Game Developer’s Conference 2009

The Game Developer’s Conference, or GDC, is the largest yearly gathering game developers, which focuses on learning, inspiration, and networking. The event is made up of networking events, awards shows, and an expo with a plethora of lectures, tutorials, and roundtables by industry professionals that focuses on game-related topics like audio, production, programming, design, business, management and visual arts.

The GDC is considered by industry personnel to be the most important industry event of the year with most people stating the show is essential. What has become the most popular developer event in the business, started out as a gathering of around 25 people in the living room of game designer Chris Crawford. Over the years, the event grew to become a mulit-million dollar event and became so established and financially set that it even sponsored the creation of the Computer Game Developers Association in 1994. GDC also hosts a variety of different awards shows. Some of the arads shows displayed at GDC include the Spotlight Awards, Independent Game Festival and the Game Developers Choice Awards. The Game Developers Conference also hosts the Game Design Challenge. Created by Eric Zimmerman, the Game Design Challenge was set up to give everybody an idea of the process behind game design, and to attempt to get everyone thinking about new kinds of games. The goal is not to build a game, just design one. Zimmerman has a specific guideline for each challenge. The second one was to design a game based on Emily Dickinson, which was won by Will Wright, the third was to design a game worthy of the Nobel Prize, which was won by Harvey Smith.

Each year the Game Developers Conference is held in California. The past few years it has been in San Fransisco and apparently will remain there. Every year, GD has a variety of special events and speakers. Special events this year include a deeper look into the developmental approach to directing the camera in the widley popular Prince of Persia video game by Jonathon Bard of Ubisoft Montreal and a look at the Art tools and techniques of Killzone 2 by Jan Bart van Beek of Guerilla Games. Industry representatives will also be happy to see Keynote speakers Kideo Kojima, head of Kojima Productions, with “Solid Game Design: Making the ‘Impossible’ Possible” and Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo, with “Discovering New Development Opportunities”.

The Game Developers Conference is the largest, most popular, and most important industry event of the year. With many different events, award shows, presentations, and keynote speakers, GDC is definitley the must attend event for any game developer or industry representative.

written by: Zack Duncan