I was fortunate enough to attend the 16th annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco last week. The experience was amazing, overwhelming, exhilarating, and exhausting.
Over 27,000 people were at GDC this year, a record setting number of attendees. That’s the average population density of a square mile of New York City packed into a convention center.
The Sound and the Fury
There’s never any shortage of activities going on at any given time during the conference. One trick to maintaining your sanity is to admit to yourself early on that you’re not going to get to see everything. There are lectures, roundtables, and workshops. There are demonstrations of VR and motion capture hardware. There are a bazillion (by my estimation) booths to visit where you can play all manner of games. A bazillion more booths are populated by companies looking to sell you digital services, help you monetize your app, publish your game, or even offer you a job.
At the end of each day, there are various parties and mixers in different neighborhood locales. On Wednesday night is the big awards ceremony. And don’t forget to eat! Meals are great time to catch up with friends or get to know new ones. Anytime you stop at a local spot for a bite, you’re sure to see groups of conference attendees gabbing away over their food.
The People of GDC
People are really the heart of the GDC experience, and I had the pleasure of talking with a lot of wonderful people there. Some of them I met for the first time, online or off; others I had known online but never met in person. It’s always interesting to finally lay eyes on someone with whom you’ve conversed but who you’ve never actually seen. The mind tends to conjure up appearances which often turn out to differ wildly from reality. My mind does, at least.
Thank goodness everyone wears a badge with their name on it. As I meandered around the booth-lined aisles of GDC, I focused more on passing nametags than faces. Anytime two people passed within a certain proximity of one another, there was a good chance their eyes would flick downwards to see if they recognized the name. Of course, a name may not ring a bell, and so many spoken introductions were accompanied by a twitter handle or an “I made X game”.
One thing I learned this GDC: Don’t be afraid to go up to someone and talk to them. Just about everyone who’s at the conference is there (at least partly) to meet people. If someone’s behind a booth, they’re easy to talk to, but even if you see someone in passing with whom you’d like to speak—even if you just want to shake the hand of someone you admire—I found that most people are very receptive. The atmosphere is consistently warm and friendly, and that’s not the games or the conference center doing that—it’s the people.
The Indie Games of GDC
I played some great games at GDC. Most of my time this year was spent in the area of the expo floor dubbed “GDC Play”. The conference organizers seemed to have made a conscious choice to create an oasis of indie games there, and it was awesome. The Independent Games Festival pavilion, the large collection of booths known as alt.ctrl.GDC, and the Game Jolt booth (really more of a pavilion, since it took the space of 3 booths) were all within a few steps of each other. The NYU Game Center’s pavilion was nearby, as well. The sheer amount of indie gaming goodness on display in that relatively small space was awe-inspiring. It tentacled into another building, too, where you could find the Indie Megabooth and the Mild Rumpus.
Here are a few highlights from my time at GDC:
The Game Jolt Booth
I used the Game Jolt booth as my hub as I ventured to and from the other stalls. Even if I wasn’t completely biased, I’m pretty sure I’d still have been impressed by Game Jolt’s presentation. There was a big screen TV in the center with a couple of Lovesacs in front of it for multiplayer games; a quartet of computers for single-player games flanked it on each side. Nine indie games were on display at a time and they were switched out every couple of hours. In all, 75 games were shown and 20 devs (or dev teams) were there to present them in person!
It was a thrill to see a bunch of developers I adore showing off their games. Among them were Daniel Linssen with Sandstorm…
…Nathalie lawhead presenting Anatomically Incorrect Dinosaurs…
…and Dene Carter (Fluttermind) showing how it’s done in Spellrazor:
The IGF Pavilion
The finalists for the Independent Games Festival awards are an astoundingly good selection of games, and many of them were shown by their developers at the IGF Pavilion.
Unfortunately, though nominated in multiple categories, Undertale did not represent:
Some of my favorite games of last year were on display, like Kingdom and The Magic Circle, as were some games that will likely end up on this year’s best-of list, like SUPERHOT and Darkest Dungeon. And they were all right there next to each other!
The new VR incarnation of Fantastic Contraption was adjacent to the pavilion proper, with a fenced-off patch of astroturf on which to play. It was quite fun, and it was amusing to watch other people manipulating objects to assemble weird machines in their own little virtual realities.
The IGF Student Showcase games were particularly strong this year. This is a category that often includes future hits (last year’s crop included an early version of Downwell), and I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot more about games like Ape Out, Chambara, and Circa Infinity.
Lost Levels
I missed it last year, so I made sure to attend Lost Levels this time around. I was not disappointed. Described as “a radically-casual unconference about games and play that aims to be hyper-inclusive”, it’s a free-to-attend gathering of folk that takes place at a different location each year during GDC. Anyone who wants to speak gets 5 minutes to expound upon the topic of their choice.
This year, Lost Levels took place on a sunny Thursday afternoon in the lovely Yerba Buena Park. Once the small but substantial crowd was gathered, the event’s organizer, Squinky, kicked things off by introducing several speakers and assigning them places in the shade to hold court on their chosen topics. The crowd split into smaller groups, each gathered around one of the speakers, who then began speaking. When their time was up, they passed the figurative conch shell on to someone among their group who had something to say related to the initial topic. Thus, several small summits were held, with speakers becoming listeners and listeners, sometimes to their own surprise, becoming speakers.
alt.ctrl.GDC
alt.ctrl.GDC is a “showcase of alternative control schemes and interactions in games” that’s put on by the conference each year. It’s a popular destination at GDC and this year it was so packed with bodies that I hope the organizers give it even more space next time. There were 20 games being shown this year and all of them were unique and entertaining. Here’s a brief look at some of my favorites:
Threadsteading was the show stealer. It’s a 2-player game that uses a sewing machine. A line is stitched into a quilted map as you claim territory.
Hello, Operator! puts you in the shoes of an old fashioned telephone operator. You switch lines and route calls using a reconstructed 1930s switchboard machine.
In Crank Tank, you and a partner control a pair of assault vehicles with wooden hand cranks. It can be quite a workout.
Planet Licker is absolutely ridiculous. You play it by licking a trio of flavored ice pops that rest in a custom-made controller. Every time your tongue flicks across a frozen treat, you’re completing a circuit.
Please Stand By is contained within the body of a vintage 1950s television set. You interact with it by actually turning the knobs, adjusting the antenna, and even banging on its sides.
Petitwo uses a souped up zoetrope for both display and controls as you guide a flock of birds homeward.
Suck My Rainbow uses an old vacuum cleaner outfitted with some newer electronics to let you suck color from actual surfaces. Say the machine wants red and you have a red shirt on; just point the nozzle and watch the red move up the hose!
This is all just a taste of my GDC experience, of course. There were so many excellent games there, and I hope to cover some more of them in the coming months. But for now, I need some rest!
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