It’s Game Developers Conference week, which means one of two things for those working in the industry: either they’re jetlagged in some hotel bar in San Francisco spending $10 a beer; or they’re at home, avoiding Twitter to lessen the Fomo. GDC has long been the nexus of the games industry, a place where indie developers get their games signed and funded, coders and artists and sound designers share the techniques of their craft, and juicy development stories are overheard in the convention centre’s corridors.
But GDC has long been regarded by some as increasingly elitist. To its credit, it partners with plenty of different organisations to offer scholarships and sponsorships to underrepresented devs, but a regular ticket costs $1,521, and an all-access pass is $2,204. Then there’s the cost of attending, which is even more prohibitive thanks to San Francisco’s ever-rising prices. Some developers who previously attended GDC every year now say they can’t justify the expense.
“For most of the world, it was never affordable, but their voices were always out of sight,” says indie developer and advocate Rami Ismail, who is skipping this year’s event. “Rising prices and the economic downturn have made it relatively unaffordable for European developers, too … GDC has become unaffordable even for those who ‘should’ be able to afford it.”
And as Ismail points out, post-Covid, many people now feel that it’s possible to meet and collaborate without being in the same physical space – and that even when being physically together is preferable, it comes with immense costs. “Many people simply visit San Francisco instead of buying GDC tickets, as the hotels and restaurants offer enough opportunity for networking during the event,” says Ismail. “But the rise of smaller and more focused events worldwide is really putting pressure on the idea of ‘one big event’.”
Developers of many different backgrounds have long told me that GDC has been vital, especially early in their careers – precisely when people can least afford it. Around 2012, I knew a group of young British game-makers who teamed up and slept sardine-like in sleeping bags on the floor of a single small hotel room.
If the organisers want to retain GDC’s reputation as the “de facto nerve system” of the games industry, as Ismail puts it, then it might be time for change. The Bay Area is the world’s tech hub, home to plenty of studios, but its decades-long stint as the unofficial home of North America’s games industry might be up. These days, you could argue that the less ruinously expensive city of Montreal has a better claim to that: it’s home to Ubisoft, Warner Bros Games and EA. And some of the accessibility measures introduced over the pandemic, such as live-streamed panels and virtual networking sessions, would benefit thousands of people if they were made permanent.
“For many independent developers, GDC is where they made the connections to fund their first projects, or where they met future collaborators. As the event gets more inaccessible, that ability to connect is hampered,” says Ismail. “But many still believe that visiting GDC is a necessary step to developing a career as an independent developer, or an entrepreneur in games. In that way, it becomes a slowly unravelling yet self-fulfilling prophecy.”
What to play
A blast from the past arrived on Apple Arcade last week in the form of Osmos+, a classic from the good old days of the App Store that was first released in 2009. You are a single-cell organism floating around a microscopic space-scape, you can absorb anything smaller than yourself, and all you must do is follow the prompt at the beginning of each level, such as: “Become huge.” What I like about Osmos is that it masquerades as a chill game but it is actually subtly threatening: you must absorb, or be absorbed. It’s got unexpected edge, for a game about round nonspecific blobs.
Available on: iPhone, iPad via Apple Arcade
Approximate playtime: 2-3 hours
What to read
One gratifying story from GDC so far: Cart Life, a lauded slice-of-life game about hard-up street vendors that attracted a lot of praise in 2010 and then disappeared from the internet, has been resurrected. Wired’s story about how this happened is very good.
Paradox has released a first trailer for a life-simulation game called Life By You: it’s The Sims, but less comedic. Nobody has really challenged EA’s life-simulation behemoth in the 20-plus years of its existence – how has such an uber-successful genre had no new entrants until now? How have the last 20 years changed what we actually want from a life-sim game, as living a pleasant life in a nice house in reality is an ever more distant dream for most people under 45?
Netflix is working on its own cloud-gaming technology. It has 55 games in development, and it envisions subscribers being able to play games anywhere that they watch Netflix. There are two major differences between the streaming giant’s approach to gaming and Google’s ill-fated attempt to enter this world: first, Netflix is interested in quality games and developers, snapping up superb, interesting titles such as Into the Breach, Immortality and Twelve Minutes; and second, it is taking things very slowly. Few of its subscribers are engaging with its games right now, but I expect things to look very different in a few years.
A YouTuber spent more than $22,000 buying every single Wii U and 3DS game from the Nintendo e-shop last week, before it was shut down for ever. He raised the cash via sponsorships and is donating the entire collection to the Video Game History Foundation.
After actor Lance Reddick died last week, game developers and players have made some moving tributes to his work in games, and his love for them. Bungie’s Blake Battle shared a story about playing through a raid with Reddick – who voiced Commander Zavala in Destiny – and finding him “kind, sociable, and patient … The kind of person you’d want to add to your friends list to play with again sometime.” Kotaku reports that Reddick played the game the night before he died. In-game, players have been gathering in The Tower around his character to pay their respects.
In further encouraging signs that Fifa is going to fare just fine in video games after splitting up with EA, president Gianni Infantino has reportedly said that its officially-branded rival to EA Sports FC “will always be the best e-game for any girl or boy”.
What to click
Cults, prophecies and helpless villagers galore: Diablo 4 is back to its moody goth best
Resident Evil 4 Remake review – all that’s best about the series
Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon review – wicked witch cleans up her act
Tetris review – rise of 80s game makes for mostly entertaining drama
Question block
Reader Lawal provides this week’s question:
“Recent favourite games (eg Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Red Dead Redemption 2, Forza Horizon 5, Spiderman, Hi-Fi Rush) have me collecting and collating screenshots and virtual photos and videos, like I do when on holiday. Which games have made you the most snap-happy?”
Being as talentless a photographer in games as I am in real life, I’m in awe of people who work magic with in-game photo modes (such as photographer Leo Sang, whose work in Assassin’s Creed and elsewhere has been exhibited worldwide). And they are so good now – I interviewed people in the 00s who had to do complex things with mods to achieve in-game photography, and now almost every big game has a full suite of camera options that let you freeze the action, pose characters and find unexpected angles, resulting in a new flavour of photographic art. But I am no artist, so the games that inspire me to take screenshots tend to be the ones I play with friends: Animal Crossing, Monster Hunter World, Grand Theft Auto Online. A notable exception is Breath of the Wild. My Switch’s storage is full of scenes and vistas that I captured over the year I spent playing it, trying to bottle some of the wonder I felt for later.
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