So MAGfest was amazing, and I am so glad that I was able to attend. Nothing gets you more motivated to work in the industry than spending four solid days surrounded by your fellow nerds!
I could wax poetic about the entire weekend, but I’ll keep it to the highlights of the weekend, and what stuck out most:
Amazing people!
I’ve got to say that the Dragon Age community is incredibly kind and inviting. I loved having a chance to chat with them at the photoshoot on Friday (and the impromptu meetup on Saturday), and I love how open and respectful everyone was when talking about their canon Inquisitors and theories about what’s in store for us in the next game. When there were disagreements or differences of opinion, no one said snide comments about how wrong the other person was.
That was what struck me the most, I think—The crowd at MAGfest in general was much more mature and polite (if a little more drunk) than what I experienced the previous week at Katsucon (and other anime cons in general). No one came up to me and said “Wow your doll is cool but why did you make Solas? He’s such an asshole, I hate him!” Instead, if someone recognized the doll or my outfit we ended up talking about how I made him, my costume, or the anchor. I received several queries for commission work, and generally came away from the con energized and encouraged, as opposed to drained and demoralized.
Music, music everywhere!
I am a sucker for live performances, and given that the ‘M’ in MAGfest stands for “Music,” I never lacked for something to do. I managed to catch a couple of really fantastic performances, including the “The World is Square” concert. So many great Squaresoft songs, including some of my favorite pieces from Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross.
But part of the beauty of the festival is that there are multiple jam spaces set up all over the convention center, so at any given time musicians will magically gravitate to a taped-off area to delight the crowds with impromptu jam sessions. I caught two performances of Disco Cactus because I was fortunate enough to happen to be walking by when they started playing more Chrono stuff (what can I say, I’m a sucker for nostalgic games, too).
Panels
For the last five or more years, I’ve pretty much only been going to conventions to hang out with friends, meet new people, and talk to strangers about how they made their costumes. At MAGfest, I actually saw things I wanted to do, panels I wanted to see, guests I wanted to listen to. I actually got to experience the full glory of an interesting con for the first time in ages!
I attended six in total, and I was really impressed with the caliber of most of the discussions. I now know how to make chainmaile (woo!), and I learned that video-game themed memoirs are a thing that people pay money to read. I might actually write one, because as soon as they started talking about it I knew exactly which game I would write about (*coughcoughDragonAge*) and which life experiences I could tie in to the plot of the game (the not-so glamorous life of a CS agent for a triple-A studio).
There were other great panels, too. The writer for “The Stanley Parable” hosted a panel about writing good characters, and I got to listen to the creator of Twine talk about choose-your-own-adventure books.
That’s right—there were multiple panels about the importance of writing in games. This was tremendous for me, since most of my professors in my game design degree program taught that writing was something that you worry about at the end of the development cycle, and not at the start. Seeing so many packed (And I do mean standing room only) sessions helped me realize that many fellow players and designers share my views on narrative design.
Verdict: Awesome
In short, I had an amazing time, met some truly amazing people, and experienced some truly amazing moments this weekend. My only regret is that I was not able to convince more friends to come with me, but I have a whole year to work on them for next year. Maybe I’ll even get some group cosplay in to boot!
Katharine Jay's Blog 