So I’m finally back from GDC and have caught up enough with the rest of my life to post again. So what exactly was new or interesting (or annoying) at GDC?
Let’s start with the annoying part - the annual whine “There’s no innovation”. It really starts grating by now. There’s plenty of innovation, if you look for it. There’s Guitar Hero. There’s Shadow of the Colossus. There’s Brain Age.
So here’s my message for the complain fraction: How about you actually do something? Greg Costykian is one of the very few to put his money where his mouth is.
And - of course - there’s the one real stinker in the presentation track. This years honor goes to Tim Sweeney and his presentation on “Building a better engine”. I’m willing to forgive that he’s a horrible speaker - he’s mainly a programmer, after all. I’m not willing to forgive a talk that is utterly devoid of content and merely a sales vehicle for the Unreal Engine. (No, it wasn’t marked as a “sponsored” talk.)
If I pay $1400 for a conference, I expect content. Period.
But let’s move to the upsides - there was, as always lots of interesting information to be had. The most interesting keynote goes to Nintendo - funny, lively, entertaining, and a couple of really big news:
- Nintendo will offer the SEGA back catalog on the revolution
- There will be a new Zelda
- Metroid Prime multiplayer on the DS is extremely well done. Excellent control scheme.
- And finally, with “Brain Age”, Nintendo is opening up an entirely new market. Since they were good enough to give away free copies to everybody in the keynote, expect a (mini-) review soon.
Will Wrights’ was, as usual, a thoroughly enjoyable talk. It’s my one guilty pleasure, since he really had nothing to offer that affected me as a programmer enough to justify the lecture. I’ll still attend all his lectures - the man is brilliant.
The PS3 keynote was ho-hum. Not much new info, and the games were not exactly overwhelming. Strange as it is, that keeps me happy - the barrier to entry in the PS3 market is fairly low.
In the non-keynote department, there were three talks worth mentioning:
The Gym: Where the Incredible Hulk Goes To Train
An excellent talk about the scripting/animation editor used by the team developing “The Incredible Hulk”. The slides are available online, but the presentation was even better.
The only downside was the misleading name - I went there because my first choice was packed already, and I had no idea it would be about tools.
Feeding The Monster: Advanced Data Packing for Consoles
Again, a rather misleading title for a great talk. This was, at its core, about load-in-place technologies, and how to use C++ for great effect in that area. Again, with slides online
God Of War: How The Left and Right Brain Learned to Love One Another
A great overview how to build a flexible game engine with limited engineering resources, and entertaining to boot. (In a nutshell - make the designers do the work instead. Everything is data-driven). Download the slides.
Best quote: “Designers suffer from shiny-object syndrome”.
And that was it. The rest contained only tiny nuggets of information. Combined, more than worth the price, but too small to justify a writeup.
“So here’s my message for the complain fraction: How about you actually do something?”
My sentiments exactly.
re: Sweeney’s talk - no comment.