San Francisco/GDC Trip Day 2
The second day of my trip, and the main reason for going to San Fran in the first place was devoted to the first day of the Game Developers Conference. All though we were all pretty tired and worn out from the day before, we woke up early Wednesday morning and drove the rental car downtown to the Moscone Center where the conference as taking place.
First up was the always fun and entertaining Game Publisher’s Rant, which started at 9 a.m. sharp. In this talk, one developer and five publishers presented their current pet peeve issues they have with the industry. While they were all good in their own right, the two stand outs for me were Nichol Bradford’s take on the industries lack of public, positive influence in kids, and Greg Costikyan’s thoughts on the consoles future market monopolies. Really good stuff.
After that it was on to Phil Harrison’s keynote speech, Game 3.0: Developing and Creating for the 3rd Age of Video Games (see below). Here he discussed his thoughts on the new age the industry is facing right now and how to benefit from the options presented by the market. It was a good showing for Sony, which recently hasn’t been all that appealing with their launch snafus and lack of decent software. Their new Home feature is pretty sweet and just what they need to stay competitive with Microsoft. Oh and the LittleBigPlanet demo was spot on… I’m going to be sure to pick this one as soon as it’s released.
The rest of the morning and early afternoon was spent exploring the Expo floor looking at new tech and making a few stops at some booths in the Career Pavilion.
The last talk I attended on Wednesday was High-Def Outdoor Environments by Crytek’s Michael Khaimzon. It was an interesting talk, but not as informative as I was expecting. As it turns out, how they make there amazing looking games is pretty much how I thought it was done. No real tricks or amazing tech feats… just simple hard work.
Finally the end of the day/night was spent attending the Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards shows down the street at the Moscone South Hall. A game called Everyday Shooter cleaned up at the IGFs and Gears of War had a successful night as well, walking away with three awards of their own.
All in all it was fun and exciting day, albeit exhausting. By the time we arrived back at Corey’s place I was about as close to the living dead as possible.
Phil Harrison’s Keynote
Sweet! Unreal 3 on PS3. I can’t wait for this game!
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:33 pm
[...] make some predictions. I made some last minute predictions while waiting for the ceremony to start last year, and as I recall, I did quite well. I’ll be sure to do a follow up story later on when the [...]