GDC 2014 Begins Today…

Posted by Rampant Coyote on March 17, 2014

It’s been a long time since I last went to GDC (I can’t really afford it on my own right now), but I still miss it. I expect a great deal of game development news and announcements over the next three days.

How all this will effect us as gamers remains to be seen. Most of the time these announcements are more along the lines of “ways to make / distribute games more cheaply and efficiently” and “new ways to charge your customers.” It’s also a good way to get an idea of emerging and mature trends in the game dev community, which are upstream of the gamers and consumers.

My joke back when I was going regularly was that GDC was “30% educational and 70% inspirational” – while it there were plenty of opportunities to learn from seasoned veterans and pick up new ideas, a big part of it was simply feeling part of the community, seeing what other people were doing, and being reminded of what excited you about game development in the first place.

And of course, for a fanboy like me, it was always pretty awesome to walk down the halls and see the people I’d only seen pictures of in magazines before. I was fortunate to be able to go just as it was transitioning into the much bigger event that it is now – my first year, it still held some of the trappings of  the old, more intimate conference. They still published name and contact information for all of the attendees in the proceedings (a practice which annoyed a lot of their employers – and which was only possible back when there were not that many attendees).

Ah, well. Here’s to another year of experiencing the conference vicariously!

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