Industry Insider - GDC 2008

The 2008 Game Developers Conference
by Eric Marlow

Those of you who follow The Insider know that my take on games comes from an industry perspective. And no greater perspective these days can be gained than by taking part in the once-a-year Game Developers Conference, this year held February 18-22 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. All attendance records were broken with well over 18,000 industry professionals attending the week-long conference.

For those of you excited about the process of game development, this is the conference for you. With over 400 sessions covering everything from graphics how-tos, vendor overviews, mobile gaming, and dozens of post-mortems, the opportunity to learn about the craft of game development is second- to-none.

Of course such learning doesn’t come cheap. A typical week-long conference pass is in excess of $1500, and that doesn’t include airfare, hotel, and meals while there. It’s easy to spend close to $3000, which is quite expensive by most comparisons for a conference. Unfortunately this means unless you just won the lottery, you’ll probably only get to go on your company’s dime – assuming you already work for a game company.

So for those lucky enough to go, what exactly was GDC like? The conference is broken up into two main sections: 1) the “expo” halls, which contain all the vendor booths, a career pavilion, and independent game competitions, and 2) the “sessions”, which in effect are the lectures and round-table discussion about the issues game developers face.

One of the first things I noticed about this year’s conference was its energy. I’ve attended GDCs in the past, and I have been to a number of E3s (Electronic Entertainment Expos) as well for comparison. This year I felt a palpable sense of excitement. But be forewarned, unlike the old E3, the GDC isn’t the place if you are interested in checking out the latest demos of forthcoming games. GDC is all about the process, not about what games will be out by Christmas.

The expo halls are where GDC gets its energy - loud music, bright lights, and of course a plethora of booth babes greet the expo walker. This part of the conference is where the vendors show off their wares. Motion capture devices, animation plug-ins, quality assurance tools and services, and of course all the big boys such as Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo showing off their latest technologies. Lots of cool stuff to look over and it can easily take you two days to walk through and see it all if you wish to check it out in detail.

It’s easy to ask “so what was new this year”, but that question is difficult to answer. Many vendors just show updated versions of their tools and technologies. Revolutionary products in any industry are hard to come by. Some products are quite innovative though. While I’ve seen other similar products it in the past, mind control of games (think the device Obi-Wan wears in his Jedi Starfighter) is a reality and becoming much more practical. The device is made by OCZ and is called the Neural Impulse Actuator. And it doesn’t look lame when you wear it! Add to my watch-list WiiWare (downloadable games for the Wii) which looks to be a hit on that platform, and it will be a big door opener for the small indie developer too.

But the sessions though are where the rubber meets the road. Just about every topic under the sun is addressed: game audio, business/management, game design, programming, visual arts, and mobile are the major headings. I attended a number of sessions including a presentation of Nintendo Deputy GM Takao Sawano on the development process and potential developer paths for the forthcoming Wii Fit, and a session offered by Simon Pressey and Mac Walters, both of which from Bioware and worked on Mass Effect on the topic of dialog production. Mundane as sound and dialog might sound, I’ve worked on games that had over 35,000 voice fragments, and making sure you not only keep track of them all, but keep them consistent is a logistical nightmare.

There are so many excellent presentations it’s difficult to mention them all here. For those of you interested in learning about game development, one of my biggest pieces of advice is to visit http://www.gdconf.com/. As has been the case in the past, a few weeks after the conference they post for free all of the session’s presentation materials. While sometimes difficult to understand without being there, many times these presentations provide valuable knowledge and long lasting insights. I’ve made it a habit these last few years to dump all the sessions and keep them for reference – whether or not I attended the lecture.

Besides myself there were a number of local game company personnel who were able to attend GDC this year. Our own GDAP (Game Developers Association of the Philippines) headed by Gabby Dizon had a booth in one of the expo halls, and many of the member companies had representatives there as well. And Anino’s Peter Paul Gadi gave a lecture on the use of the Agile approach in mobile game development during the Tuesday Mobile Gaming track. It’s exciting to see that Pinoys are sitting center-stage in game development world, and I’m glad that GDC exist as a forum for the learning and sharing of knowledge. I just wish there was something we all could attend that has the depth of a GDC, but was a bit closer to home :-)