So the GDC is over and done with. I took over 30 pages of notes (the paper kind). The sessions Jeff and I chose were on casual games or web-based games whenever possible. Brian Robbins led three roundtables on different aspects of web-based games, which encompasses most casual games. We participated in all three sessions and it was definitely worth it. I had been a little apprehensive about getting out there and getting involved but the discussions there really made me feel that I'm on the right track and what I'm doing makes sense.

We also went to a couple sessions on the business and revenue side of things, one about how to (and how not to) integrate advertising in games. To round things out, we went to a hands-on tutorial on HLSL by Microsoft, one on advanced shadow techniques using portals and a couple others that I can't think of at the moment.

The web-based games roundtables were the most practical to me by far. At the last one, on Friday morning, someone actually asked if there was anyone making games using web standards (or something to that effect). I was surprised since the focus so far had been Flash and Shockwave. As it turned out the people asking were from Mozilla. There were only a handful of us that had been doing work in that area. Jeff and I stayed late for the chance to talk with Vladimir Vukićević, Mike Shaver and Stuart Parmenter. It was good to see the interest in our applications from Mozilla - it's nice to have validation when so much of building games on web pages can feel like a hack for a platform that was designed primarily for presenting documents.

I'll make some time to dig into those notes over the next while (i.e. before GDC2007) and see what I come up with. I also snapped piles of photos, mostly on the PCH drive and on our trip up to Sonoma on the weekend. Some of those pictures will end up on On Beaches eventually, as will some details from the route for the drive up the coast.