Report from GDC 2017

Once again I attended the Game Developer's Conference (GDC) in San Francisco this year. I have managed to attend every year since 2013 but never write about it. The conference is really for companies that make technology for creating and playing video games. It is also a great place to go if you want to get a job in the industry as companies look to hire at the event.

I had a meeting in San Francisco on Wednesday and so I spent the morning at the Expo before heading to my late-afternoon appointment. I wish I could report that I saw a number of exciting and new technologies. Unfortunately I cannot. There seemed to be a lot relating to virtual reality but that has been the case for the past several years and so it all seemed a bit old. The most interesting technology seemed to come from students creating new ways of controlling games. They all looked very much like early prototypes but everyone seemed like they had a lot of fun creating them.

This year's show seemed smaller than usual and I didn't notice a large number of companies looking to hire people. I'm not sure if GDC represents the current state of the industry. Perhaps we need to wait until E3 and see if that is more exciting. I sure hope so.