San Francisco, CA - GDC

This week, I was in San Francisco for the 2013 version of the Game Developers Conference (GDC):

This is one of the biggest events of the entire year for the people that actually make games.  In fact, this is the fifth time that I've posted about this conference on this blog.  I've been attending this conference for many years.

The attendance this year was probably over 25,000.  Everyone gathers to talk about methods and techniques for making games - programming, sound, story, game design, video effects...you name it.  They also have several sessions on the business side.

For my company, we decided to hold a press conference.  Each year, more press come to GDC and we wanted to capitalize on that fact.  I was asked to speak at the event, talking about my company's domination in the world of gaming consoles.  We've provided the technology for 5 of the last 6 consoles, and we're technology partners for both of the announced next-gen consoles (Wii U and PlayStation 4).  Usually, I don't have very many pictures of my speaking engagements.  This time, I hired a photographer for the event, for very little money.  It was actually my wife, doing our company a big favor:

Afterwards, I was able to mingle with reporters and answer questions that they had about the material we presented.  This is me talking with a reporter from the Wall St. Journal:

The next day, the actual conference opened.  My company had a booth on the floor of the event, much like other trade shows.  I was actually in charge of the booth and was pretty proud of the work.  Here are some pictures of the AMD booth:

This is the new Tomb Raider game, played on five screens at once ; )

In the booth, we were showing a new technology that take your image from a web cam, and using your facial expressions to animate a character on-screen.  It was kind of fun to see a game character talking with my voice ; )

At least a third of our booth was meeting rooms, to allow us the chance to chat with game developers and talk about ways to work closer together.  I arranged to have chocolate in every room - each piece had our corporate logo on it:

Around the convention floor, there were lots of other booth.  Some interesting, some not.  The Nintendo booth was incredible boring:

The Sony PlayStation booth had more life to it - especially when they were showing the new PlayStation 4 controller:

One crazy company had created a booth floor that looked like lava was erupting from a sword that was stuck in the middle.  I have no idea how much this cost...I certainly didn't have a budget like that!

One other piece of technology that I had a good look at -  the new "virtual reality" goggles from a company named Oculus VR.  Basically, a game is rendered in both a left and right screen, then combined together to give a 3D look on a small screen inside the goggles.  When you moved your head, it moved the game on the screen, like you were looking around a virtual environment.  It looked really cool.  This is only a prototype and the final product will be much smaller and lighter.  I don't know how many people will buy it, but it's a unique way to experience games.

That's it for GDC 2013.  The game business is about to have a really good year with the new consoles. More games are being made for smartphones and tablets/iPads.  It's a good time to be a game developer ; )