It was a busy week before the start of this tour. So busy in fact, that I could hardly think about how cool it was going to be to visit San Francisco and Los Angeles again and get the chance to do this. On Friday, Marco and I left a little early from work to be able to pack, because we would be leaving the next day. Even though we would fly just before noon, we still had to get up early. Security checks are strict, so you have to be there a few hours before departure. Fortunately the trains were all running on time, getting on the plane went fine and the trip itself didn’t seem that long. We had a direct flight from Amsterdam to San Francisco, which took about eleven hours. It gave me the chance to watch The Informant and also the successful Dutch movie called ‘Komt een vrouw bij de dokter’, while Marco was having a laugh watching an episode of The Big Bang Theory. After the smoothest landing ever, we took the BART to our hotel right in the center of San Francisco on Market Street.

Because we got here on the weekend and work doesn’t start until Monday, we had quite a lot of time to do some sightseeing. Of course we started out with some Starbucks coffee and a cookie, while walking around the Financial District and Union Square. Having been there before, I convinced Marco to check out the Metreon. He described it as a tacky amusement park and I must admit that it’s just not the same without the PlayStation section and the specialized board game store that used to be opposite the arcade. From the Metreon, we followed the Bay Bridge to the coast. Then the jetlag set in. Our feet were done, we were tired and hungry. So we set out to get a quick and not so healthy meal, after which we went back to the hotel to play some Dominion. If we would’ve gone to bed before that, we would certainly have been wide awake again at three in the morning. Dominion is a pretty cool card game. Marco taught me to play it and I just barely lost the first match. We played another match just now, with some additional cards, and I was able to beat him.

Today we did some additional sightseeing in the city, starting at Fisherman’s Wharf. We walked there and then took the bus through Chinatown back to Market Street. Marco marked a couple of specialized gaming stores on the map, so after checking out the nearest GameStop we took the Muni Metro to West Portal to visit Just Awesome, a store full of popular and obscure board games and space to play them. Marco was especially looking for Thunderstone, which was supposedly not available or hard to get at home. Even through our Dutch, the guy running the store noticed Marco was comparing it to Dominion. Even though it might become a problem to fit it inside our luggage, Marco bought Thunderstone and the shop owner gave us some of his brand new logo stickers. We then traveled back to the hotel to rest a bit and to make sure the equipment we need to demo Greed Corp was working. We brought an Xbox 360 test kit from work, which has a European power block with a voltage to high for an American outlet. So to be able to even turn on the Xbox 360 and run Greed Corp, we had to bring a specialized, heavy power transformer. Fortunately, it all works perfectly!

I’m a pretty big fan of games like Catan and Carcassonne and playing Dominion and visiting the board game shop made me realize I should try out more board and card games. Greed Corp was inspired by a couple of these games and still has a similar look and feel. I really enjoy playing it myself, not just because I worked on it. Much like other board games I admire, Greed Corp continues to surprise me with new layers of depth and strategies I discover. I think it’s that quality that will interest people, with the land collapsing mechanic as the added value of Greed Corp being a digital game. Up until now, I think the press that played the game really got that and I’m confident we’ll be able to communicate that this week to the American press, starting tomorrow.