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The quiet buzz flying around Moscone Center on the final day of GDC that Nintendo had an opening for a new speech writer. To say that Iwata’s comments about social and mobile game platforms and the need for developers to focus on real games (our translation, not his) didn’t sit well with the production organizations, tool makers, developers who had smartphone games in the market or in development. The other console folks didn’t jump to his defense they just encouraged the attendees to develop games for their units that would set the world on fire. What they did in their spare time… The closing day of most conferences is something like everyone running around picking up loose change and shotzkys (the free stuff). But GDC attendees seem to suck up as much information as possible. Great thing is there is a strong cadre of people in the industry willing to share their insights into their successes and their shortcomings.

One of the announcements that always makes us wonder — not just about the gaming industry but the entire software industry — was that Electronic Arts (EA) had signed up more than 600,000 gamers for the beta version of Battlefield Play4Free. We’re sure there were probably another 600,000 plus folks who didn’t make the cut. Defying logic people – smart, knowledgeable people — rush to become a beta user or stand in a long queue to get a copy of software that by definition is still a work-in-progress. Beta users provide a valuable/volunteer service not only to the developer but also the ultimate consumer when the gold version is released. They find bugs, issues, problems and even provide ideas, tricks that make the game better, more fun, more rewarding to play. Software though is always a work in progress. They aren’t bugs just undocumented features. The federal trade or safety folks don’t demand a recall instead you get patches or a work-around. Nuff said.

GDC isn’t huge by a lot of convention standards but it’s really big if you consider the fact that people come from around the globe to learn the latest tricks, tools, ideas on what it takes to make the growing array of highly involved, interesting games. When they aren’t in the sessions or networking they’re on the show floor packing the freakin booths. Old/young, male/female they spend a lot of time in the booths trying to figure out how the hardware/software will make their behind-in-the-seat development time easier and more rewarding (for them and us). There were two sessions this final day that we looked forward to when we first looked at the program months ago:
– Chris Crawford’s presentation/discussion on yesterday/today/tomorrow
– The GDC Awards

GDC’s Founding Father
The founder of CGDC (Computer Game Developers Conference) and a pretty impressive game designer in his own right not only gave us flashes of what he – and we – worked with in “the old days” and his vision of tomorrow. At times with what seemed like a lump in his throat he talked about working with early microcomputers including the Atari Stella, Apple II, Commodore PET, TRS-80. He brought tears to our eyes…tears of bygone pain, not pleasure! Crawford told the young bucks and buckettes in the audience what it was like to program in Assembly (with paper/pencil) and doing most of the work in your head counting in hexadecimal…backward. He talked about each little industry improvement like line buffers as though they were monumental strides forward. Of course his discussion of being delighted when he sold a whopping 150 copies of a game in a ziplock for $15 made more than a few in the audience question is grip on reality.

Crawford founded the conference in 1988 just as the gaming industry was beginning to recover from the massive layoffs four years earlier. Today he feels that the first law of software development remains unchanged – when you design a game constantly ask yourself “what does the user do?”. He felt that following the first law was critical because people don’t watch games, don’t read them, don’t listen to them, they play them! But that is probably the only constant in the gaming industry because today it is made up of large well financed companies and individuals with no money but the fire in their gut to make an insanely great game. While the depth, breadth, quality, intensity (and expense) of game development has grown over the years he didn’t feel what the player does and the gamers’ satisfaction remains unchanged.

If you think the intensity and excitement of the recent Oscar Night was impressive you’ve never seen the GDC’s annual Game Developers Choice Awards. Ok there’s a total lack of tuxes, fashion gowns, red carpets, gold statuettes and paparazzi but other than that …it’s the same. Big winner for the evening was Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption. Red Dead walked away with Game of the Year, Best Game Design, Best Technology. Other big winners were:
– Minecraft – Best Debut Game, Best Downloadable Game, Innovation
– Cut the Rope- Best Handheld Game
– Mass Effect 2 – Best Writing
– Limbo – Best Visual Arts

Saga’s Yu Suzuki won the Pioneer Award for his work on such classics as Outrun, Space Harrier, Shenmue Series. Lifetime Achievement Award went to Peter Molyneaux for his design work on Populous and Fable.