Game Developers Conference Notebook
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Commentary: This year's GDC was almost a sleepy affair. We suspect it's the lull before the storm of new announcements hits. But there were some interesting tidbits we uncovered along the way.My first exposure to Game Developers Conference (then known as the Computer Game Developers Conference) was in 1995. It was early in my technology writing career, and that particular CGDC sticks in my mind for a number of reasons. There was Danny Sanchez, formerly of Orchid, now at ATI, who dragged me into the 3Dfx (the "D" was capitalized back then) developers conference. The Voodoo 1 card hadn't actually shipped yet, but the hardware accelerated 3D was the big buzz of the show.

Later that show, Mike Weksler, then Technical Editor of Computer Gaming World, dragged me upstairs to crash the hotel suite that Rendition was hosting. Rendition was another early player in consumer 3D graphics, long since fallen by the wayside in the brutal competition for desktop graphics market share. Back then, they were one of the hot new companies, and their V1000 single chip accelerator did have a brief moment in the sun.

That was also the year that Microsoft released DirectX 1.0—without a 3D API. Unfortunately, that meant 3D graphics would be mired in proprietary APIs for several years. Later, Microsoft bought Reality Lab, whose graphics API become the core of Direct3D. Today's Direct3D has almost no resemblance to the original Reality Lab.

Since then, GDC has gone through a number of trials and tribulations, but has emerged as a major conference for game developers of all stripes. The early conferences focused on PC game development. (PC is used here in a generic sense, as the Apple II, Amiga, and Atari platforms were still in use back then). Now PC game development is only one part of GDC, which includes consoles, mobile phones, handheld devices, and web-based gaming.

Here are just a few of the notes I made while wandering around this year's GDC. Continued...

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