GDC Report 2003 Day 2

Unfortunately, I got there a bit early, which I seem to have a tendency to do. I wondered around for a bit, looking for the rooms that the sessions would be held in, and then hit the free GDC breakfast and got myself a couple of donuts there. By this time it was close to 9am and about time for the sessions to start.

The first session I went to was a lecture on Game Design Patterns. Most of the sessions were only supposed to last an hour, but this one went on for two. The subject matter was a bit too heavy for me, though, so I skipped the second half of it and went to the How to Build a Better Cut scene lecture by Adam Schnitzer. This one was pretty interesting, and Schnitzer had clips from Bounty Hunter and the yet to be released RTX Redrock (both of which he worked on). He talked primarily about being aware of traditional film techniques when doing cutscenes to better integrate them into games. After this session, there was a 15 minute break, so I headed over to a roundtable on "Hero's of the 21st Century".

I really enjoyed this roundtable. It was being run by John Feil from Lucasarts and only about 6 or 7 people showed up in addition. However, it was still an interesting discussion covering whether or not the "hero" style are going out-of-style and if there was a way to reward things such as heroism in MMORPGs... It was a really fun panel, and I voiced my opinion a lot having somewhat of a background from playing AC1 and AC2. After this I had meant to go to the Keynote on Weta Digital Creatures from the LotR movies, but I went into the expo hall for the first time after the Heros roundtable.

I must say, it seems that the expo area is rather small compared to others I had seen, but there were still quite a few Exhibits there, including a rather large one from Intel, and another from NVidia. After I had taken some pictures, I headed to the back and grabbed some of the free lunch. (Free is always good.)

After that, I went through the developers' area, and overall it was pretty underwhelming. They seemed to be more of a just poorly informational thing. Despite that, I still gave my business card to many of the developers in the area, including the guys at the Turbine booth.

I talked to Harry Teasley first, then went to pass out some more cards and resumes. When I had come back around to the same area, I went back to the Turbine booth. Ken Troop hadn't been there during my first visit, but he was there now. I proceeded to slather Ken with compliments, and I meant everything I told him. I really do have the utmost respect for ANYBODY who's willing to put up with the stuff he does. Also, I talked to Jason Booth, nd complimented him on the music system and asked him some questions that I thought you guys might be interested in.

Apparently there are 2 instruments that aren't currently dropping One is apparently some sort of Virinidi Instrument which was apparently around during beta, and another type of Clarinet (Jason couldn't remember off hand. I also asked him about the possibility of more percussion instruments for Humans and Tumeroks. Jason said that, unfortunately, it would take a lot of time to do new animations. Also, Jason said that he had wanted to have something a little more unique.

After I was done in that area, I went to explore the main expo area. I got to see several new things, including Final Fantasy XI and Dark Cloud 2. They were pretty fun and interesting, although it's hard to read Japanese when you don't know the language. I wasted some more time in that area until around 4pm, when I went to a session on game sequels and licensed games. This was another Keynote speak, so the room was quite large.

This keynote too was quite interesting, and basically came to the conclusion that sequels and licensed games aren't all that bad off. However, Warren Spencer, the guy doing the keynote focused a lot on ways in which he said that doing sequels and licensed stuff isn't necessarily bad. By the time this was over, I needed to get ready for the Game Developer's Choice Awards, so I went back into the exhibit hall to eat before I went to see the show.

After that, I crossed the street and headed over. This too was a pretty fun event. Retro Studios won several awards for Metroid Prime (Rookie Studio of the Year, Best Level design, and Game of the year). I've played Prime and I really do believe that the devs for the game really do deserve the awards.

Once that was over, I caught the light rail back to the apartment and decided to call it a night. I had gone by the "Open gaming room", but it turned out to be more of a boardgame type of thing. I was tired ad decided not to join in on any.

Anyway, that's about it for now. I'm having a lot of fun and am really glad I got the opportunity to come. Also, I was a bit tired when writing this up, so if there are any places that seem a bit odd, sorry about that. Tomorrow's another full day and I'll probably spend the majority of my time in other sessions. Hope everyone is finding this informative and at least interesting so far, and I'll be sure to try and get another update in tomorrow! ^_^

Cas Emerjy
The Magus Knight
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