Forum Overview :: Motherfucking News :: Report from the Game Developers Conference

[quote name="I need clarification"]Ah, San Jose. Oh well, enough about the town. Made the trek up to GDC again this year, god knows why. The conference remains as hopelessly PC-centric as always, I suppose harkening back to its humble origins as CGDC. The irony this year is the actual attendees were almost all involved in console development (the ones who counted, anyway), while the expo floor and the majority of the planned lectures concerned that not-so-booming world of PC games. Sony deigned for the first time to actually set up something approaching a booth this year (mostly to hawk the linux dev kit for PS2, as close to a PC as the PS2 gets), while Nintendo of America strode purposefully into the conference by assigning two bored-looking HR people a tiny booth in the job fair, where they politely informed any surprised wanderers that they weren't really hiring but would be glad to accept resumes. The X-Box logo was plastered over every available surface, including the ubiquitous handbags, badge-holder straps, and foreheads of every single attendee, but if there was a Microsoft booth, I forget where it was or what it was promoting. Certainly not X-Box. No, the big three seem to know the money should go to E3, and let the GDC retain its proud if somewhat constraining amateur status. Further evidence of this was the nonstop jockeying between nVidia and Radeon. Honestly, if there was ever an industry that literally screamed PLEASE KEEP US NICHE, it's the combined forces of PC game developers, the fans/haters of their games, and the countless sites dedicated to debating the whole mess ad nauseum. This year, at least, the PC developers didn't even bother to protest when the roundtables inevitably moved to console discussion. Anyway, on with the awards: Best Lecture: Tie between Jason Rubin of Naughty Dog whose "Next Generation Graphics: Who Cares?" speech both terrified and inspired all of us, the guy from Insomniac who explained how they managed to make a game like Ratchet and Clank in a year and a half, and a former WETA technical director who showed some great behind-the-scenes stuff from LotR: TT. Worst Lecture: A close race between pretty much all the other lectures, but the winner should probably be Art Management for Artists, which I think was supposed to be a lecture by Doug Oglesby of Red Storm, but somehow was rescheduled into a roundtable, then he just gave us all his lecture notes and told us to talk amongst ourselves. Occasionally he would interject with some Caltrops-level "humor" about working with some Navy SEAL or other, then we would go back to yelling at each other about what a lead artist does. Honorable Mention: After their electrifying presentation last year at GDC in which they gave away the farm on the AI in Halo, an apparently chastised Bungie team (don't fuck around after Bill buys you, guys) sent their fucking AUDIO GUY to talk about Halo (it was not listed as an audio talk, which is why there were people in the audience). After ten minutes of his explaining how he has a keyboard right in his office so he can compose music whenever he wants, I took off. Worst Moment of GDC: Tie between Gaming God(dess?) Stevie "Killcreek" Case giving out the Best Level Design Award at the awards ceremony ("For level designers, the devil is in the details..."; how would she know?), the awards ceremony as a whole (is there really no endeavor left to mankind for which we don't need to invent an award?), and the "martini" I was served in the lobby of the Fairmont on the last night of the conference (suffice to say it was warm, weak, and served in a plastic Gamespy cup). Most Gratifying Moment of GDC: A table full of some of the best programmers in the business laughing their heads off when I mentioned I'd read a post on a message board suggesting John Carmack was a "competent implementor." But anyway, at least this year they didn't sucker us into another yawn-fest like they did last year, the "summit" between Will Wright and Scott McCloud... <img src="https://www.cmpevents.com/GDx/gifs/conference/conferencephotos-wrightmcloud.gif"> [/quote]