ComicCon: (I play Spore!) [Teaser]

The San Diego Comic Con is unique among conventions in that you can be interested in one thing and still find plenty to do for an entire weekend.

For those who don't know, the ComicCon is big. Really, ridiculously, amazingly big. It's been said that the main hall is so large that you can't see from one end to the other - probably because of the curvature of the earth. And in all of this, you have otaku toys, movies, indie movies, really obscure indie movies, video games, card games, comics (a shrinking part of the Con every year, I note), artists (both good and very poor), and subcultures you can scarcely imagine. Oh, and celebrities of every stripe - movies, TV, comics, sports, books, you name it.

Part of the fun of ComicCon for me is watching the whole arc of it play out from Wednesday, when the Professionals, Exhibitors, and the most rabid of the 4-Day-Passers show up to pick up their badges, to Sunday, when people exhaustedly drag themselves from booth to booth looking for something they missed the first 2 dozen times.

So naturally, after getting my badges I went to the San Diego Zoo.

Thursday is commonly known as the chill day - or at least the dry-run day - before the rabid hordes show up and tear your sanity to pieces. In the most recent years the Con has been selling out of tickets and thus Thursday has been more and more like Friday.

So, Spore. After creating a few dozen creatures at my workplace and in the comfort of my home, I was eager to see Will Wright address the Con (for the first time) and get a hands-on of the game itself. Having planned my morning around going to see him speak, I was amused to see the Spore booth asking people if they wanted to see Will Wright speak - which seemed like a no-brainer until you remember that ComicCon attracts all sorts of folks, including, apparently, people who have never heard of Will Wright or the mighty Sim empire.

As an inducement to go see the talk, they were handing out Spore t-shirts - and even had my size - (which marks a convention first for me). I eagerly accepted the shirt and prepared to watch Will Wright speak (and since he is such a fast talker, see if I could follow what he said).