For me the highlight of GameFest was the chance to meet some of the incredibly talented Dream-Build-Play finalists.
Conferences like this usually involve Microsoft giving out swag to the attendees, but this year we were excited to be given cool stuff instead. Here are some of the XNA team sporting their new Shuggy t-shirts:
I think David missed an opportunity here, though. He should have scattered his goodies on ledges high above the expo floor, and set things up so we had to rotate the convention center to get to them!
The best thing about Dream-Build-Play is that it answers two questions I get asked a lot:
Common Question 1: "Are you guys crazy? Managed code for games? That's never going to work!"
My new answer: "Hah! Go play these games and see for yourself."
Common Question 2: "Why didn't feature X make it into the next version of the XNA Framework?"
My new answer: "Because we've been playing games, of course! How can you possibly expect us to get any work done if you keep making stuff that is so cool and fun to play?"