The Winnitron 1000 on the Streets of San Francisco

The Winnitron 1000 was a HUGE success at the 2011 Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco! Hundreds of people from all over the world came by the Manitoba booth to finally get a chance to lay their hands on the machine.

Over the three days the expo floor was open, the total play time for the Winnitron 1000 was: 19 Hours, 59 Minutes, 54 Seconds, with a grand total of 256 games played. The booth was packed from the second the floor opened to the minute the floor closed every day. We couldn’t have been happier with the way things turned out!

That being said, we were never quite sure how well the Winnitron 1000 would be received, or how well it would stand up to so much constant abuse. We brought along a bunch of spare parts, just in case something went wrong. Fortunately, she held up great, and took the non stop action that was thrust upon her

The Winnitron 1000 Crew at GDC 2011

We also were never 100% sure exactly how the Winnitron 1000 would actually get down to San Francisco. Fortunately, a team of 8 guys from Complex Games (a Winnipeg game development studio) decided they were going to take the long 3 day journey down to GDC in a used van, and hopefully we would find a way to make the Winnitron 1000 fit. Well, we managed to fit the machine inside the van, but we had to take out a row of seats in order to do it… In the end, they had to rent a U-Haul, and we crossed our fingers nothing would get damaged, or that they would get stopped at the border. They probably don’t see people bringing across an arcade cabinet every day!

In the end, with a little help from some bubble wrap, the machine made it there safe and sound! The computer booted up fine, so we were off to the races (or so it seemed). While we were testing the machine, we found a few weird bugs that would cause the local database of games to not load properly. Sometimes games wouldn’t be responsive if you wailed on the buttons while they loaded. Fortunately, Alec was able to find a fix for both the problems the night before the expo floor opened. The next morning, things went off without a hitch! Here’s a time lapse of a few days of the expo floor, so you can get an idea of how much the machine was played. Colin Northway was also stalking the Winnitron webcam, and captured some cool moments of some indies playing on the machine.

Winnitron 1000 Playtime at GDC 2011

Jonathan Blow playing the Winnitron 1000

Notch (The Creator of Minecraft) about to play Super Crate Box Versus with Tom Rab on the Winnitron 1000

Super Crate Box was by far the most played game on the Winnitron 1000, eating up almost 10 hours of total play time on the machine. This was the only place at GDC you could play this variant of the game, and it attracted some indie ‘celebrities’ like Jonathan Blow and Markus Persson AKA Notch (the creator of MineCraft).

Canabalt: 2 Player by Adam Saltsman followed as the 2nd most played game, followed by Chevy Ray‘s simple but addictive X-Bones. The break down of the rest of the games follows like this:

Along with the Winnitron 1000 at the booth, we decided it might be really cool to do some interviews with different indie game developers about the games they’ve developed for the Winnitron 1000. The crew from Indie Game the Movie were also there, so we did a short interview with them as well! The interviews the first day were a little bit chaotic to say the least, but there’s some nice gems in there We recorded the interviews for your viewing pleasureful:

First off we have Kyle Pulver from Retro Affect talking about his game Space Sushi for the Winnitron 1000!

Next up, Jan Willem Nijman from Vlambeer does a live running commentary on a match of Super Crate Box Versus!

On day two, Alec interviewed James and Lisanne, creators of Indie Game the Movie. They talk about how the movie is coming along, distribution, their personal lives, their home in Winnipeg, and why they think Winnipeg is a special place in the indie game community.

Finally, we have an interview with Adam Saltsman. Adam talks about Canabalt, being a dad, and what inspires him as a game developer. Unfortunately, my camera ate the footage for this segment, so all we have is the audio feed.

Adam Saltsman Interview GDC 2011 by kertgartner

Overall everything was a huge success! We had a great time at GDC this year, and we’re hoping to bring the Winnitron 1000 (and maybe a few siblings) back next year!

For those of you that actually got to play the Winnitron 1000 at GDC this year, you may have noticed that the machine received a web cam upgrade! We took a time lapse of people playing the machine for the entire expo along with screen shots of what they were currently playing. We haven’t retrieved all that data just yet, but it will likely be the most epic time lapse you’ve ever seen Hopefully that will be posted in the next week or two.

If you have any comments or questions, let us know!

Thanks!