All week, Complex fam Nick Marroni is at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, soaking up game and putting us on it. Read on for his summation of Day One...
GDC Day One was just as inspiring as ever it was.
• Ron Carmel of 2D Boy (World of Goo) got things off on the right foot by laying down the law about independent developers not needing publishers, just funding—which could be found through Carmel's (and the rest of the 1337 indie devs') forthcoming gift to the game industry, Indie Fund. Headed up by Carmel and his 2D Boy partner Kyle Gabler, and the developers behind Flower, Braid, and others, it's looking to change the indie game development game for good, in a good way.
• On the conference floor, 360 racing title Dirt 2 looked pretty damn nice in 3D and as long as you've got the right kind of glasses and are coming correct (i.e., standing right directly in front of the TV), it's solid. I'm really not trying to wear 3D glasses while I'm getting into a game, but the 3D truly did add quite a bit and brought an entirely new immediacy to the whole affair—I'm basically sold.
• Shutting things down, Randy Smith, developer of the iPhone insta-classic Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, inspired the living shit out of me and at least ¾ of the rest of the crowd at the Independent Games Summit with his accessible design school revival—more friendly games means more players, which means more $ for devs. Sounds good to me—but maybe I'm just saying that since my own company pretty much nailed this with our awesome, new-school arcade, soon-to-be iPhone App Store hit, iBailout!!. [Ed.—Fine, you can plug the game. But we want download codes!]
That's all for now, and be sure to tune in @marronigames and tweet all your most pressing GDC questions and comments my way. I'll be here all week, people.
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