So I had one day at GDC (my job is rather busy so it was all I could spare) and I wanted to give you my general impressions and share some insights.

ON RECRUITING:
Recruiting was down this year based on everything I'd heard – still active, definitely, but not what it was last year.  This of course is not surprising and companies were hiring.

I will say even with down numbers, GDC is pretty much obviously the place to go to learn about and break into the game market, and I talked to several people who were busy networking and looking for work happily.  GDC is not cheap if that's your goal ($195 just to attend expo areas and a limited selection of seminars and other events, full memberships break $1000 easily), but you can work for the event to get a membership in return for hours worked.

Some of the young people I met were very dynamic and ambitious.  It was really very reassuring to see them unstoppable in the recession.

ON WHO WAS THERE:
Lots of middleware and services out there, and a few people I talked to said there seemed to be more.  That was very intriguing – as I've often noted middleware is a great area to work in in gaming (as I do, so I'm biased).  However you may also want to consider the service area as well – testing, translation, marketing, advanced modeling, and so on.  I saw some very impressive stuff, and was surprised what companies had worked on various games I was familiar with.  In the future, I'll try and pay more and more attention to the service side of gaming and its career options for you.

One thing that interested me was too see how many companeis outsourced complex graphic designs and animations.  I would literally run into people who had turned out to be responsible for things I'd appreciated and realize they were suddenly not done in-house.  Definitely those of you with graphic skills who want to work in gaming want to stay aware of this.

IN WHICH I EXPERIENCE GAMEBRYO
I was pleased to see that Emergent Technologies was there and got to see Gamebryo: Lightspeed, which did live up to my expectation.  I watched as a game in play could have its environment modified quickly, and even its rules rewritten in LUA, and a quick save and momentary pause, and the "new" game is running.  It's pretty slick – there are similar tools out there, but this does a lot, and what really impressed me was how friendly it was – it's a system made by people that have used systems like it.  I'm more enthused about their productivity increasing tools now – well even more – because they definitely know what they're doing.

The Emergent folks were nice and rather pleased at my enthusiasm.  They also had a lot of sense of their own history – which is very encouraging.  They take a long view and it shows.

IN WHICH I EXPERIENCE ONLIVE
Yes, I went to the OnLive booth – or area.  They definitely know how to put on a show.  So what did I think about it?

First, they DO have something going on here, there's no denying that.  They've got a slick presentation, the games do work, and they're also honest about potential limitation and issues.  There's also still some business model elements being figured out and they admit that too.  That was refreshing over the breathless press commentary.

The games themselves overall worked pretty good.  When doing some high-powered gaming or watching a very colorful game you could detect an occasional hiccup or notice some washed out colors.  I can see whatever the service is will need to be calibrated for individual machines, connections, etc.

Now do I buy OnLive as portrayed?  No.  It's got a lot of good tech and I'd say it's about 80% there, but I just keep seeing potential problems with it – there's too many variables to guarantee a consistent product at this time and maybe for years.  Based on people I've read and talked to I suspect that they'll have too many limitations to make this universal.  HOWEVER I think what they'll do is team up to provide this as a service through other companies – in hotels (perhaps even with their own server?), special high-speed cable deals with companies, etc.  Careful strategy an give them a limited but highly effective deployment they can do over time.

But is it the end of consoles?  No.  Even if my concerns aren't valid, we'll then have an Online Gaming war just as bad as the Console war give or take.

IN WHICH I MEET THE FOLKS BEHIND NAVPOWER
I'd been mildly curious about Babelflux, the folks behind Navpower, the targeting/path software application.  However running into them was pretty impressive – they had some interesting demos, and also were honest about the advantages and limitations of what they provide.  It seems to me what they've got is a system that does complex things in a simple to understand way and some nice tools and good demos.  Going to keep an eye on them – and hey they're local to me so I'm biased.

IN WHICH I MEET ADAM SESSLER
He is very nice and polite.

So overall? An interesting experience, a few trends to note, and I got to meet some people I'd been curious about.  I can say as a game pro, even a guy in management, this was well worth it.  So keep in mind that, despite the cost, it may be worth the price – or worth working at to network.

- Steve