GDC08 Highlights: Sony, Sessions and Telltale
Sony more or less packed up and left early (around 5:00pm on Thursday), but in the interim they did let us hang out in their Bloggers' Lounge (even Xbox 360 Fanboy editor Richard Mitchell) playing Singstar, flOw on PSP and Echochrome. They also held a Buzz! charity event. Outside the lounge they gave us the "in-shirt XMB" shirts — especially ironic given that they didn't announce the much-hoped for in-game XMB feature.
Elsewhere, Home was mentioned, Sony gurus Insomniac unleashed its source code for development world to peruse. Then there was the Block Party with Q-Tip (video) ... um, yeah. For you, Sony, we dine on Cell chips in Blu-ray dip. Meanwhile, where the heck was LittleBigPlanet?
Adventure Quest(ions)
Whereas we felt really out of place at Sony's party, Telltale threw a zombified soirée attracting some of industry's best adventure game luminaries (many of whom, as it were, happen to work at Telltale). We were even lucky enough to pose a ridiculous adventure game puzzle to legends such as Steve Purcell, Ron Gilbert and Mike Stemmle. There's more to come, if threats on our life (wake up) don't come to fruition.
While not a "party," per se, Emotive did give a few attendees a jolly good time at their presentation, while everyone else just felt uncomfortable witnessing a series of unfortunate disasters.
In Other News
- GDC08: Bionic Commando Rearmed aims for May
- GDC08: Boom Blox to include head tracking. Seriously.
- GDC08: EA joins the user-generated bandwagon with 'The Sims Carnival'
- GDC08: Far Cry 2 gives you malaria, deal with it
- GDC08: Mass Effect PC demo (spoiler: the inventory system is much better)
- GDC08: Penny Arcade dev aims for episode every 4 months
- GDC08: Square Enix unveils Crystal Tools engine
- Puzzle Quest: Galactrix (re)announced
- Realtime Worlds shows off All Points Bulletin
- WildTangent unveils 'PC game console' Orb, Sierra and THQ pledge support
Sessions
GDC holds hundreds of sessions in its five day period. Most of them talk about programming and art techniques, and while we tried our best to attend them all (really, we did), a handful stood out as interesting and fascinating for even non-developers to enjoy. They also happen to be some of the most heavily-attended sessions in the conference. Experimental games? They got you covered. Angry designers and balloon parties? Yep, that too. This year's game design challenge produced a sure-fire hit for the much-coveted bacteria demographic.
Our old friend total rock star Ken Levine had his BioShock honored by a panel as one of the eight best examples of interactive storytelling alongside Ico, Thief, Plansecape and others. Looking to the future, Silicon Knights' Denis Dyack nearly came to blows with Timeshift's Matthew Karch over the relevance of storytelling for games both in the present and the future.