GDC 2013 Has Concluded

What a busy, inspiring, terrifying, and fun week that was. It was the first ever GDC for me, and... I don't know how to describe it. It was amazing. I feel so inspired, like I'll be printing out Nuovo-Award winning games every day.

The IGF Awards and Game Developers Choice Awards were spectacular and funny as hell. When Tim Schafer said "What is beauty in a video game? Is it subtle, breathtaking character portrayal? Is it the emotional moments that grip and don't let go? Or is it polygon count? The answer, ladies and gentlemen... Is polygon count.", I lost myself. (He said something like that. I sure don't remember exactly what he said, but you get the point.) And of course he went off to give the Best Visual Arts award to Journey.

One of the best parts of the conference was when I got to meet YoYo Games, the company that makes GameMaker which I've been using as soon as I knew how to type. So, for like six-seven years. A tool that was developed to teach children graphical interfaces has come a very long way, and according to this guy GameMaker: Studio is going to become a hundred times faster in a upcoming patch. Also, four more platforms are going to be available to port. During GDC week, GameMaker: Studio Master Collection was available for $199 for all Professional customers, which I was, and I bought it just yesterday.

Jongmin Jerome Baek (PokPoong Games)

And of course the absolute best part of the conference was the part where I got to speak, in front of a thousand people, at the most popular session in the conference. It was also the most stomach-wrenching and terrifying part. I actually threw up at the bathroom right before the start after I saw rows upon rows of chairs filled with hundreds of hundreds of people... You see, I didn't want to throw up during the presentation. 

There were actually wayyyyyy more people than this picture shows.

Testing the game on the big screen. Seeing it work well relieved me a bit.

With co-developer Sun Park of Turtle Cream.