San Francisco - GDC 2

As I told you in the last post (here), I'm here in San Francisco for the annual Game Developers Conference. I wanted to share some images from inside the conference, so you can see what it was like. The conference took place at the Moscone Center, one of the biggest convention centers in the country. The event was divided into three areas - job fair, expo show floor, and meeting room area. All three were held inside a single "hall" at Moscone - a massive building, to be sure.

I'll start with some wider shots of the expo floor. This is what a "regular" trade show area looks like. It's filled with various booths to attract visitors. In this case, the visitors are game developers, so the content is focused on tools & technology involved in making games:

In front of the Intel booth - you can see the size of the crowds

This is the Sony booth - a two-story affair

A closer look at the Sony booth - they're trying hard to attract developers for the PS3

A new trend in videogames - 3D gaming (stereoscopic)

The Nintendo booth - showing the latest for Wii and Nintendo DS

A new entry in the music game genre - this game actually uses a six-string guitar

Next, I'll show you just a couple of pictures from the meeting room area. This is where we located the AMD booth, to hold lots of meetings with developers. I shot these pictures right before the show started, so you could see what our booth looked like:

The front demo area

Our front door...

Last, I have some short video clips that I shot around the expo show floor. The first is shot at the PlayStation booth. They introduced a new controller technology for the PS3 called "Sony Move". It's basically a duplication of the Nintendo Wii controllers - allowing you to wave controllers in the air and have the machine track your movement:

Sony Move

Next, comes a really fun exhibit. Basically, this was a giant, rotating globe that you went inside. When you move around the inside of the globe, the system translates your movement into a videogame. You wear goggles that let you see what the game looks like - sort of like a virtual reality system:

Giant exercise ball

There was also an interesting exhibit for a cool toy/iPhone app combination. It was basically a remote-control hover craft...which you controlled via your iPhone ; ) The hover craft has a wireless camera on it. I have no idea what the price might be...but this would sure make a cool birthday gift (hint, hint).

Hover Craft

Last, a quick panorama of the expo floor. This was shot in front of the two largest booths, just to give you an idea of the crowds.

GDC Expo Floor

Overall, the show was very successful for our company. It was good to see some old friends in the game industry. Tomorrow, I'm off to Austin, Texas. I wish I was headed back home, but I'm still not done yet...