Austin GDC Powers

In early September, for the fourth year in a row, Austin was host to a game developers conference...managed this year for the first time by the CMP Group. On the second day of the conference, GamesIndustry.biz sat down with the show's organisers to discuss the focus of the show and the changes going on within the industry.

Izora Garcia de Lillard: Obviously we're not done, but it's much greater than expected. We are over 1,800 right now and we're really hopeful that we'll be over 2,000.

Lillard: We are definitely growing. It is much larger this year.

Lillard: Much larger as well. The show floor has been packed. It's been very, very busy, and we're hoping to continue that through the end of the day tomorrow.

Lillard: We are pursuing a few, but I won't comment upon that.

Lillard: We're obviously waiting for the feedback. There's some thought of bringing the casual games back...it's just discussions right now. But we're definitely keeping the audio and the writers [tracks] for sure, and obviously the online track.

Jamil Moledina: It's difficult to say. We're looking at things less in terms of national boundaries and more in terms of where developers are in the world. GDC has been, and we intend for it to continue to be, the world's game developers conference. That is the one show where you get everything for everyone.

Now, with Austin, with China, with our European events...all of those cater to that specific region, what developers are specializing in, in that area. And sometimes that gives a particular show like Austin the chance to "drill down" to a greater extent that you might find at GDC.

Moledina: That assumes a zero-sum game...that people go to one or the other. A lot of the people that I see at these shows, a handful are hitting all of them, a lot of them are hitting two of them. A lot of them make it a point to get to GDC because, since everyone will be there, they have to be there. They're doing their business there.

But also there is an opportunity here to drill down into writing, for example, which is a great resource for the writers of the game industry because it gives them a location, an identity, a place where they can bond and talk about real issues that face them.

I was in a writing session yesterday, and it was amazing to see the degree to which writers of games were engaging with the speakers. It was almost like a roundtable discussion. This is the kind of thing that allows a regional event like this to flourish.

Moledina: This is exactly what we do. We look at the attendee reviews and we bring some of those high-scoring classes to the main GDC, and vice-versa.

Ultimately, there is an opportunity to look at interdisciplinary subjects. For example, Chris Williams gave a presentation that combined programming and art. So, the more that we can combine interdisciplinary sessions, and bring them back and forth, that just improves the experience for the attendees.

Austin is really well-positioned to do interdisciplinary talks because it has all of these specific areas that are covered.

Lillard: Right. We wanted to keep the flavour of Austin as Austin. It is not meant to be the next GDC. We changed the name solely because the GDC brand...the reputation it has...we wanted to bring that reputation here. The intimacy, the core components, are going to stay the same.

Lillard: Basically, we really value the attendee feedback and we also rely heavily on our advisory board. Between the two of them, we are fully aware of the trends and the focuses and the shifts. Historically, [Austin] has been about MMOs. PC-centric. But, again, the landscape is changing...they're bringing in virtual worlds...there's a whole movement and shift, and we'll follow that.

Moledina: If I can just add to that, Hiromichi Tanaka just gave a keynote on Final Fantasy XI, which is also a console game. There was a lot of discussion in that keynote about how to create a cross-platform game. I think the line between console and PC is becoming more of a marketing line than a development line.

Moledina: I was just talking about this last night. There are a couple of things going on. At kind of a macro level, there has been much more of a "silo-ization" shall we say, where people who make casual games stick to what they do. The people who make serious games stick to what they do. The people who make mobile games...and so on. As your previous question alluded to, console people do console games, PC people do PC games.

But we're seeing much more migration, more interest in seeing how these disciplines blend across the lines. For instance, what we are calling "casualization," where input systems become more simplified. Not necessarily that the gameplay is simplified, but different ways of accessing the game become simplified. We saw a little bit of it in the Habbo Hotel keynote as well, where something that has been around for seven years is now catching on...what did they call it? "Player-created activity." It's more about bringing some of those elements online.

So the mainstream console, the mainstream PC developers are looking at this very closely. The idea of taking some of these more casual elements into the mainstream is really picking up, especially what we've seen lately with the DS and the Wii of course.

On a personal level, one of the things that I find very cool is to meet developers very early in their careers. They may start out in the console world, working on their first big-budget title. Then they see what the entire universe of game development offers...we bring them to different parties, work with them, talk with them, and enable different types of sessions, different experiences for different people.

And so one guy ends up breaking out of the console world, giving a shot at independent game development, puts out Wildlife Tycoon, it's an instant success, he becomes an instant celebrity, and now we're in a position of asking him to emcee our Independent Games Festival at GDC. And now he's actually keynoting the game career seminar. It is just great to see that development of developers...or volunteers even. Volunteers that I met when I first started GDC are now mainstream developers. People that were students at Northwestern University are now developing big Sims games for EA.

Moledina: We have a number of different ways to access our GDC content. There's audio available, and a lot of the content that was available in the sessions can become a post mortem in Game Developer magazine. Gamasutra has a lot of running coverage of the show. And a lot of publications such as GamesIndustry.biz, have unique perspectives and interviews as well. So there are a lot of entry points into everything we provide.

I would recommend trying out a show, seeing if it meets your interests. The one thing not to underestimate is the value of networking. Because if you are looking to either get to the next step in your career, or lateral over to another company, there are opportunities to learn what is possible, what kind of breakthroughs are available in the market, what kinds of business models might be there. If you want to break out and become your own boss, there are a lot of different stories around GDC that focus on that.

It's not just in the content...it is not just in the sessions that we have posted. Take a look at the speakers. Take a look at who is actually coming to the show. They're more than likely happy to talk to you in the hallway. You've seen the buzz right here at the Austin GDC...top level people being very open, and very candid. Exchange a couple of business cards and see what happens next.

The reason it works is that we focus on the content. Unlike most shows, GDC shows are incredibly top-heavy on the content side. You'll see that our classrooms are frequently bursting. There's also, of course, a massive trade show component, a lot of other activities such as networking...and, of course, at any event there is a recruitment element.

Since we focus so much on the content, it makes every GDC a safe event. The primary function is to share ideas. Everyone is there because they are creative, expressive, passionate people. They want to be able to commune with like-minded people. It is an opportunity that rarely exists in our modern corporate world.

Moledina: The whole landscape has been shifting since E3 announced that it would be contracting. We've seen other shows step in, such as the E for All show. The interesting thing to note here...when you say focus, you have to ask, who is focusing on what?

There were a couple of things that were happening at E3. On the one hand, it was ostensibly a show about presenting games to retailers and to the press for the fall buying season. That was their raison d'etre. The next thing, since it grew to such a size, it became a place where everyone in the industry could congregate and come together to do their business. Everyone involved in the game industry was going to E3.

In terms of the business component--developers making deals, developers discovering new technologies on display--some of that did migrate to GDC. However, since GDC requires developers to be on stage and in the audience, it is not physically possible for GDC to also be a product show. The trade show element is something that can be very complimentary to GDC.

We actually partner with E for All. We're doing a game career seminar with them, at the consumer event this fall. So, while the landscape is shifting, and some of the interests may change, GDC is now the largest game industry professional-only event in the world. There's some degree of critical mass, kind of a gravity effect, that we need to make sure we manage appropriately. But, at the same time, this opens the door for us to partner with a lot of the trade show and consumer show elements that exist in the US and around the world.