In case you didn’t know, GDC started today and like every year there is more coverage than I can shake a stick at (I tried, it was not intimidated). So I’ve gone ahead and compiled a few highlights so you won’t have to bother attempting to tell the difference between talks, lectures, and roundtables.
- IGN has gone ahead and made a list of the ten best GDC speeches ever. While I may not necessarily agree with the order, I do agree with the number 1 choice, I can see why each is on the list. Hopefully this year will have a few notable speeches or talks, or whatever you want to call them, as well.
- According the Venture Beat, Facebook paid more than $1.4 billion to developers in 2011. Currently, Facebook has a team of over 40 that meet with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on a weekly basis. As early as 2010, however, they didn’t have anyone dedicated to games on Facebook at all. With a potential vacuum being created with the launch of Zynga’s own platform, it will be interesting to see which developers, if any, can fill the void.
- It looks as if Crytek is going to spend some time at GDC this week promoting their new CryENGINE 3 according to WebProNews. You can see some of how it looks in the videos embedded in the link, and then you can then sit and feel sad about how you will most likely never own a computer that can utilize the technology.
- TQ Jefferson, Vice President of Games Production at Marvel, sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to talk about the new Amazing Spider-man game. While the game itself will probably look great, I’m skeptical when I read things like, “We can’t give Spider-Man guns, no matter how cool the guns are, but we can give him specialized ‘web balls’ that work in much the same way without breaking the character.“ Ummm, no you can’t.
- In our second top ten list of the evening, Gamasutra is reporting on a talk by Playdom’s Steve Meretzky and Dave Rohrl in which they list what they think are the 10 key social games of the year.
- Finally, Spry Fox CEO David Edery gave a postmortem on Realm of the Mad God. The focus of the talk is about how to implement changes into a game that is constantly moving. It’s also interesting to hear someone talk about not being afraid to rollback changes when they have made a mistake.
