Some notes from GDC07

GDC07 was a lot of fun as well as somewhat enlightening though most of the sessions were very basics or/and down to earth. From researchers viewpoint the speakers were not really bringing out some bewildering news, vision or ideas but nicely linking topical issues with developers' experiences. There were several Agile/Scrum sessions, all crowded. I have complained earlier how developers can't use their full potential and/or excellent ideas due to the lack of organizing skills and knowledge of being an entrepreneur. Thanks to the great hype around Agile, game developers really seem to take agile software development and project management (especially Scrum) seriously and the results are already turning up.

After Agile experiences the second most interesting thing was future visions of gaming provided by Shigeru Miyamoto (Nintendo) and Phil Harrison (Sony). Mr. Miyamoto focused on Nintendo's strategy, fun and the creative side of gaming (Wii). He highlighted the role of expanded audience, risk and balance in the development of games for Nintendo. I just wish other developers could also think of non-typical target groups (and I am not only talking about girls) and take more risks.

Of course that is more easily said than done -- but hopefully investors/publishers understand the need to innovate in able to actually expand the business.

Mr. Harrison was delivering more solid vision to the audience. PS3 is "all you need" hightech entertainment package in a shiny cover (Finns can check out my views on PS3 from Verkossa.com). It is about to challenge PC/online world and services such as Second Life and alike with their "Home" service. Even though they definitely have huge challenges with the PS3 Home, I truly adore their way of looking at gaming not only as guys'n'games thing but as spare time experience linking fun, games and movies with UGC and wide range of [digi]social activities. I have been complaining that the first releases for PS3 haven't been that inspiring (except MotorStorm) but now I am in love! A company named Mediamolecule presented their LittleBigPlanet at the GDC. It was fantastic, innovative, exiting, cute and definitely a reason to buy PS3.