Yes, it's that time once again: good old FDL is back with yet another edition of his very personal, very subjective and not very lucid report on the Game Developers Conference.

For the three or four of you who have resisted the urge to hit the browser's "Back" button, sit back and try to enjoy the ride. I did not endure four flights, four hours of delays, an uncomfortably thorough search at the airport, several bruises caused by the kicking baby in the next seat of Flight 1520, and five days of GDC food for nothing!

General Impressions
Unquestionably, the show felt much smaller this year than last, in several ways:

Fewer sessions. Not so much in terms of number of lectures as in number of time slots. The organizers wisely decided to cut back on the last day's program a little, since many people are too exhausted to contribute after the Friday night parties.

Fewer people, for less time. The crowd also seemed much older than usual on average. With the current economic uncertainty and the conference's high price tag, many companies probably decided to send their leads and executives and keep the rank and file at home. And it seemed that those who came mostly did so for the three-day "regular GDC": the hallways were very quiet in the early part of the week, devoted to full-day tutorials.

Less diversity. Europeans, who were everywhere last year, have come in much smaller numbers, despite the Wireless Summit. The emergence of GDC Europe probably explains this phenomenon.

Fewer exhibitors. Last year, the trade show floor was packed, and both the job fair and the lunch area were moved to another hall across the street. This year, not only did everything (including the IGF) fit inside the main expo hall, but there were also a couple of sit-down areas in prime locations. Thankfully, the job fair itself was busier than in 2001.

There is also a welcome tendency towards thematic balance within the conference's program: it seems that every year sees more lectures and roundtables on business, design, audio and art topics. On the programming side, however, I have heard a few developers complain of a lack of truly advanced lectures.

The Week's Keywords: Optimistic Skepticism.
As an industry, we have every reason to feel good about the next couple of years. After all, we have just crushed the previous annual sales record, and the Acacia Research Group predicts that the numbers will leap to $15 billion this year.

However, unlike previous years, no one seems really sure where this new growth will come from. There was no palpable excitement over massively multiplayer worlds (except Star Wars Galaxies), console broadband, episodic distribution, wireless gaming or any other radical change in the industry's dynamics. Of course, with 4 successful platforms that have been on the market for less than 2 years, there is nothing wrong with expecting growth to occur largely of its own.

The Winners
Criterion Software, makers of Renderware, have every reason to gloat. With 6 of the top 10 sellers during the British Christmas season (including Grand Theft Auto 3), these guys have proven that they can wrestle with anyone. Their large booth, right at the entrance of the show floor, was consistently one of the most crowded. (The free massages didn't hurt their popularity either.)

XBOX was everywhere. An XBOX logo on the bag of goodies handed out to participants. XBOX ads in the convention center's stairways. XBOX pens. XBOX games in the lobby lounge. XBOX full-day tutorial. Even XBOX t-shirts on the custodial staff. Microsoft really wanted to make a statement. And it didn't hurt that the most impressive new project on display, Peter Molyneux's RPG code-named Project Ego, will be an XBOX exclusive.

Facial Animation software makers. They were everywhere on the show floor this year, and their products are mightily impressive. Effective lip-synching and expressive morphing will be among the keys to next year's cinematic interactive experiences.

Dissemination of Information. This year, there were no fewer than five book publishers on the floor, including three who have dedicated collections targeted to game developers - and not only the introductory DirectX programming stuff of years gone by: literally dozens of titles covering increasingly specialized subtopics. In a similar vein, a number of initiatives devoted to codifying game design wisdom into formal "patterns" attracted attention, including Hal Barwood's and Noah Falstein's well-attended lecture on "the 400" rules of design, a roundtable, and two different upcoming books called Game Design Patterns (one by Bernd Kreimeier, one by Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams). Hopefully, there will still be a small market niche for my own book to occupy when it comes out!

The Highlights
On Saturday, Avatars Offline, a documentary on massively multiplayer online worlds and the people who love them (too much), was premiered to a standing-room-only audience. Go see this movie; it is funny, informative, and thought-provoking.

The two-person lecture/discussion/debates, one between Will Wright and comic book author Scott McCloud, the other between Warren Spector and Doug Church, were tightly packed with stimulating ideas. This is most definitely an experiment to repeat.

And finally, it never ceases to amaze me how nice and accessible the people in this business are. Some of my personal heroes showed up at my roundtables, unannounced, to dish out absolute gems of wisdom. I almost managed to remain coherent. Most of the time.

The Lowlights
Layoffs, again. Westwood Studios continued a dubious tradition by cutting staff at GDC time. And judging by what the press is saying about Loki's demise, it looks like we may be having our own private little Enron scandal.

Absences. Apple didn't show up. Neither did Macromedia, despite the popularity of online Flash games. Motion capture companies, which used to occupy a sizable portion of the show floor, were much more discreet. And Nintendo was nowhere to be seen, except for a small and poorly attended booth in the job fair.

The Too Weird To Ignore
Thankfully, we didn't see anything quite so egregiously creepy as DigiScents' 60-year old booth babes in skunk outfits from last year, but still...

One book publisher hired models dressed and made-up as stereotypical guilty-fantasy 12-year old Catholic school girls to sell their wares. Might have been a bit much, even by geeky trade show standards.

In a similar vein, UbiSoft announced that they would be publishing a PlayStation racing game based on a license from... Hooters, the restaurant chain better known for buxom wenches than for palatable food. I'm sure there are a few things left in the world that haven't been licensed yet, but I can't think of any.

Anarchy Online, the dystopian MMO, receives the prestigious Shovelware Award for this year. It was impossible to swing a cat anywhere in San Jose without hitting a pile of free copies of this game. Anybody who wanted one got five. If I had bought that game in a store, I'd feel a bit silly right about now.

And finally, one more proof that we developers have a ways to go before we join the real world: I witnessed at least half a dozen people trying to eat the Booth Crawl tamales without unwrapping the cornhusks first. That's gotta hurt.

Looking Forward
Unquestionably, the most highly anticipated game of the year, as far as developers are concerned, is Star Wars Galaxies, the upcoming persistent online world from LucasArts and Sony Online Entertainment. And it's not just a developers' thing either: the best quote of the show, from Avatars Offline, said: "There is not enough bandwidth in the State of California to support that game." The second-best quote, from a panel on the future of online gaming: "80% of hardcore gamers have never played [an MMORPG]." At least, not yet. This could get very, very interesting.

As for next year, Project Ego looks mighty juicy. A world where actions have lasting consequences, where the player character morphs according to age and actions, and with a plot that lasts years of game time - cinematically, this one looks to be a quantum leap above the rest, and it might do for the XBOX what Final Fantasy VII did for the PlayStation: turn it into the platform of reference for role-playing gamers, at least in the Western World.

And finally, an unconfirmed rumor circulating on the show floor states that the GDC might move out of San Jose, possibly to Las Vegas, in 2004. That is the best news I've heard all year: not only is Vegas more interesting to visit and easier to reach by direct flight from just about everywhere in the world, which is a significant argument in favor of the move in these current circumstances, but the switch would also put a couple of hundred miles between my stomach and the San Jose Convention Center's lunch boxes.

And that's good enough for me.

BIO
François Dominic Laramée has plagued the game industry for almost a decade, finagling his way into a variety of short-lived jobs as studio head, producer, designer and programmer, until he ran out of luck and was forced to become a (mostly starving) freelancer three years ago. He is in no way responsible for the success of the more than 20 console, PC, online and board games for which he claims unwarranted credit, and should never have been allowed to edit Charles River Media's upcoming book "Game Design Methods" or to publish his insane ramblings in over 35 articles and book chapters. Visit his mediocre web site, http://pages.infinit.net/idjy, at your own risk.