Gamertell

Need more proof that the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) is becoming the new E3? Look no further than the attendance numbers for the once-intimate conference: GameDaily is reporting that over 18,000 people attended the five-day event. This breaks the event’s previous attendance record, setting the bar even higher for next year’s iteration (which is set for March 23-27, 2009 in San Francisco).

It seems that in the wake of the “reimagined” E3, all the other major conferences (GDC, PAX, TGS, D.I.C.E etc.) are growing and filling the void of the once-mighty show. However, as noted in an earlier story, the directors behind GDC and D.I.C.E. are looking for ways to trim the proverbial fat from their shows. It’ll be interesting to see if the trend continues into 2009.

Read [GameDaily]

According to GameDaily, the Game Developer’s conference (GDC) and D.I.C.E. summit - two of the most prominent industry conventions - may be going invite-only for next year. If this goes through, both events will only be open to press members that are specifically invited to partake.

The intention is to reduce the number of part time journalists and the overall number of press attending the events. As stated in the GameDaily piece, GDC executive director Jamil Moledina said

“It’s meant to be a networking event for people who make games, but more and more we are seeing a lot of individuals who are obtaining press credentials who aren’t full-time press. It’s kind of open to being spoofed, in a way.”

The post goes on to note that the directors of the D.I.C.E. summit have similar feelings about the situation.

I would say that GDC’s real problem is its recent focus on hyping and selling games instead of remaining true to its mission as a space for developers to share ideas, but might sound like sour grapes coming from a smaller outlet.

Read [GameDaily]

A lot of lesser known, smaller games got their moments in the sun at the Game Developers Conference, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t any love for more established, smaller sized games. Xbox Live’s Arcade has been one of the providers of tiny games that get you and all your friends buzzing for a week and a half. At GDC 2008, the results of a community vote for 2007’s batch of Live Arcade games was unveiled. Any chance Space Giraffe took top honors?

It was Hudson’s Bomberman Live as Best Overall with just a bit of an upset over Namco Bandai’s Pac-Man: Championship Edition, which won for Best Original Game. And looks like Bungie’s magic couldn’t rub off on its 1994 shooter Marathon, as Konami’s Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was named…

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In any story-driven medium, be it novels, narrative videogames, films, etc. you can’t have a very successful project without solid writing. While visual mediums like film and videogames (and from here, we’re speaking of games with central storylines, not Tetris) don’t necessarily rely on the spoken word as heavily, the writing is still an essential piece of the puzzle. With narrative becoming more and more important in gaming, and the industry growing at such an exponential rate, we’re increasingly seeing established screenwriters try their hand at writing games. But can these skills really be translated into such a vastly different medium?

At GDC 2008, 2k Boston mastermind Ken Levine gave a talk on storytelling in Bioshock. He revealed quite a few details about how the game’s story and world came together. To summarize very briefly, Levine stated that the narrative was actually written quite late in the development process, meaning that the game’s world and gameplay mechanics were established before the specific story details were written. It would appear that this organic, design-minded approach worked quite well for the format – seeing the title’s massive success and tremendous critical acclaim. He also left the audience with three bullet points essential for good storytelling in videogames: respect your audience, trust mystery, and empower the gamer.

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During the Game Developers Conference, Microsoft announced a new video game sharing feature for Xbox Live that will allow gamers to play and rate community developed games. They can also share theses games with any of their Xbox Live friends.

Microsoft believes that the new “open distribution” service will be a boon for community game development, allowing any level developers to almost instantly reach 10 million Xbox Live users. With the announcement of this new service, seven games created using XNA Game Studio 2.0 have already been announced…

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Nokia’s new N-Gage service has been marred by several delays and, in December 2007, the company formally pushed the launch of the service to the first half of 2008. Now with a pre-launch version, N-Gage First Access, being made available to N81 users through the official N-Gage website, the full version can’t be far off. And just before the launch of the service, the ongoing Game Developers Conference proved to be a great platform for the cellphone maker to shed more light on N-Gage’s new avatar as a standard gaming service for Nokia cellphone which will allow users to download and…

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Regardless of how you feel about most award ceremonies, you have to respect the Game Developers Choice Awards, in which actual working professionals (read: people who really know their stuff) pick the best and brightest games, ideas, and people of the past year. At this year’s eighth iteration of the ceremony, Valve’s innovative Portal was named the game of the year, with other big winners including Bioshock, Crackdown, Fl0w, Crysis, and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Also honored were Sid Meier with a lifetime achievement award, Jason Della Rocca with an ambassador award, and Ralph Baer with a pioneer award.

Click through for a full list of the winners.

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Microsoft has had a forgettable start to the year with the Xbox 360 finishing third for the first time on US sales charts in January 2008. The news of Blu-ray triumphing in the HD format war has only aggravated its woes, although it is putting up a brave pretense. But at the Game Developers Conference, Microsoft gave itself a few reasons to cheer by announcing a stellar games lineup, which includes the much awaited Gears of War 2, Fable 2, Ninja Gaiden 2 and Too Human.

Cliff Bleszinski, the lead designer at Epic Games, took center stage just as…

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As Microsoft has already confirmed that Gears of War 2 is already in development and ready for a November 2008 release, Epic took to the stage at this year’s Game Developers Conference to discuses some of the changes and additions being made to their hugely successful Unreal Engine 3.

It should be noted that all of the updates and improvements made to the Unreal Engine were demonstrated showing Gears of War. While these are more than likely not scenes of the upcoming sequel, they do…

Click through for more including the tech demo from GDC 2008.

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After much speculation, rumors and even a debunked article from Gamepro Magazine, it has finally been confirmed by Microsoft at the Game Developers Conference 2008, which is currently being held in San Francisco, that Gears of War 2 is defiantly in the works.

Better yet, fans of 2006 game of the year won’t have to wait too long as Microsoft stated that Gears of War 2 would be released November 2008.

At the press conference held by…

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