Missing the GDC

… So I was in Egypt last week. I’d upload some photos if they didn’t have a weird compression error that’s strangely reminiscent of the way my TV broke over a year ago, but I’ll have to get back on that once I hear from support. Anyway, this also means I didn’t have access to the internet during the GDC so I’ll just summarize what little I learned from browsing through the news reports.

It seems Portal won big the Game Developer’s Choice awards, and while I certainly like it I had hoped otherwise. It undoubtedly deserves the “Innovation” award and maybe also the award for “Game Design”, but I can’t really shake the feeling that giving it the Game of the Year award is like giving the Academy Award for “Best Animated Feature” to, say, “Mike’s New Car“. Maybe Game Developer’s Choice needs a category for shorter, prototype-like games with smaller budgets as well – then again, maybe it’s simply the games industry that needs more shorter, prototype-like games with smaller budgets. So in a way, while I don’t think Portal deserved the Game of the Year award, what it represents certainly does.

Crayon Physics Deluxe took home the Seamus McNally Grand Prize at the IGF, which seems fair (even though it’s hard to give an informed opinion since very few finalists have released anything playable). World of Goo took home the impressive combo of Technical Excellence/Design Innovation award, so my prediction wasn’t completely off. I was also happy to see Fez taking home the Excellence in Visual Art award as it deserves recognition.

I have only glossed over the presentations so far but it seems that I once again agree with Ernest Adams. Also, Jonathan Blow – as always – had a lot to say about the state of the games industry, and while I usually think he’s just bitching about why he doesn’t like games anymore or reiterating what others have already said, he manages to come up with a few interesting points.

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Posted on Feb 23/08 by Saint and filed under General game development, Meta-blog | No Comments »