The drinks are being consumed over here in the twin cities. As a result, we’ve all become a hell of a lot more social over here. Cassandra is interviewing Jacque of Sieent over in the other room about their new game. Sound bytes will be part of next week’s show.

Our live stream tends to lag a bit, but we’re keeping up well enough. Outside of the banquet room where we are located, the sounds of the normal afternoon diners are filtering in. Every once inn a while, someone strolls past and peeks in through the door. I wonder what they’re thinking when they peer in and see a mismatched bunch of people gathered with their computers, staring up at a large screen.

Now on to the Ubisoft keynote…

Yves Guillemot and Michael Ancel… “Hello, we are showing new pheesics weeth ze new conzoles”. (presenting a Marioesque side scroller game with lots of “zany” sounds, does it ever end?

…. No still going.

Yeah yeah yeah….

Where is the fucking Rainbow?

Aaron Pricemen Mr. Crystal me— caffeine. “Sham Wow!” blahh blah blah he’s throwing out stats and on to talking about the percentage of hot women gamers… (WTF?)

Anyway… 90% of the people on stage are PR mouthpieces, and 100% of those are obnoxious, and 99 % of those 100% are sweaty.

Driver San Francisco receives a golf clap from audience.

Next game up!

Some game where your girlfriend and your boat go missing. (Noooo, not my boat!) featuring an ethnically neutral Mr. T and a really long drowning scene…. “Is my boat here? Anyone? Anyone see my boat?… Bueller?”

Wait, that’s not Rainbow, its Far Cry 3. Where is my Rainbow?

Next up, another WW2 shooter… Which isn’t Rainbow, but still looks kind of comical. Brothers in Arms.

Mr Caffeine is back to introduce… Tin-tin.

More Ghost Recon stuff… and the camo looks cool but who in the hell is Tom Ca-la-Han-cy?

Ghost Recon online will be free to play… This is announcednfollowed by the sound of one pair of hands clapping.

Next!

“Uplay.. Twack mania 2 in September” What in the fuck are these women saying? “Shootmania” and “Questmania”

Where is Rainbow? About to enter nerd rage mania.

A bunny kicking game.

Mass Effect 3. Bioware and EA. Will we have more hawt mining action? They don’t say!

Need for Speed: The RUN – OMG running! On foot! Running up stairs and cop face-kicking action. Press X you dumas!

Star Wars: Old Republic- Cowboys, twileks, cutscenes with streaking stars… Want to touch my light saber? “eew, yours is green!”

SSX: And now, snowboarding, with parachutes. Game coming out in January 2012.

FIFA 2012 – May 10

EA Sports football club… Facebook for soccer nerds.
And now the lineup of football players… Real ones. It’s not a celebrity appearance, they’re football players!

Announcing The Sims Social. “you ‘play’ with you friends… (cut to scene of avatars making out) … Play with your friends? More like… play with yourself.

Kingdoms of amalur RECKONING- holy shit, how did they sneak a non-sequel into E3?

Overstrike – Dalton Brooks, how would you describe yourself? “Yes I like Pina Coladas.”

Battlefield 3. October 25. It’s like Battlefield… With another game engine (Frostbite 2)

With more electronics than people in this room, it’s obvious that I’m with my kind of people, talking games, writing about games. There is a large projection screen on the wall, live streaming the Spike TV network. There is a laptop or macbook in front of every individual, some programming, some emailing, some blogging.

Off in the other room, Cassandra has Zachary, president of the IGDA twin cities chapter, to ask him about development and about the organization. There will likely be sound clips up on the site next week.

There is a cluster of game creators off to my right, talking about a future project, networking and making contacts. This gathering is part fun and a whole lot of business.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the live blogging where I wacth other people watch E3. At the Chatterbox pub In Highland Park Minnesota with the IGDA gang of the twin cities.

First up is Microsoft, so let’s get started… and we are scuba diving!

Update 11:41

Sledgehammer and Infinity Ward are making a baby together. The baby is called Modern Warfare 3, which is coming out November 8th. We all knew this, but they wanted to show us their giant submarine… Heh.. Heh…Hehehe.

And now for the PR mouthpiece…. Tomb raider time.

Laura, shivering, wet, and falling, took a spike in the gunt. My question is which blog will be the first to talk about the reduction in Laura’s boobs… Oh wait, it was me.

12:00

Mass Effect 3:

Kinect will allow youu to voice commands for dialogue selections and for directing teammates on where to go. “Garrus, go F*ck yourself!”

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Future Soldier… The game they showed you last year! … But this time, it’s using kinect to allow the player to shoot without a contoller. Not sure how the aiming is going to with with this one, since I couldn’t tell if they were using head movement or hand movement to place the aiming reticule.

12:15 –

Kinect will be able to recognize the voice command for videos, and video titles. “XBOX video”. …. “XBOX Emanuel 5!”

12:23

Gears of War 3-

Ice mother-fuckin T comes on the stage to play co-op Gears, and perform with his band, Body Count.

Ryse …. What?

Classic Halo for XBOX live. I’m sure someone will be excited.

12:35-

Peter Moleneux

Another Fable Game.

Kinect invades Fable.

Kinect invades minecraft… Block… Block…. Block….

Virtual Disney world… A vacation for a new economy!

Star Wars – I see your Schwartz is as big as Minecraft!

Sesame Street: once upon a monster. Awe, cuuute!

Kinect fun labs:

Scan yourself into your XBOX kinect. Become your avatar. “wow, that guy has sausage pants!”

Kinect will allow you to scan in objects and bring your “creations” to life. I have no doubt there will be lots of depantsed creations appearing soon on XBOX live.

Random question from Cassandra: What’s with the stars of David along the bottom of the stage?

Tomorrow morning, Cassandra and I will be live blogging from the IGDA Twin Cities chapter meetup at the Chatterbox, in Saint Paul.

As a brand new member to IGDA, I’m looking forward to meeting some local members of the chapter, as well as learning more about the indy and home brew games that are being created in my home town. I’m betting tomorrow will be an intriguing and educational experience.

And as an aside, purely for personal, selfish reasons, I am a little bit on my toes for the Ubisoft conference at 4:30 CDT, because I want to find out if rumors of another Rainbow Six game will be confirmed or denied. People who’ve claimed to “know a guy” have been whispering about the game’s release for the past two years, and while I am *hopeful as any gamer that this rumor is true, I can’t forget that it’s still a rumor.

Until tomorrow, keep on gaming.

*I may need to seek medical attention or therapy if the rumor is false.