GDC outgrew its old location and this year took over the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. Photo credit: Christopher Harz. 

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) this year took place in San Francisco, at the Moscone Convention Center; there are now so many people attending this event that it has probably outgrown the smaller San Jose Convention Center forever. There were two show floors, a huge area devoted to recruiting, and special segments for Serious Games, mobile games, casual games, women's games, independently produced games and God knows what else, with energetic streams of people moving nonstop between them all.

The explosive growth of the GDC is in stark contrast to the shrinkage of the E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), which is imploding this year. We can only hope that the GDC does not absorb the culture of the E3 -- an event all about the presidents, a big-money slugfest between major gaming companies that emphasized major franchises and profit centers and seldom mentioned the members of the development teams that worked so hard on those games.

As of right now, the GDC still retains much of the charm of the days when it was called the Computer Game Developers Conference. This is evident in the awards shows, where the audience may cheer an indie game that's self-distributed more loudly than a blockbuster for a major game platform.

Although it's almost impossible to give a comprehensive review of the whole GDC, with its many different tracks and special interest groups, here are some snapshots from the show to give you an idea of status and trends in the industry.

SCE's Phil Harrison unleashed soccer balls on the audience during his keynote speech to make a point about community play before he delved into his company's Home concept. Unless otherwise noted, all images courtesy of GDC.

The Keynotes
The two main keynotes, with crowds waiting outside for blocks to fill the 5,000-seat auditorium, were given by Phil Harrison of Sony Computer Ent. (SCE) and Shigeru Miyamoto for Nintendo. They were emblematic of the trends of the state of the gaming industry, and where two of the major players see it heading.

The Sony presentation was the more colorful one, starting out with giant soccer balls released upon the audience, which proceeded to form teams and played a game with them, with scores displayed on monitors. The point of all this became apparent: introduce a game into a social setting, and communities form to play it.

The point of the presentation was to introduce what Harrison calls the "Game 3.0" concept, a sequel to Wall Street's "Web 2.0" moniker (which refers to social phenomena such as YouTube, MySpace, Amazon and the Wikipedia). Game 3.0 stands in contrast to "Game 1.0," which consisted of individual, static, disconnected games -- games that were played by players who had no influence on the shape or format of gameplay. What Game 3.0 is about is audience participation and "emergent" gameplay, according to Harrison. "This is about the connected device," he said. "Such devices are built on open standards and powered by active communities. This is about community, about collaboration."

A slide entitled "Game 3.0" appeared on a screen, surrounded by terms that sound like they belong in a college sociology class more than at a game developers conference, terms such as community, social content creation, localization, customization, service. Harrison went on to explain how game players would interact with a game environment, customize it and make it their own.