I had a really nice GDC
this year. Thank you to work for flying me out and paying for
everything, to my co-workers past and present for your help and good
company, and to my hosts for putting me up and introducing me to Pasole.
Work
flew out tools and engine programmers, lead artists, lead designers,
and myself. Conspicuously absent was anyone from recruiting. I promised
to pimp top positions in their stead, but had little luck since I spent
my time attending the convention and meeting up with former co-workers
and friends.
One of my traditional gripes is that GDC never had enough space. Last year's convention in San Jose was cramped to the point where attendees were being turned away from sessions they had paid for and couldn't get into due to overcrowding. Not so this year; the convention was held in San Francisco at the Moscone convention center. Moscone has enough space to host all of Oracle Open World attendees. GDC used all of the West and North halls, and the main room of South hall for the keynote speeches.
Since I was able to attend all my slots, I got to see some cool speakers:
One of my traditional gripes is that GDC never had enough space. Last year's convention in San Jose was cramped to the point where attendees were being turned away from sessions they had paid for and couldn't get into due to overcrowding. Not so this year; the convention was held in San Francisco at the Moscone convention center. Moscone has enough space to host all of Oracle Open World attendees. GDC used all of the West and North halls, and the main room of South hall for the keynote speeches.
Since I was able to attend all my slots, I got to see some cool speakers:
- Steve Jackson -- of Illuminati, Munchkin, and Car Wars fame -- gave a great talk on blind testing. He's a good game designer. I lost plenty of time playing Auto Duel, the adaptation of Car Wars to the Apple][e. My brother and my friends practiced stealing flaxscript from each other during kitchen Illuminati board game sessions, and more recently I played lots of Munchkin with my co-workers at my last job. I never did play GURPS although I looked over the rules.
- Clinton Keith -- tireless advocate for Agile development, which I like hearing about but have no experience with -- gave a good summary of using scrum development. I get tired of buzz words, but you need a vocabulary to talk about software development. Meh.
- Ray Muzyka, who I adore, and Raph were on a panel about sharing control.
- It was satisfying to witness Little Big Planet in action and see Kotaku's leak about PS3 Home unveiled. Way to stick to your journalistic integrity, Kotaku reporters.
- Shigeru Miyamoto is the king, and very inspiring to see talk.
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