Quick Notes From the Trenches
Unfortunately, I missed several highly interesting sessions due to prior commitments, but I still managed to glean a lot of precious tidbits. For example:

[] When making the Lord of the Rings movies, it took about 40 hours to render each frame of Treebeard's animation. And while he looks good, he doesn't look that much better than what game engines can produce in real time, on much more modest hardware. Does he?

[] 15% of PS2 sales come from original intellectual property, versus 30% at the same point in the PS1's life cycle. This little tidbit from Warren Spector's keynote shows that sequels and licenses are here to stay – but as Warren says, that's not necessarily a bad thing, as long as you know what to do with the licensed property. After all, if we like sequels in our books (Harry Potter, anyone?), why not in our games?

[] Half of GarageGames' business comes from the Mac market, and another 20% from Linux users. Indie developers should definitely give a long hard look to these underserved audiences.

[] The typical "budget publisher" boilerplate contract follows the 10-10 model: 10% royalty on publisher's receipts, $10,000 advance. Now, since the actual royalty on a game sold for $20 at retail is likely to be about $1.25, odds are the $10K advance is all you'll ever see. Not even Deer Hunter was developed for under $10K. Online distribution looks better and better every year.

[] 80% of buyers of games sold online never had any intention of buying those games at retail. This one comes from an Internet self-publishing strategies panel. It shows that an effective trial period (and research shows that the average player decides whether to buy or not within 40 minutes) is the key to success.

[] At worst, retailers are neutral when it comes to online distribution. Trymedia's Gabe Zicherman's comment, which flies in the face of the conventional wisdom about channel conflict, may indicate that wide-scale digital distribution is closer than we think. He says that the Wal-Marts of this world completely "get it", but that it is the publishers who don't really know how to handle this new channel. I'm pretty sure they'll figure it out…

Sundry Signs of Impending Doom
Of course, the GDC is not entirely about work. (Some would say it isn't about work at all.) Here's a quick recap of the extracurriculars:

The Free Junk
There was very little free stuff to gather this year, at least not without jumping through hoops that my shrinking-but-still-there girth renders totally impassable. I came back with plenty of docs, but no more than half a dozen t-shirts and the speaker freebies.

Heck, for non-speakers who didn't want to attend the Game Developers Choice Awards (and endure another massive lineup at the end of the event), even the official conference shirt wasn't free this year. Which is unnecessarily harsh, given the fact that the price tag on a Giga Pass now requires attendees to have children every year just so they can sell them into slavery.

And remember when I made fun of the people who ate the booth crawl tamales without unwrapping the cornhusks last year? Well, I got around to eating one of those tamales this year, and I must apologize: the husks must have been the edible part. Ugh. Even by the usual toothpick-sandwich and fat-fried-in-fat standards of the San Jose Convention Center's food services, that thing was vile.

Stunt of the Year
This award goes to Liquid, the art outsourcing company, for their "Make Art, Not War" fake protest held in front of the convention center. While most of the jokes on their signs fell flat, and their show itself was nowhere near as entertaining as Wild Tangent's gospel choir from a few years back, the basic concept itself took guts given the current circumstances.

The Ego Stroke
In my 2002 GDC report for this esteemed publication, I warmly recommended Avatars Offline, a documentary on massively multiplayer online worlds and the people who love them too much. A few months later, I saw a quote from that report used to promote the movie on its official web site, which was cool. That quote was reprinted in the conference program's addendum this year, which was cooler, since it means that I am now officially an industry pundit.

I guess that proves that if you are sufficiently talkative, people will eventually start assuming that you know what you're talking about, despite all evidence to the contrary.

And Oh Yeah, The Booth Babes
Something is definitely wrong with the world, because there were none. Oh, sure, I saw plenty of attractive women at the show (which is strange enough in itself), but none of them wore the delightful insufficiency of clothing characteristic of the typical techie trade show. Nor the creepy skunk outfits and Catholic schoolgirl uniforms we saw at GDC in recent years.

In fact, the only true bimbos at the show were virtual. The nVidia pixie-elf-Tinkerbell thingy looked like she was on something illegal, and plenty of it. Meanwhile, the DOA Beach Volleyball girls, whose game blared ALL DAY LONG in the Xbox lounge, sounded like Munchkin porn stars. Astoundingly annoying.

Potent Quotables
Finally, here are some of the best quotes of the week:

[] "Beeyatch, get a sandwich!" This is an actual marketing slogan, from an actual company that is still in business, according to one of the questions in the Programmer's Challenge. The economy has been harsh in recent years, but apparently not harsh enough.

[] "Are they duct-taping the engine to the plane?" Me, as I watched crack maintenance crew prepping our jet at the Montreal International Airport.

[] "And the winner of the Game Developers Choice Award for Game of the Year is… Doom 3!" Graeme Devine, chair of the IGDA and Grand Pooh Bah of that much-anticipated technical wonder, before he presented the actual prize to the Metroid team. A preview of next year's ceremony? Not implausible…

[] "This hotel is crawling with cheerleaders." Heard from an anonymous developer at the Hyatt Sainte Claire on the last night of the show. Seems like a dance-and-cheer competition was sharing abodes with a significant share of the GDC crowd. While some of the girls apparently staged a drunken battle royale in the corridor outside of my room, the fearsome matter-antimatter reaction that could have resulted from direct contact between game developers and high school prom queens never happened.

[] "We make videocards, not hairdryers." Seen on promotional t-shirts from a Big Two graphics hardware company. A slight poke at the competitor's product's tendency to overheat and make lots of noise.

[] "We've run out of proceedings CD-ROMs." Someone from the conference organization, around 8:30 Wednesday morning, i.e., about an hour into registration for the Classic GDC. A new batch was expected that night, but the planning mishap is puzzling.

San Jose AGAIN?
San Jose has a lousy airport you can't get to on a direct flight from anywhere. San Jose is a city of a million people with the airport-to-downtown highway facilities of a city of ten thousand that has recently sustained heavy bombardment. San Jose's downtown area provides insufficient affordable lodging, few restaurants, and not a whole lot of anything to do in terms of entertainment. But GDC is staying there again next year. I cringe at the thought.

Oh well. It's still worth it.

See you there next year!

Actually, we thank you.