Introduction

With the 2007 edition of the Game Developers Conference now coming to an end I though I would put up some final thought on the show. In many ways this GDC may be a sign of things to come in many different ways for the industry.

Sony's Keynote Speech

The Playstation 3 has taken a beating in many circles for what was determined to be a lackluster launch combined with the easing of demand for the console just after the holidays. While Sony still has a long road ahead of it, it took some postive steps in the right direction on Wednesday with its keynote presenation by Sony Playstation VP Phil Harrison. The demo of LittleBigPlanet from developer Media Molecule was easily the highlight of GDC, showing off the sandbox properties of the game to create whole new worlds with just a few clicks. It's a game that also couldn't be made for Nintendo's Wii console due to the high amount of phyics and graphics displayed in the demo. In short, this game has the makings to be Sony's version of The Sims; a game that can be embraced by the masses, even those folks who don't play games.

I was less than excited about the prospect of Playstation Home, the 3D avatar world that Sony is developing for the PS3 console. It's clear that Sony wants some of the media attention that Linden Labs has generated for Second Life, an online avatar world that in my view has gotten way too much attention from the mainstream media compared to the amount of its real users (now estimated to be around 300,000 or less worldwide and only 40,000 or so who actually pay for the service). Thankfully Sony plans to offer Playstation Home for free which means that it will have a lot of users but the idea creating a virtual home for your virtual character to collect virtual stuff and watch virtual videos on your virtual TV is just not appealing to me at all at this stage. I have a real life and quite frankly unless I'm using super powered to defeat the bad guys no virtual world is going to be as enticing to me as sitting on my real couch to watch a real movie.

At least Sony is moving in the right direction with its trophies, their version of Microsoft's Achievements for Xbox 360 games. Being able to attain goals, both easy and hard, is something that is one of the big attractions for Xbox 360 players. In truth I think Sony has an even better solution with their trophies; they certainly look a lot better than some number listing and the game artists can be creative with making their designs. It's too bad that we will have to wait until close to a year after the PS3 launch for this feature but it's better late than never.

Nintendo's Keynote Speech

Shigeru Miyamoto made his first GDC keynote speech in eight years on Thursday and it certainly was...different. Basically Miyamoto tried to convey the idea that if more games were made that pleased his wife, the entire industry would be a better place. It's certainly true that expanding the video game market to attract non-gamers is a good idea but quite frankly Miyamoto made some not-so-gentle slams against companies like Rockstar and Microsoft for games like the Halo and Grand Theft Auto series. He said that the industry's reputation went down as sales of those games went up. I don't believe that the industry's reputation took as much of a beating as he thinks. It's true that certain Florida lawyers have gotten a lot of media attention to attack games but all of those attacks are completely unwarranted. What happened was that as games began getting made for an older audience some people who believe all games should be made for kids decided to try to make a case that these games were going to affect kids, even if they were clearly not made for that audience.

In watching Miyamoto make his address, I really got the feeling that games made for an older audience exclusively were not for him. He wants more games like Nintendogs and Big Brain Academy. There's nothing wrong with these kinds of games at all but if that's all that were available I don't think I would still be a gamer who is nearing the age of 40. There were no real new announcements from Nintendo during the keynote but they did show some new footage of Super Mario Galaxy. It looks like a cool game but it's hard for me to get too excited about it because, well, it's another Mario game. Let's face it, Mario is used a lot in Nintendo's games (something that even Miyamoto seemed to agree with in his speech) and while the Nintendo fanboys and fangirls will be happy it's going to take a lot for me to get excited about it. Hopefully Nintendo will prove me wrong.

The Rest Of GDC

With E3 now an invite only event and pushed back to July GDC has now become the last major show for a ton of people to see new and cool games and game technologies for several months. Lots of publishers, from Sony to EA to Nintendo to Microsoft to smaller publishers like NCSoft, CDV and more, gathered at GDC to show off their upcoming games to the press. It's still not quite the big single showcase that the old E3 was but there was still plenty to write about. GDC's move to San Francisco's Moscone Center is a postive move; the show took up nearly all three buildings along with a couple of side hotels. I'll still miss the intimacy of San Jose but it's clear that GDC needed to make this move.

Overall GDC was a long but ultimately fun time and while the show is still aimed quarely at game developers rather than the general consumer press it was a fountain of new news about the industry. I will certainly be back again in mid-February for the 2008 edition.