Month: March 2004

Post show ramblings after the Game Developers Conference…

All in all i think it was a really good show this year.  I met with lots of interesting people doing lots of interesting projects.  I also heard ramblings that the show next year might be in San Francisco rather than San Jose.  It was awfully crowded, so maybe a change of venue might be in order, but really i don’t know if it’s going to happen or not..

The expo itself was decently sized this year with lots of good booths.  Renderware had a large booth once again, but it seemed a little more enclosed this time, so i didn’t actually go in there.  Nokia’s N-Gage booth (which was huge and popular last year) was smaller and much less popular this year..  Part of that probably has to do with it’s sub-prime location this year compared to last year, part, but not all..  ATI and nVidia’s booths both had interesting presentations happening throughout the day, and the AMD64 booth was quite popular as well.  The Intel booth was huge as always, and they once again had the ‘contests’ where 6 people would play an online game for 5 minutes, and the winner would get the game (this year the game was ‘Call of Duty’)..  I played once and came in third place (i sucked), but did get a stuffed intel bunny-man doll.

My talk seemed to be received very well too.  I covered most of the basic areas for managed code in gaming, showed some demos, failed in showing other demos (doh!), and got some good questions..  One demo in particular really stood out for the crowd and i was asked many questions on that one after the talk and throughout the show.  It’ll be released in an upcoming DirectX SDK Update..

I loved the award shows Wednesday night, we announced XNA, and i think it was an all around great show.

Game Developers Conference…

So next week is the Game Developers Conference which is always an exciting time around here.  The ‘main’ conference runs next week from Wednesday through Friday, although there are tutorials and sessions on Monday and Tuesday as well, just no show floor, etc.

I will be giving a talk on managed code in gaming during one of these sessions Tuesday morning, which should be pretty exciting.. It’s always great to get the chance to actually talk with the customers and find out issues they may be having and answering questions.  Everytime i’ve given a talk i’d say the Q&A session at the end is always the best time.  People always come up with some great questions, and most times it gives a good insight into the types of things they’re trying to accomplish, and how they expect things to work.

As for the rest of the show, i’m pretty excited about that as well.  There are always lots of interesting things to see on the expo floor, there are literally hundreds of different sessions to see, booths for everything, and an all around great vibe.  I’m looking forward to a great show.