Roundup: The best (and worst) of GDC 2009

By Darren Gladstone, PC World
March 30, 2009 10:16 AM PST
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Learn about what you'll be playing (or avoiding) this year, as we look at some of the best bets--and the weirdest tech--to come out of the 2009 Game Developer's Conference.

The annual Game Developer's Conference isn't about pomp and circumstance--it's about people banding together once a year and attempting to fit all their oversize brains into a single convention center. They sit on panels discussing distributed gaming possibilities, cloud computing, game physics...and, yeah, they occasionally stumble upon a booth that has Rock Band blaring or Street Fighters fighting.

Consider this a quick-hit list of some of the things that happened at this year's GDC, as well as my editor's-eye view of the oddities I encountered on and off the show floor during the 2009 conference in San Francisco. Read on for some of the big news and what to make of the cool gaming possibilities on the horizon for 2009. Not enough here? Don't forget to check out our sister site GamePro.com's extensive GDC coverage. It's easily digestible, and it collects all the stories in one convenient hub.

The Career Pavilion

What recession? My initial fear was that the only career opportunities here would be "nomad" and "tumbleweed." Fortunately that wasn't quite the case. Most of the people applying for jobs were college students looking for their first big break. We didn't get exact numbers, but I did poll a few recruiters on the show floor, and they said that while there weren't as many major recruiters at the show, many spry little companies are looking for upcoming talent. Of course, that isn't stopping people from applying for jobs with the big names. Here's the line to apply at Valve, for example--it was busting out the door (inset above).

On the other hand, I spoke with one person working on the next Halo game, and they're still looking for lead-level positions on the team. Anyone want to move to Seattle?

Indie Gaming at Its Finest

The Independent Gaming Festival is a big--and growing--portion of the annual conference. Some people come to the show to puff up their chests and act like abstract artists creating pieces that will stand the test of time. Others just want to create fun games. And maybe find a job.

Not only is the festival a way for students to polish their game-making resumes, but it's also a way for companies to cherry-pick among the best and brightest. Among this year's winners is the team behind Tag: The Power of Paint (pictured here). This inventive first-person shooter puts you inside a drab world. You use colorful power-ups to find new ways to navigate through the environment. Think of it as a cross between a color-by-numbers take on Portal and Mirror's Edge.

The Tag team consists mostly of graduating students (and a couple freshmen) who hope to continue working together after finishing their studies at Digipen's game-design school. Want to download the game or find out more about the team? Go to the Tag: The Power of Paint Web site.

OnLive--When It Goes Live

The Internet buzzed this week with the announcement of OnLive--the scene-stealer at this year's show. In a nutshell, it's a streaming video game service in which the data centers on the back end host the entire game. On your end, you can play on everything from your desktop PC or MacBook to a tiny thin-client "MicroConsole" that attaches to your TV. In other words: Imagine playing complex, power-hungry PC games on just about any machine.

We've analyzed, cross-analyzed, and generally overanalyzed the technology this week. Read our hands-on impressions of OnLive for even more thoughts on the service's viability.

Dexter: The iPhone Game

What I'm finding fascinating about the upcoming Dexter mobile game isn't the fact that it's based on my favorite serial-killer TV series. Or the fact that it has a devious collection of minigames, such as analyzing blood splatter patterns or moving the iPhone back and forth in your hand like a hacksaw to...cut...things. I'm psyched by the fact that Icarus Studios, the company behind the project, has adapted its engine for an MMO to work on an iPhone. It's a full, immersive 3D world where you're stalking enemies, collecting clues, and delivering your own special brand of justice to the creeps of the world.

Did I mention that the game lets you use your phone like a saw?

CryEngine 3: Cry Me a River

Y'know, the new CryEngine doesn't look a whole lot different from CryEngine 2. But that isn't the point. The fact is, the incredibly realistic-looking graphics technology can now run smoothly in DirectX 9 or 10, on your PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360. And to think that, about one and half years ago, you couldn't run Crysis (which uses the Crytek engine) at high resolutions on a $5000-plus machine at more than 15 frames per second. [UPDATE: Joke fail alert. A zero was accidentally omitted from the price. It should have read: "$50000-plus machine." This was intended to be an over-the-top joke about how system-demanding Crysis was when it first came out.]

Still, the cantankerous among us (namely, PCW's Game On blogger, Matt Peckham, and I) remain a little skeptical about the focus on hyperrealism when games should concentrate on being hyperfun. And playable. Just saying.

Nintendo's Knockout

Fans of the prizefighting classic don't have much longer to wait until Punch-Out comes to the Wii (mid-May), but in the meantime a couple of good and interesting tidbits surfaced this week. Among them: sneak peeks at a few upcoming titles for the Nintendo DS and DSi.

The more immediate news is that the Wii now supports SDHC cards through a firmware update. More important, you can offload game saves to said memory card and--gasp--actually play them off the card. Now if only the DSi would get a similar firmware upgrade when it comes to the States on April 5.

Stay tuned--we're finishing up a video segment where you'll get to see all of this and more in action.

Indie Gaming Rocks iPhones

There was a lot of noise about iPhone games cleaning up at the mobile IGF awards; but just around a well-hidden corner on the show floor, I found two other ingenious game makers that were porting stuff over to Apple's handheld. And yes, at this point, you might as well consider the iPhone/iPod Touch a gaming handheld.

The first game, Space Trader (left), is a 3D, space-ified version of the classic game Dope Wars--minus the dope. You travel the galaxy looking to buy commodities low and sell them high. (Just don't invest your credits in AIG Galactica.) An interesting point to consider: This game, built off a modded Quake III engine, is currently available on Steam for PCs.

The second game is the WiiWare hit Defend Your Castle. It's a goofy but straightforward take on the popular Tower Defense games. Porting the game over to the iPhone took three people about three months. Does that mean more WiiWare titles could theoretically make the jump? I can only dream.

After all, this week I also saw the new ARM Mali-200 processors--the same as you'll find in $100 handsets as early as this winter--running Project Gotham Racing (a sharp-looking Xbox game).