I've attended the past 3 GDCs, and GDC 2009 was the oddest of the bunch. The economy cast a pall over the entire conference: there were fewer recruiters at the job floor, there were fewer companies with booths on the expo floor, there appeared to be fewer talks than previous years, and in general, the conference just felt less crowded.
There were a number of other changes that happened this year compared to the last two GDCs that I attended:
Not a student
This was the first year that I attended GDC not as a student. I've been in the games industry for only a year now so I'm still green, but the experience actually proved to be quite different than in previous years. Though at the previous GDCs that I had attended, I already had offers for internships or jobs at the time, whenever I would chat with people and say that I was a student, I sensed an immediate disengagement with some people. Perhaps they were assuming that I'm only chatting with them because I want a job. Either I was much more at ease with myself this time around or my badge didn't say "Student", or both. Either way, I found that people opened up much more when I was chatting with them than in previous years.
Economy
The economy is on everyone's minds in just about every industry. As for how it related to GDC, there were far fewer people at the conference, the expo floors were quite small, and weirdly enough, it seemed as though the expo floor had lots of middleware companies and not very many development or publishing booths. I'm no economist, but at least from my observations, the game industry is definitely not immune to the economy. How this will affect game development moving into the future is not clear either.
At least as an observation, again, it seemed as though indie games haven't been affected by the economy; in fact, there appeared to be even more indie games than ever before. There are probably a combination of reasons for this:
- With more and more indie successes like World of Goo, Crayon Physics, etc., more people are making games on their own time.
- There are simply more and more people getting into the games industry every day.
- This last explanation is a stretch, but maybe due to all of the people getting laid off, they're spending time that they now have making the games that they've always wanted to make, but never could given, well, their jobs.
Indies are now Mainstream
With World of Goo and Crayon Physics being the forerunners, it's clear that indie games are no longer hobby-projects that people work on in their garages– they're big business too. With so many methods of delivering independent games directly to players (WiiWare, Steam, Impulse) indie games are proving that they're able to be quite successful without having to play into the "OMG WE HAVE TO SHIP CHRISTMAS" mindset. It's been said over and over again in the past, but I think it finally sunk in to everyone's mind this year; you don't need millions of dollars to make a good game, and if you make a good game, people will play it.
While this comment from Warren Spector was written regarding OnLive, the video games on demand business that debuted at GDC, I think it's an interesting point regarding the games industry overall.
New distribution methods can have an effect on game design. I am sick and tired of the movie model that we have adopted as a business. Frankly, all we get to do in mainstream games is tent-pole games. We do summer blockbusters. That’s crazy. It’s a terrible business model. We should be thinking more like television with serialized content. With this, there is a direct conduit between me and my players. I can get at lower commitment gaming, where players can drop in and play an episode of a game. You have to think about how you would do narrative in a different way if you do a serial narrative that has to keep people hooked for a long time.Some developers and publishers are doing this already (Telltale Games, Hothead Games, about 49808421 indie developers), it'll be interesting to see more and more "mainstream" studios attempt to follow this model and create longer-lasting, and quite different games.
