BioWare Blog: (Dragon Age) Demo Moments, Part Two

BioWare's Bruce Venne continues to share a few stories from the time he's spent demonstrating Dragon Age: Origins during various events.
Last year we showed Dragon Age: Origins (tminstoreslaterthisyearforpcandconsoles) at the Games Convention in Leipzig. After checking to our hotel we hopped over to the Convention Centre to set up. Our first demos were the next day. We brought over disks to install the build onto machines provided at the Convention Centre. There were problems. I don't remember the specifics, but the game wouldn't run. Ok, no reason to panic, that's why we brought over our own demo machines. As a result, I go back to the hotel and grab the demo box. And I mean demo BOX. The computer was packed in the box we bought it in so this thing was huge. Carrying it through an airport from the luggage carrier to a taxi can be tiring. I had to transport it through the entire Convention Centre. Now I'm not a large man. Forget the image of the burly, rugged Alberta oil-worker. Those guys are from Newfoundland. I'm not that guy. On top of that I hadn't slept in the past twenty-four hours. My flight out of Edmonton was insanely early, so to get to the airport in time I had to leave my place at around 3:30am. I figured heck, rather than waking up that early I just won't go to sleep. The only sleep I was working on was the little naps I was able to take during the flight. So after carrying, pushing, pulling, lugging, shoving, kicking and hauling the box, (which had increased in density a thousand-fold by this time) all the way to the EA booth I was exhausted. I collapsed in the corner and slept, while the EA IT guys set up the machine.