So as I was sitting here writing up some more articles on what I saw at the Game Developer's Conference (GDC) last week, I came to the realization that there was a lot which happened that doesn't really "fit" into an article, but might still be interesting to our readers. So what better way to share this with you than a blog!

First thing that came to mind was the party on Thursday night. Now there were parties almost every night that we were there, but Tuesday and Wednesday I was still so beat from trying to adjust to the 3 hour time difference that I just couldn't drag myself back up off the bed to attend. But by Thursday I was well adjusted, and I'm glad, as I think I caught the best party of them all that night. You see, Thursday was the CDV party where they were demoing Tortuga: Two Treasures and Runaway: The Dream of Turtle. Now I'd seen Tortuga before. In fact, not to toot my own horn or anything, but I've got a "box quote" on the Tortuga box. (My first, so I'm rather excited by it). But Runaway I hadn't had the chance to see for myself. Having spent a short time playing it that night, I can tell you that it's one I now want to try. It's one of those "get inside the developers' heads" type of games where you sometimes have to take creative and intuitive leaps to solve problems and advance through the story, but it looks fun none the less. And the art work for it is just very cool and colorful.

Of course, one of the best parts of the party was getting to meet people face to face that I'd been communicating through emails for a while now. I won't name any names to protect the innocent, you all know who you are. It was great to see that when the "nerd" hats come off, game developers and members of the community know how to party with the best of them, that's for sure.

The other fun part of the week was sitting in on the panels that were more roundtable discussions than lectures. Here was where I learned the most about the inside of the gaming industry. Publishers look at games very differently from how developers do, and that's very different from how I as press have. The "publisher's rant" I attended the first day, for example, was very enlightening. While many of the rants were who can lay the blame on someone else (usually that someone else being Microsoft) for why a product is delayed, or doesn't work, one of the rants in particular struck quite a chord in me. It was more a call to action than a rant. Nichol Bradford, the Global Director of Strategic Growth at Vivendi Games, ranted about how disconnected from schools and colleges today's game developers are. She spoke of what a disservice to the industry as a whole it is when developers, publishers and others in the industry don't volunteer to go in to schools to speak to the coming generations. And she's right. She said it much better than I have here, but the point remains that without people inside the gaming industry coming in to schools to speak and get kids excited about how games are made, about how what they are doing in school now will have an impact on them later in life, the current generation of kids playing the very games being made today will grow up with wide eyed expectations of "I want to be a game developer, why do I need math? or English? Or history?". Kids need to see those people who they look up to as role models active in their lives and communities if they ever hope to have realistic expecations of what it takes to be good in the role they've chosen. And that's even more true for such a young industry as developing games is. By now children who look up to a doctor, or lawyer, or teacher, know what they have to aspire to in order to succeed in that profession. But when was the last time that a high school gamer really thought about what it would take to be able to make a game like Gears of War? Or even a casual game like Luxor? For the majority of kids, even if that's what they want to do when they grow up, I doubt they ever have. So Nichol's rant, her call to action, was to get the gaming community involved in teaching youngesters now, before it is too late, that they do need math; they do need history; they do need good grammar and spelling; they need to be strong students in school if they want to grow up to be innovative and creative game developers. As a parent and teacher, that was an incredibly exciting "rant" to listen to, and I hope that something truly does come from it.

I sat in on a number of other lectures, but most of them have now blurred in to some spot in my brain which is tucked away behind the overall experience of being tired, excited, and proud to be a part of the gaming industry. Oh, to say nothing of being totally overwhelmed by the size of San Francisco itself. I've no idea what GDC is normally like for press, but this time it seemed to be a large mix of trying to see new products and learning. And while it was a lot of work, it was also a good deal of fun.