s friends, a first-time film script writer and novelist, at a combined bookstore and café in a quaint neighborhood – don’t remember exactly where it was but it had a café at the front serving among other things really nice salads, a bookstore at the back and an outdoor patio with 10-15 tables. It was not until late afternoon that Urban and I finally took off for our annual skiing tradition in Mammoth.

The annual geek show for game developers

This year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC 2007) was held in San Francisco (CA) on March 5-9th. I was there for three days and stayed at the Chancellor Hotel on Powell Street at Union Square, smack in the center of SF. I have been in San Francisco a number of times and I absolutely LOVE this city. It’s easy to walk around and find things to see and do, to take the cable-car or cabs and people are friendly. This time around, I did not have time to go to any of my usual salsa clubs (Roccapulco, the Glass Kat or Café Cocomo), and I’ve taken most of the touristy pictures before, so I mostly walked back and forth between the hotel and the Moscone Center, which is the big convention center in SF where all major exhibitions and conferences are held.

Union Square















This was my fifth GDC so I know many of the game developers and other industry folks that come to this event. Historically GDC has been held in San Jose but they tried moving it to SF a couple of years ago but then moved it back to San Jose last year. Now it’s back in SF so I guess the event is growing. GDC has been organized for 21 years now and there has been a separate 2-day mobile conference, GDC Mobile, for at least the last 6-7 years.

Mobile gaming is maturing and there has been a weed-out and consolidation of companies in the industry the past couple of years. Playing games is the forth most used mobile service or function among 15-19 year-olds. 80% of Sony Ericsson phone users start and play a game on the phone at least once. One of the industry challenges is however to get mobile users to search for and download more games to their phones, not just play the ones that are already preloaded. Industry luminaries often discuss the fact that only 5-7% of the users also purchase and download games and how this can be increased, but we start getting feedback from some of the leading game developers, publishers and operator customers that Sony Ericsson phones are the ones generating the most game downloads among mobile users, which is of course a positive story to tell.

Embedding high-quality, intuitive and addictive games is of course key to stimulate replay and interest in playing more games. Sony Ericsson preloads roughly 70% 3D games on its phones, demonstrating the game-playing capabilities at their best, and mobile 3D game titles are also becoming a normal part of the game portfolio among professional game developers and publishers. Puzzle, sports and arcade games are most popular preload genres on mobile phones due to instant casual and intuitive game-play. Role-Playing Games (RPG), adventure and strategy games are less popular for preload since they are too advanced for most casual, mobile gamers who usually engage in game-snack instead of hours of continuous game-play.

I was of course at the event this year for press interviews as an official Sony Ericsson spokesperson, and I managed to attend a few presentations and lectures at GDC Mobile, but there were a number of other activities that helped me really enjoy this tradeshow. These included having American breakfast (French toast or buttermilk pancakes with fresh fruit and maple syrup) and watching people at Lori’s Diner – a 1950’s decorated restaurant with typical jukebox, music, old cars and signs, a gas pump, waitresses in 50’s dresses and aprons, and booth seating with red sofas – located in the upper left corner of Union Square, and attending a party hosted by Vivendi Games Mobile and dinner at a fabulous Italian restaurant. I had tickets for a couple of other industry parties (the Nordic Gaming event and a huge Sony party) on Wednesday night, but jetlag all of a sudden hit me so hard that I could not stay awake for the life of me after dinner with colleagues, so I skipped the parties altogether and went to bed.

Two other activities not to be missed at GDC are the exhibition and industry awards.

GDC Expo
There was quite high activity in the exhibition hall. It was fun just to walk around and see all the geeks absorbed in various games on different platforms and devices. One of the stands with the most visitors all the time seemed to be the PlayStation booth, perhaps thanks to their many video game and PSP (PlayStation Portable, for those of my friends who are not familiar with the acronym) stations where people could play new games.


7th annual Game Developers Choice Awards
The Game Developers Choice Awards honor the outstanding achievements, innovations and risks taken in the game industry to make a difference in the art and science of making great games. Nominations are made and the votes cast by developers working in the trenches all over the world. The South Hall of the Moscone Center was jampacked on the Wednesday night with enthusiastic and cheering game geeks who gave standing ovations to some of the most appreciated and loved game creators.

This was a really cool event, very professionally presented by IGDA, International Game Developers Association. Nominations and awards were presented for best Innovation, best New Studio to overcome hurdles as a start-out, best Writing in a game (story, plot construction, dialog, branching narratives etc), best Game Design, best Audio, best Character Design, excellence of Technology in a game (graphics programming, artificial intelligence, networking, physics etc), best Visual Arts and Best Game of the Year (released in 2006).


Hosted by Double Fine’s Tim Schafer

There were also four awards given to individuals:

• for exhibiting independence in thought and action while experimenting with alternate / emerging forms of digital games (the ‘Maverick’ award, given to Greg Costikyan, CEO of Manifesto Games),
• looking back through history for bravery of a developer who tested the waters and served as a lesson and inspiration to the rest of the game developer community over the years (the ‘First Penguin’ award given to Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris back in the 80’s which later became almost like a game-genre of its own with many popular follow ups and variants, also for mobile in the past few years),
• for significant individual contributions to building community, sharing knowledge, speaking on behalf of developers etc (the ‘Community Contribution’ award given to George Alistair Sanger, The Fat Man-Music and Sound Design for Games), and last but not least
• for career and achievements as a developer and having had an undeniable impact on the craft of game development and games as a whole (the ‘Lifetime Achievement’ award). This award was given to Shigeru Miyamoto, Senior Managing Director of Nintendo. He’s the creator of several well-known and loved video games series such as Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda and Pikmin (not to be confused with Pac-Man!).

Shigeru Miyamoto, happily accepting and giving a short thank you speech in Japanese for the ‘Lifetime Achievement’ Award and several of the other “Best…” awards

I wish I could have stayed longer than three days in San Francisco and had some time off to go dancing and exploring more parts of the city, perhaps even visit my friend Vinay, who this particular week had gone to Yosemite Park with his parents from Mauritius, but some other adventures were waiting for me in California. Stay tuned for reports…


Video interviews from GDC

• GDC: Nikki Inderlied Talks To Mimmis Olsson, Sony Ericsson, part 1 (I4U News)
• GDC: Nikki Inderlied Talks To Mimmis Olsson, Sony Ericsson, part 2 (I4U News)

Engelberg from the merry side

I just came home from my “ski trip” to Engelberg and in a matter of hours I am going back to the Arlanda airport for a long-haul trip to the US, but that will be the topic for another blog post.
I almost gave up on the idea of skiing in the Swiss Alps and went to the bar Yucatán in Engelberg to drown my sorrows on Thursday night. I had a couple of beers and watched the good-looking bartender make drinks for an increasingly festive crowd. Then I sat talking for a while with the son of the man running Engelberg’s horse and carriage business, who also told me about his brother’s adventures as a blacksmith, competing in the Swiss national horse-shoeing team – imagine that there are competitions for such a thing; I thought that this trade was almost extinct.

I ended up partying the whole night with some Norwegians and Danes.



In true Scandinavian Viking spirit we called upon the old Asa gods to bring us some snow – and lo and behold! – when the bar closed at 3:00 am and we had to leave, it was snowing heavily! I can’t begin to describe how utterly happy I felt in that moment! I was humming and smiling all the way back to the apartment.

Although my skiing sucked the day after – the first few runs each winter are always a little stiff before I get into it – the snow was wonderful! I took the Titlis Rotair lift up, crossed Trübsee over to Jochpass and skied there the whole afternoon. So I got one wonderful day of skiing, then it rained again…

Engelberg

Titlis

After ski and parties
After ski is a given on any ski trip, and the Chalet at the bottom of the Titlis – Trübsee lift is a good place to go for some fun after skiing. It’s usually packed with people from different countries, and Friday and Saturday were no exceptions. On Saturday they had a cover band playing so the place rocked. People were dancing on the tables and the wooden benches in their ski boots and sang along to familiar hits from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.






I made friends with some Germans who worked for a transportation company and were in Engelberg on a company trip. We later went for dinner and Kloster-Bier at Yucatán and sat talking for a couple of hours while the place got absolutely jam-packed.


Wolfgang, Roman, George, Tommy and I at after ski


Left: Tommy, Anja and I at Yucatán
Right: Wolfgang with Kloster-Bier

There were two bands playing at Yucatán last night, so all the young and crazy snowboarders as well as older ski tourists were there partying. The Germans and I were seated in an outer bar room so we didn’t quite notice the state of the other guests until much later. I had a good time talking to various people until I decided to check out the bigger bar area where the bands were playing. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen people so incredibly drunk! I was dancing for no more than two songs when I noticed two male guests engaged in sexual activity right there on the dance floor. The party had hit a low-mark (!) and I decided it was time to leave.

Perfect weather when leaving Engelberg
Today I cleaned the apartment and packed my gear to leave Engelberg. Of course the sun was shining and there was not a cloud on the sky! A beautiful day, the first sunny one all week, and I had to leave! How typical!

Below you’ll find a few photos from Engelberg in all its sunny glory.








Beautiful Luzern
The cute, small, red, two-wagon Zentralbahn train took me from Engelberg to Luzern in an hour and I watched the beautiful landscape pass by. The scenery was quite breathtaking with mountain cottages and green hill sides against a backdrop of snowy Alp tops. I couldn’t help but thinking of the Sound of Music.









I spent 50 min in the sun by the lake in Luzern (see photos below) before I continued to the Zurich Flughafen with my connecting train. In the end I was wishing that I could have stayed a while longer in the Swiss Alps to enjoy the now much improved weather. I would imagine that it’s beautiful to go hiking in the Swiss Alps in summertime.

Luzern

Ski trip to the Swiss Alps turned into rain season

Quite tired from a very active salsa weekend in Zurich, I took the train to Engelberg this past Monday to spend the rest of the week skiing. The train ride took about two hours with a change in beautiful Luzern. There was hardly any snow in sight along the way. Weird leaving a snow-clad Sweden with chaos due to all the snowing in many parts of the country (not to mention Stockholm where big, fluffy snow-flakes were falling) for quite unexpected spring weather in the Alps... I was sadly disappointed since I had expected there to be a lot of snow this time of year in the Alps! It must be an effect of global warming – how sad.

Engelberg (http://www.engelberg.ch/) is situated at 1050 meters above sea level in the Swiss Alps and has 24 different cable-ways and 82 km of ski slopes. My friends Anneli & Bosse own an apartment in Engelberg and had been good enough to let me borrow it this week. It’s quite conveniently located about 5 min from the ski lift (and after ski!) and 10 min from the train station. I have been in Engelberg before over New Year’s 2005/06 and the skiing was excellent, including some great off-pist skiing in knee-deep, fresh powder snow.

Pouring rain in Engelberg

Upon arrival to Engelberg this time, though, the birds were chirping quite like in spring-time, the little snow there was on the ground was melting and water was streaming in the creek. Nonetheless, the ski lifts were running and people were indeed skiing, so I figured that it can’t be that bad (check out the webcam from the ski resort: http://www.engelberg.ch/Aktuell/LiveCam/index.php). The second day, I realized it can be that bad, because the rain was pouring down! Not exactly ideal for skiing. Quite depressing actually.

I had to resort to a good book by the Swedish author Jan Guillou and TV programs in incomprehensible Swiss German or familiar American shows dubbed into somewhat understandable German instead – well, I don’t speak German either, but at least it’s similar enough to Swedish that I could pick out a word here and there…After zapping through some 30 channels I finally found a couple of Swiss TV channels in Italian, tsi (televisione Svizzera italiana) 1 and 2 as well as the Italian Rai Uno, and felt more comfortable when I could understand the language, although what they were broadcasting was quite silly.

The restaurant/bar Yucatán in the ground-floor of Hotel Bellevue was quite happening, nonetheless. It was filled with happy, beer-drinking people when I went there for dinner and to write the postcards from Zurich I hadn’t gotten to yet. So after some good pasta and a couple of Swiss beers I went back to the apartment with my groceries, including my favorite coffee confect Raffaello-Kugeln (crispy cocoanut covered confects with creamy almond filling), less bothered by the rain than before.

The third day I woke up at 8:00 am to have breakfast and get ready for what I hoped would be at least one day of skiing, but the Titlis Glacier, Laubersgrat, Rindertitlis and Jochstock were closed “due to strong wind” and all ski-lifts and slopes were closed but the cable-car to Ristis, perhaps to be able to look at “the view” because skiing must have been impossible… My God, it was raining! I’m not talking about some gentle drizzle here, but a steady and heavy pouring rain washing away all remaining evidence of snow. The temperature in Engelberg was +4° Celsius. The below Live Cam pictures from local TV yesterday morning show you just how depressing it was.

So what does a girl do when alone in the Swiss Alps in winter-time with no possibility of skiing? She goes in monastery…

Engelberg Kloster

Given all the raining I thought I’d enjoy some ‘history and culture’ instead of skiing. Engelberg has a large Benedictine monastery (http://www.kloster-engelberg.ch/) founded in year 1120 which made for an interesting visit. Apparently the singing voices of angels in some revelation on the monastery grounds influenced the name of the village here in the mountains, hence ‘Engelberg’. Due to a fire in the 18th century, the monastery had to be rebuilt and it has subsequently been restored into its current state and is quite modern. The latest restoration started in 2005 and is expected to be finished in 2009.

The monks are supposed to spend their life in prayer and labor. One of the monks (Colomban, I think his name was) was famous for his exquisite wooden work, and spent ten years finishing the Room of Virtues in the monastery, depicting 24 female virtues in wooden panels on the wall.

The monastery also has a school with 250 pupils (roughly one third living in boarding houses) divided into ten different classes.

The Great Baroque Hall, used mainly for various musical events

Hallway on third floor

Guest Hall – guests are not allowed to have meals together with the monks

Monastery garden

The beautiful monastery church in its bright colors is currently under restoration and will be opened again to the public at the end of March.


Walks in Engelberg
Today is the forth day of steady raining and now I’m seriously getting bored beyond belief. Only a couple of ski lifts were open, but all the top ones where the snow was likely to be found were closed again today due to strong winds. I didn’t even bother going to the ski-rental shop or buying a day pass for the lift with the outlook of skiing in mud.

After walking round Engelberg ten times (doesn’t take that long), snapping a few rain-saddened photos and visiting just about every café there is, I am now on the verge of giving up on the idea of skiing on this trip. There are only two things I can do now: party like crazy at one of the local bars or leave this rain-pit. If nothing drastic happens to the weather and it starts snowing heavily tomorrow, I will have to do something else over the weekend.