Chucks and Cobblestones: Day 2 – Nerdy Meetups, HOG and the English Nerd Artist

Thank you Meetup for introducing me to super cool people in a place I don’t know. I will forever by an acolyte for Meetup and AirBnB. There, I said it.

London, Day 2 begets an uneventful morning. My hosts went to their perspective jobs and I was left to my own devices. When choice and unfamiliarity get you down, go to Meetup I says. So I do and I find a great meetup for Indie Game Developers in Oxford Circus Plaza. I have no idea what that is or what I’m going into but I live on the safe side of YOLO. I workout, get showered, get lost finding the tube station, find the Brixton tube station and head to Oxford Circus.

Jimminy cricket! Hello British NYC. The sidewalks were jam packed, the stores high end and every corner held a preacher, a peddler a Green Peacer or some type of promoter. It was loud, crowded, smelling of waffles, cigarettes and expensive cologne. Glorious. I asked directions to the plaza and was disappointed by the low lit, drab contrast that the Plaza held. Fastfood fare and cheap tables; a image frozen in time of the 90s’ food court. There was the Game Dev Meetup, a modge podge of people who were music composers, coders, producers looking for fresh talent and newbies. I introduced myself, sat and listened to the knowledge around me and within the GB Game industry. We laughed and talked about video games, kanban and agile methodologies pertaining to game development and why the combo is better than waterfall any day. I forgot to eat breakfast so I asked where can I get good eats without breaking the bank. While a few people had to return to work, the rest of us traversed to busy streets in search of Korean food: Bibigo was the place.

bibigo_04 — kimichi marniated fried calamari

Talking with Jade and Chiara was fantastic. Learning about the music side of gaming, their process and their passion for the art was amazing. Aubry, our French developer had to go home, but Chiara, Jade and their friend Fred decided to keep it going and explore the streets and music shops of Oxford Circus…nerdin’ up the air with our geekery.

” We have time before our taiko lesson! Let’s HOG it up?”

‘HOG it up?’

“Yeah!”

So we piled back on to the tube and went to the outskirts of London to one of the coolest places on earth: HOG == Heart of Gaming; the underground gaming spot that you pay 7 pounds and play all the games you want for as long as you want in a refurbed warehouse. Brad Pitt littered the walls. Fight sticks littered the seats and I bought some SANWA buttons half off while sadly unable to play Bayonetta 2. I almost bought a Madcatz SF4 TE fightstick shell, but that was too big a project to mod out. I love this place. I really, really do. It’s a perfect revamp to the arcade system that is so sorely needed in the US.