Game Developers Marathon

I think I need to train harder for GDC! I actually suffered my first conference injury, "hand shake pinky twist", from shaking too many hands! (Actually, I aggravated an old rugby injury (ie, broken hand), but still). Anyway, another grueling week in California "working" the GDC. Aside from some room and a/v glitches, everyone seemed pretty jazzed about being in San Francisco - too bad we're going back to San Jose next year (although, the Fairmont lobby was sorely missed).

Sadly, I only got to attend a handful of sessions. So, for an in depth look at the content of GDC I'll punt you to the great coverage at Gamasutra, GameDev.net, GameSpot and GameSpy.

Quality of life was a major theme for the IGDA and we got a ton of press attention - I did about two dozen interviews covering QoL issues (with outlets like Wired, Wall Street Journal, SF Chronicle, Game Informer, Red Herring, GameDaily, etc). The QoL Summit that the IGDA hosted went over very well, with a ton of discussion over the issues and real answers. The McConnell keynote on the business case for QoL was truly enlightening and should be required consumption for everyone in the industry! So far, all the slides/materials have been posted online, with a more complete summary report and full video recordings to come online in the near future...

The Choice Awards were a bit of a bummer for me. I got too bogged down in the minutia of stage direction, worrying about long acceptance speeches and lame video interludes to truly appreciate the significance of what we're doing. Case in point: I bumped into the Valve guys after the ceremony and they said how they were clutching their trophies, really proud/humbled by being recognized by their peers. Much better to hear that, than if they just tossed the awards into their big trophy pile. Also, seeing Katamari Damacy creator, Keita Takahashi take the stage for Game Design and Innovation awards was nice. And, if the system can recognize something like I Love Bees, I just know we're doing something right...

Finally, our rant session was a blast. While there's no real sense that anything will come of it (well, beyond the fact that the IGDA works on meta-level industry issues), it was just fun and cathartic to generally insult everyone and rip the industry to shreds. Alice's live transcript is pretty accurate, but we're working on a precise one from the recording...

Anyway, I'd say more, but I've got a mountain of work and follow-up to do - and a sprained pinky to nurse!