Even though the event is now in a larger venue, the heart of the original GDC and the creative spirit of the videogame industry are alive and well. Photo credit: Christopher Harz.

One sure sign that the lines between films and games keep getting more blurred is the increased poaching by the game producers of film industry experts. There is a growing practice of hiring film studio producers, directors, artists and animators by game houses. This was cited by several sources as a problem of making movies in Los Angeles -- because so much of the talent was being grabbed by the many game producers in the area.

Another sign of the blurring between games and films is the generation of cinematics (also called "cut scenes") by in-game software. Cinematics are in essence short movies that introduce different scenes or levels in a game; until recently, these were created outside of the game with film vfx toolsets and approaches, and were added in as pre-rendered scenes into the game. Because of the much higher quality of the cinematics, scenes used to promote the game were always clips from the cinematics sequences. The fact that AAA games such as Gears of War (whose feature film rights have just been snared by New Line) can now create cinematics in-game with game creation tools says volumes about how far gaming software and hardware has come in the last couple of years.

Not that long ago, many games were produced via a single 3D toolset, such as 3ds Max. Nowadays it is common for one production house to use many toolsets, depending on artists' tastes or what works best for a certain part of the production pipeline. Because translating from the format of one toolset into that of another has invariably resulted in glitches, there is a high priority effort of major software producers such as Autodesk and Avid to produce seamless means of porting files from one format into another -- it is universally agreed that when this is finally achieved it will have major effects on the ability to meet production deadlines.

Summary
The Gaming continues to expand and evolve into many different directions, with dramatic growth in online, mobile, independent and serious games. As the lines between games and other media such as feature films are becoming increasingly blurred, there is increasing effort to merge the two pipelines, an effort that still appears to be problematic for most studio chiefs. New revenue models are emerging, such as the increasing sale within gaming environments of digital assets such as clothing, furniture and real estate. There is an increasing emphasis on allowing game players to modify or even create their own customized content, in the hope that becoming a stakeholder will increase the retention of such clients. Finally, as the gaming field is growing, there are more spinoffs from the GDC -- look for an increasing number of other GDC conferences in the U.S. (such as the very dynamic one in Austin, Texas), Europe and Asia.

The heart of the original GDC appears to continue beating strongly in this much larger venue, and the creative spirit of the videogame industry -- and of the GDC -- is alive and well.

Christopher Harz is an executive consultant for new media. He has produced videogames for films such as Spawn, The Fifth Element, Titanic and Lost in Space. As Perceptronics svp of program development, Harz helped build the first massively multiplayer online game worlds, including the $240 million 3-D SIMNET. He worked on C3I, combat robots and war gaming at the RAND Corp., the military think tank.