End of GDC 2024
I am typing out my last post about GDC 2024 while waiting to board my plane home (I only finished it the day after though, so if the times seem weird, that's why). If you didn't see the previous one and wanna check it out, click here.
So, I wrote the post linked above on the first day of GDC and it's been four days since, so there's a lot to cover, but I'll try to focus on the big things.
Firstly - I got to play the chip taking game in real life with actual people! It was just as awful as I expected. To those who don't know, The Chip Taking Game is a hypothetical game used to teach game design and discuss game design principles. The game itself is as simple as it is mind-numbing: Each player starts with a stack of chips, and each turn one player gets to remove a chip from another player. Last man standing wins. This game is awful for an amount of reasons that I cannot be bothered to spell out here, but the main issues are that victory means nothing and the winner is chosen entirely arbitrarily through table politics. Until now, I've only read about this game in game design books and discussions. Turns out that game devs actually made a physical version of it called Spitecraft, which considering how I can't find it anywhere online1, I figure is just a limited novelty run. A novelty run which I managed to snag a copy of, because they were handing spares out after the workshop ended. I can now arrogantly brag to my friends about owning the worst tabletop game ever put to print, and after we finish playing monopoly I could also show them Spitecraft.
Also, while we're on the topic of Spitecraft, an absolute character decided to show up at our table mid-match: A dude wearing oversized white clothes, a white cap, a GIANT2 gold chain riddled with what I can only assume is diamonds, who introduced himself as the rapper game designer and went on to say that he thought Spitecraft was such a well designed game it should be licensed and put in Mass Effect as a playable minigame. What a guy.
On Thursday there were two big stage events: A concert, and the game awards. The concert was honestly amazing; I don't know if it was just the live instruments or the fact that these were games I held near and dear to my heart, but I was pretty much perpetually on the verge of tears. They did a whole medley of classic games, full covers of the Celeste theme and "In The Blood" from Hades, and many other amazing songs. At one point they said they were going to do a tribute to the "stacked year of releases that was 2024" and proceeded to open with a cover of Starfield's theme and Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. I'm just gonna let hang in the air for a second.
The award show was very nice, helped introduce me to some indie games I previously didn't know of, but - it was only really the indie award show that was interesting. The "main" show was just a constant repeat of "And the nominees for [whatever] category are: Insomniac's Spiderman 2! Alan Wake 2! Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom! Baldur's Gate 3!" Like god damn people, can we have any other games? Those four games are just that good at everything? Even the technology award? Sure. It was a bit disappointing frankly, but Yoko Shimomura getting the lifetime achivement award was nice to see.
Going to the proper exposition hall made me simultaneously feel like a little kid at a candy store and also like I was going to pass out; I had to stop multiple times to breathe due to the sheer amount of stuff there. I stole stickers from a bunch of places to decorate my laptop, got a zine about unionizing funnily enough3, got to meet the creator of Cryptmaster (which I was excited for anyways), I got a lego set of the fortnite pinata from the Unreal Engine section... I could keep going, there really was so much in the exposition, but I don't know where to start nor end, so I'll leave the rest of the contents of the hall to your imagination.
Actually there's one thing I'll tell you: There was a giant booth called "WEB3 GAMING SUCKS" which was pro-web3 gaming. Not a single one of their shown examples could not be done with just a standard database, which makes me wonder what the fuck is the point of the "decentralization" part of crypto if no one here is using it.
I got to meet a lot of lovely people there, which I really can't say enough about. I went to a lot of mixers, did a lot of networking4, got a lot of advice about how to join game jams... I'm really thankful for everyone I met there. Unfortunately I did not snag myself a new job, however I did find out that the game dev community in Israel is not as dead as I thought which is going to be a massive boon going forward.
One final thing I wanna mention that I was saddened by - i didn manage to get the novelty mug :(. In their store they had a novelty mug on sale and I really wanted to get one to show off and use daily to feel a lil' proud I did this whole trip, but the day I went to buy the mug they were sold out! I even brought clothes to shield it so it wouldn't shatter! I was so sad dude. I ended up buying some arm warmers and stickers as consolation, but it's nothing like owning The Cup Itself :(.
Now it's all over. I'm heading back, stopping to see some family, but... it's done. My first GDC, something I've been dreaming about since I was a kid. I was worried I wouldn't do enough, I was worried I'd do too much, I am still worried I could have done better, but you know what?
I do not regret it for a second; I'm so happy I got to experience it.
Hopefully I'll go again soon.
Would love to be corrected wrong here.↩
Bigger than you imagined it right there.↩
Also a mousepad. It's surprising how pro-union the game industry is right now, but it's also expected considering the amount of layoffs going on.↩
Atleast I think I did. I am still not fully on the concept of what "networking" even means. I got a bunch of linkedin connections, is that it?↩