Archive: 20th February 2008: GDC 2008 / Gamasutra
If I thought my problems were over when GDC Mobile ended, well, was I in for a surprise. It managed to get busier and crazier once the main conference began.
GDC 2008: The Crysis Of Audio - Maybe not the most obviously exciting way to kick off one of the main events in the gaming calendar, but considering that both the development of game audio and the game Crysis have barely grazed my consciousness, this was… Sort of interesting?
GDC: Deconstructing The Best Interactive Storytelling - This was a great session. If we’re going to talk “trends” pretty much the major trend of this year’s GDC was storytelling; how to make it good, how to integrate it with gameplay, and so on. This was just a fun panel on games that some famous developers liked, including Loom and Planescape: Torment (which even I have yet to finish.)
I was supposed to write up three sessions on the 20th, but apparently Jesse Alexander (co-executive producer and writer on Heroes) decided to cancel his session weeks previous and somehow no one knew. Thanks for nothing, Jesse.
Still! The IGF Awards that evening were so great it kind of made up for it (even if they made the IGF Mobile Awards look positively tiny by comparison) with some brilliant skits from the Mega 64 crew (and The Behemoth’s Dan Paladin.) I think Mega 64’s Rocco was kind of pissed that I compared the opening skit to the opening of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Movie, but considering that’s probably my favourite opening to anything ever, I thought it was a nice thing to say. In retrospect I realize I was dumb.
Later, Jason Rubin mumbled his way through his script at the Game Developer’s Choice Awards with all of the style and panache of a bronzed porcelain bird, but he made up for that by mistakenly calling Crackdown “Cracktime.” We laughed about that for the rest of the week.