Here, there and everywhere.

I've just spent a busy couple of days up and down the country, first of all visiting London yesterday (27th) to attend a discussion on digital distribution at Bafta's HQ in Piccadilly, London and then, after a stay-over, up to Bradford University where I was part of a local industry networking/collaborative meeting with the staff of the computing/media/games-related courses over at Bradford Uni. 

The talk at Bafta was preceded by a pint with old mucker Matt O'Disco who had his first day at Square-Enix after his 3 years at Eidos, funnily enough the week after Square had announced their purchase of Eidos, it's a funny old-games-industry... Also, as I had checked into my hotel, I was walking up to Piccadilly Circus from Leicester Square and I got a text from Craig Albeck, who coincidentally was in London and asking if I knew a good watering hole in Covent Garden... so we arranged to have a pint later.

The talk itself was fairly interesting even if I didn't really take much from it myself, given that we've been heavily into the digital download scene since late 2005 and it's almost all our business from here on in, so the "Do developers really need publishers?" tagline of the talk was already answered by ourselves as we're very definately digital publishers these days. It was quite amusing that David Lau-Kee (ex Criterion/EA) described 3rd party traditional publishers as 'leeches and parasites' - it drew gasps from the audience. David also used Worms success on XBLA to highlight what's possible, including asking if I was in the crowd and quizzing me over sales figures... which I avoided (got slapped wrists last time!).

Afterwards I took time to have a chat with a few people then escaped off for a pint with the Albeck Monkey, we had a ride in a rickshaw to Covent-Garden and then into some club thing as all the pubs were shut (what IS all that about in London?). 

An early start today took me back up north (including dreadfully slow train internet) and then onto Bradford for the advisory panel meeting, which is an annual event. I actually really enjoyed the talks and felt the input by all was positive - I'm hopeful that we can get something going with Ian and his team.

Back in the office tomorrow before a long-weekend and plenty, plenty to do...

Incidentally I had a bit of fun putting an iPhone sneak peak together last Sunday (took me about 20mins) and its had about 50,000 hits in just a few days on Youtube and made news absolutely everywhere, with a stunningly overwhelmingly positive reaction. Should do well when that hits, then...

Oh and yes, footage of Worms 2 Armageddon (360) and Alien Breed (360/PC) will be coming soon!