So IRDC just happened, hosted at the National Videogame Arcade in Nottingham. Mark Johnson of Ultima Ratio Regum did the organising. You can find a couple of other reports on it by Mark and by Alan Charlesworth.

On the Friday a few of us met in a pub and had a long chat about roguelikes and gaming. As a sign of the times some wedding discussion also crept in (myself and 2 others are currently engaged). I imagine in a few years it will be about babies! We also had some interesting chat about how Youtube Let’s Plays affect roguelike exposure and sales, and how roguelikes in particular are good for Let’s Plays – both the audience and the LPer like having fresh content from a procedural system.

On Saturday were the presentations. They were recorded and streamed, and hopefully they’ll be available soon! I’ve uploaded my slides on Alternative Death Systems, essentially saying we need to make the approach to death more obvious, interesting and dramatic, which the ubiquitous HP model often fails at. Particular highlights in the talks for me were AIs attempting to beat Spelunky, a peek at how DCSS generates levels and lots of detail of how Sir, You Are Being Hunted procedural generates environments that feel hand-crafted.

After the talks we went to a pub and then out for a curry (very British) before going to a pub that was in some caves beneath the castle, complete with halberds and flails on the walls. Many roguelike puns were made! Then there were debates about game pricing, early access, Steam refunds and other boring money-related stuff. Still, it was interesting to hear some passionate opinions on stuff outside of my domain. We also decided that we need a roguelike set in the caverns of Nottingham, and more roguelikes involving Sean Bean. We should also try to get Sean Bean to a future IRDC if we can :P

The next day we were a thinned out crowd, sitting in a room with a bunch of laptops showing off various roguelikes. I brought some board games to keep us entertained, and gave Mark his first taste of modern board games – he was pretty quickly hooked, vowing to beat me at Hey, That’s My Fish (he didn’t). Some people wandered in to see the roguelike exhibition and quickly wandered out – overall the audience was much younger than expected and the games not so appropriate for them.

We recorded an episode of Roguelike Radio, mostly discussing the previous day’s talks. This should be available soon!

At the end of the day we went for pasta and a few of us ended up back at my hotel room playing more board games. Good fun :) I managed to do perhaps my best lying ever in as a spy in Resistance :D Alan was utterly hoodwinked…

Overall a great event! Mark did an excellent job arranging everything, and the venue were fantastic. It was also brilliant to see the likes of DarkGod and Ido again.

However it should be said that this hasn’t been the most successful of IRDCs in terms of attendance, and particular in terms of diversity of attendees. The vast majority there were English (many drawn through Mark’s academic connections), with only about four coming from abroad. Most of the European IRDC regulars didn’t attend. No women either. We did have one uni student attend, which is great, and he gave a presentation on his level generator made for his dissertation (very cool). We need more young people making roguelikes and getting into the dev scene :)

I think the location probably didn’t work in our favour for attracting more people – Nottingham seems a far and exotic place for anyone outside the UK. Contrast with the London event where many people made it part of a holiday, some with their families, or the accessibility and cheapness of Berlin. Something to consider for next year (there are rumours of Paris!)