{"id":303,"date":"2014-03-24T17:26:11","date_gmt":"2014-03-24T21:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/?p=303"},"modified":"2014-03-24T17:28:30","modified_gmt":"2014-03-24T21:28:30","slug":"gdc-2014-afterthoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/?p=303","title":{"rendered":"GDC 2014 Afterthoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve always been a fan of GDC. \u00a0When I was younger, the amount of information people were willing to share blew me away; as a learning addict, it fed that desire in astonishing ways. \u00a0I still love the conference, but for different reasons now that I already know about most of the things people are talking about. \u00a0Here are some of my impressions, in no particular order.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>The format continues to evolve.<\/strong> \u00a0This year, there were a lot more roundtables, maybe as much as twice as many. \u00a0There were also fewer sessions, with the Friday afternoon schedule, in particular, having been cut back, probably to allow people to fly out that night. \u00a0The summits and tutorials section has expanded a lot; next year, I may have to spend the entire week in SF. \u00a0The upshot for me, doing business as well as going to sessions, is that the Vault subscription that comes with being a speaker is going to be a life-saver.<\/li>\n<li><strong>No one knows where the business is going.<\/strong> \u00a0I talked to a lot of people about the big picture, as I usually do. \u00a0In previous years, there have been clear trends &#8211; the rise of free-to-play, the explosion of social games, the move to mobile &#8211; but not this year. \u00a0Everyone recognizes the problems, but there were no clear solutions. \u00a0If you haven&#8217;t seen Greg Costikyan&#8217;s rant yet, <a href=\"http:\/\/gamasutra.com\/blogs\/GregCostikyan\/20140324\/213784\/2014_GDC_Rant_We_Had_a_Good_10_Years_But_the_Walls_are_Closing_In.php\" target=\"_blank\">go read it now<\/a>. \u00a0It&#8217;s a grim picture, but frighteningly accurate.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Diversity remains an issue.<\/strong> \u00a0Several talks, even entire roundtables, were dedicated to issues around diversity &#8211; gender, race, and sexual orientation in particular. \u00a0While some people took this as a sign that we&#8217;re turning a corner, I have a more cynical view. \u00a0We wouldn&#8217;t need to be putting so much energy into this if it weren&#8217;t such a glaring problem. \u00a0It will take years to make progress on this. \u00a0We are still in the early days.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The people are more important than the programming.<\/strong> \u00a0In spite of my years of experience with this conference, my hit rate for sessions was still about 50% (half of them gave real value). \u00a0On the flip side, every time I got together with people outside of the sessions, I learned things, had great conversations, and got great value for my time. \u00a0This year, in particular, I had a great time talking to a couple of folks who were involved with the very early years of the industry; it was a blast just listening to their stories.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Expectations can lead to disappointment.<\/strong> \u00a0Much like you are more likely to be disappointed by a movie if your friends have been talking it up for a while as the best thing, so with sessions. \u00a0Soren Johnson&#8217;s talk on transparency in games brought this home to me this year. \u00a0There wasn&#8217;t a lot wrong with it (I can quibble, but that&#8217;s always true), but it just didn&#8217;t hold a candle to the awesomeness that was his talk on Civilization IV. \u00a0I was surprised by how many people were enthusiastic about it, but it turned out that a lot of that was just being grateful for a talk that was in-depth about game dynamics; that says something distressing about the quality of programming in the game design track.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s it for now. \u00a0I&#8217;ll definitely be back next year, if I can. \u00a0GDC remains one of my favorite things to do, in spite of any issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve always been a fan of GDC. \u00a0When I was younger, the amount of information people were willing to share blew me away; as a learning addict, it fed that desire in astonishing ways. \u00a0I still love the conference, but for different reasons now that I already know about most of the things people are &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/?p=303\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">GDC 2014 Afterthoughts<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":304,"href":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions\/304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betterrealities.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}