Whew, just got back from GDC.  Interesting yet exhausting, as usual, but this year it was compounded by still recovering from a bit of a chest cold.  It's really unfortunate to be off your game at GDC because there are so many cool people to hang out with and so many ideas to absorb. 

I helped teach the Game Design Workshop again this year(previous year's notes can be found here on Mahk LeBlanc's site).  Despite some logistical problems due to it being over-subscribed the first day, it was a fun way to kick off the conference.  The workshop gets a great mix of veterans and total newcomers and it is always a blast to see what they come up with for the various exercises.  My favorite this year was in the "Paper Games" exercise, one group did a fascinating version of House of the Dead that had this great two player real-time vibe.  Players had to slap down targeting cards on a 5x5 grid (vaguely like the card games Slap and Rat-Killer) and the physicality of it mapped captured the essence of the original game quite well.

I'm bummed that I missed Will Wright's talk though -- due to planning oversights they put his always immensely popular talk in a far-too-small venue and it was already over filled by the time arrived (25 minutes early!). 

Some talks that I found very interesting... Chris Butcher on the network infrastructure of Halo 2, Jake Simpson on the object system of the Sims 2, and John Underkoffler on realistic futurism.  Peter Molyneux gave some interesting demos of Black & White 2 and The Movies, but I can't say that I got too much out of his talks.

One of the highlights of the show was attending the "Dear Friends" concert, a live orchestral performance of various songs from the Final Fantasy games.  I am a huge Final Fantasy fanboy, and we had incredible seats -- about 6 rows from the orchestra and right across the aisle from Nobuo Uematsu!  It was definitely a memorable experience and may be the defining moment of GDC 2005 for me.

If you like sci-fi strategy games, definitely check out Nexus: The Jupiter Incident.  Despite an awful title and some cringe-worthy narrative, the gameplay is fantastic, really nailing the vibe of being in charge of a fleet of capital ships.  Other games that have tackled this sub-genre have been saddled with critical flaws of various kinds, ranging from horrible interface, to poor production quality, to insane micromanagement.  So far Nexus avoids all of those and delivers a solid "fleet commander" experience.

March is bringing another great crop of games, including Star Wars Republic Commando and Brothers in Arms.  I'm most thrilled about Freedom Force vs The Third Reich, and not just because of my fixation on superhero games.  It's also from my old pals at Irrational Games, and it's self-published so unlike 99% of the games you guy today, if you buy it your dollars are actually going to the creators of the game.  There's a free demo on that website, so you can't go wrong!