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Thoughts on GDCMarch 10th, 2007 |
Here I am in Austin now, right across the street from the Convention Center where the mob scene that is SXSW plays out. I am totally exhausted. I went over to registration, and they were out of the badge holders so they could give me the right badge. They said they could give me one of the other sorts, but I wouldn’t have access to any parties tonight. I doubt I will be conscious for more than another two hours, so I just told them I’d come by in the morning for the real badge…
Besides, I feel guilty about not having posted the slides for the Game Meets Web talk yet. So I should stay in and do that!
In the meantime, my thoughts on GDC are as follows:
- Too big, somehow. Two halls, with keynotes going to a third hall (!). Last time it was in downtown San Francisco, it was just West Hall. The spread out nature of it meant that it was harder to bump into folks, harder to coordinate meeting up, and just less personal. The lack of a central watering hole like the Fairmont was in San Jose was an issue as well.
- Too E3ish. What the hell were E3 booths doing on the expo floor? Argh! I suppose they had nothing else they could do with them… And actually, there were two expo floors. But seriously, the fact that the GameSpy and GameSpot coverage is easily half demos, videos of games, and the like is a bad thing. GDC shouldn’t be about that sort of glitz. I realize that with no E3, this was where the marketing and PR folks had to go, but… bleah. When I saw the giant weird constructed booths sitting in the middle of the expo floor, I winced. And why was there loud pulsing music going on the expo floor? The one time I ever saw booth babes at GDC, they were widely derided by everyone… so I worry.
- Small is big was a common theme: lots of talk about indie stuff, casual stuff, serious game stuff, DS stuff, etc.
- Online was everywhere, which is what you would expect at this point — even before the keynote announcement of PS3 Home.
- Suits looking for online plays were also everywhere. A ton of VCs, hedge fund managers, private equity folks, media conglomerate people — I saw “mergers and acquisition” on at least three random badges throughout the show. There were what seemed like an equal number of online startups looking to connect with these people.
- Too many parties. One night, I was scheduled to be in five places at once.
For us, the show went great. From a catch-up-with-people point of view, though, it was hard connecting, so it wasn’t nearly as satisfying in some ways.
BTW, nice interview of Mark Jacobs and coverage of the MMO Past Present and Future panel over at VirginWorlds. I look forward to their coverage of my lecture — I bumped into them on the last day right as the show was ending.
OK, so now the question is, stay downtown for dinner, or wander off to Rudy’s?
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[...] Hey Blaze, a developer that agrees with you on the GDC.http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/03/10/thoughts-on-gdc/ [...]
it was “too E3ish”, I think it would be good to think about what goes into a good conference. I’ll post my ideas a bit later. As some know, I’ve helped to put together a few of the MUD-Dev conferences, so I have some thoughts on this matter. 
