GDC: A Newbie's Perspective
In part one, our reporter on the spot talks about a lackluster show missing the the glamour and glitz you would find at the E3.
by Erik Zwerling
Photos from gamasutra.com

I had been looking forward to my first visit to the Game Developer's Conference for the past few months. While I could not afford to buy a pass to attend all the conference sessions and workshops, I was excited about being able to walk the exhibit floor and attending some of the free lectures that were included with the purchase of an Expo Pass.

Walking into San Jose's Game Developers Conference for the first time on March 21st, I expected to be inundated by a cacophony of pumping rave music and flashing lights, something akin to what one would find at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) annually. I was always told by friends and co-workers that GDC was huge and took up residence in multiple exhibit halls.

However, the GDC I found in San Jose was subdued and restrained. There was no pumping rave music blaring. There was no flashing lights; just rows of sterile fluorescent lights from above. I was expecting to see and hear a game developers conference that was representative of the .com and computer boom of the past 5 years. But it was apparent to me from my first step into the exhibit hall, what I was experiencing was more reflective of an industry recovering and restructuring for the next big boom.

Even Microsoft's booth seemed to be cutting costs this year. During my previous journeys to E3 in Los Angeles, Microsoft's booth was always packed with attendees, waiting in line to catch an exclusive glimpse at the new version of DirectX, new platforms like the Xbox, or whatever other trick Microsoft had up it's sleeve to gain another foothold into people's homes. This year though, even Microsoft was showing the effects of a game industry slow down. Gone was the exclusive demonstration room, in favor of an open classroom setting. But in the five or six trips I made walking past the Microsoft booth, the Microsoft representatives seemed to be lecturing more to other Microsoft employees, than to game industry professionals.

"There was no flashing lights; just rows of sterile fluorescent lights from above."

If anything was apparent to me during my GDC visit, it was that this was GDC's 'Year of the Jobhunter'. While most of the floor had a steady flow of traffic, the most active exhibit floor section was not nVidia's show and tell of their new Quadro4 family of workstation graphics processors. Even Sony with its front and center booth, demonstrating its Linux for Playstation, wasn't all the rave. No, the most popular section of the exhibit floor was in the back corner, the Job Fair.

Click Here to go to Part 2 of the GDC review