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Austin GDC, Day 1
On Monday, the first day of the Austin Game Developers Conference, I kept wondering, “How many of these people registered before the recent Austin game company layoffs?”
Bad news at NCSoft and Midway Austin notwithstanding, GDC so far feels like a gathering for an industry that’s still expanding despite the current national economic panic. Merrill Lynch sold? Sorry, we’re busy creating a playable demo for our Xbox 360 game.
It’s not defiance, exactly, but maybe an optimism rooted in knowing that video games are still a young, vibrant medium with a future. (Contrast this with any journalism conference with a large contingent of print journalists. It’s like they’re on two different planets.)
I haven’t covered GDC very extensively in the past because it always felt to me like an insiders’ conference for talking shop. This year, however, the schedule reflects gaming’s increasing shift to the mainstream. Panels are focusing much more on the user experience, on social networks, on casual games and games that appear on cell phones and sites like Facebook and MySpace. There are still very serious discussions about narrative and storytelling (a session I attended featuring Paul Marino and Mac Walters of BioWare talked about the challenges of creating decent stories in huge games like their “Mass Effect.).
One session I attended addressed the inherent difficulties in creating tutorials for games given that there are multiple kinds of learning and we all are wired differently in how we learn best (be it visually, through experimentation or textually).
A keynote about Club Penguin highlighted the challenges small, indie developers face when they are suddenly acquired by a huge, monolithic company (in this case, Disney).
This is the first GDC where I’ve felt there’s far more going on than I’m able to cover, even for a mainstream newspaper and blog. It’s a good sign for the games industry, I think, and a clear sign that video games will continue to grow and perhaps dominate the entertainment industry before too long.
On the other hand, there is that pesky diversity problem. I think the games industry will become increasingly diverse as it absorb or incorporate other kinds of businesses (PR, broadcasting, screenwriting, education), but judging from the attendees at GDC, we’re certainly not there yet. As one female freelance writer told me, “This is a lot like South by Southwest — but with a lot fewer women.”
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