I'm home! Let's see if I can zero in on the stuff I really wanna say.

I was up for an award I was sure I wouldn't win. I did not write an acceptance speech. Mike, on the other hand, was confident I would get it, or at least that I'd want my family's support if I didn't. He insisted we go together with Oscar and have a great time in San Francisco.

The Good

I saw so many dear friends, met so many people I wanted to meet, met so many people I didn't KNOW I wanted to meet. GDC is for friends. It has the energy that all good festivals do, where people are ready to know you - where a random friendly glance turns into a conversation you'll be thinking about for weeks. Despite low attendance (I'm hearing a 30% drop) the people are still very much there.

The Bad

Shit was sparse. You've heard it already. The IGF Pavilion was at the back of the show floor and never looked too busy. I showed up bright and early for the "press hour" on Wednesday. It was an hour all right! No press. None of the IGF devs were totally surprised. Games press outlets have been collapsing before our eyes for years. But it was especially rough going through the vestigial motions of it all, prepping and waiting for the nobody that came.

You'll hear lots about AI at GDC. At some point, Mike and I stopped by a booth that was demoing an AI NPC dialogue generator. It had gone semi-viral for how bad the results were, so I tried to get a closer look. Immediately a person working the booth asked if she could scan my badge, so we bailed. I didn't walk the floor much after that.

The Abysmal

This may be controversial, and I may be new to this whole thing, but I don't think AI is the worst part of GDC. At least some amount of lame technological trend-sniffing is bound to happen at these things. No, the worst thing about GDC is that children are not allowed at the festival under any circumstance.

A videogame festival in search of the future... with no children. What could be more bleak.

Now obviously kids can't be everywhere, not at the talks or in the places where business is done (though let's be honest, much of that is happening after-hours at bars anyway), but I encountered spaces where the lack of children was depressing at best and occasionally infuriating. The biggest insult was the GDC Commons/Day of the Devs space, where couches with game demos, sugary snacks, and fucking LEGOs spilled out from every corner. Nobody was even pretending this was a place for adults.

As an attendee I was provided with childcare in a separate room, and to to be sure these women were lovely and showed my son a nice time. But this needed to be scheduled weeks in advance, and I erred on the side of the fewest hours possible, because I (rightly) expected it would suck to leave him with snacks and markers while I attend an event that would've DAZZLED him.

Ignoring the juvenile slant of its output, it seems obvious that an industry event serious about the inclusion of women be more accommodating to children. (But I'm not sure a for-profit industry conference is serious about that, or about anything really.)

Once in Yerba Buena garden, I left Mike and Oscar at a picnic table to say hi to some friends. When I came back, a woman with a laptop was showing Oscar an in-dev game that was perfectly age-appropriate and delightful to him. She told me he was the only kid at the show who had played it. I'm just saying.

A Great Time in San Francisco

We did have this. The burritos alone were heaven. On our first full day we took Oscar to the Musee Mechanique at Fisherman's Wharf. 100+ years of gaming, preserved and playable. What a gift. We'd end up returning, at the expense of other tourism, because he loved it so much.

I did win the award. Mike was right.

I'd like to come away from events like this kicked into high gear - inspired to get off my restful ass and do the good, meaningful work. And I think my encounters with fellow devs, the kind festival staff, and everyone involved with the IGF will feed me for a while.

But GDC took a chunk out of me, too. The expense, the scamminess, the desperation. I have not quite recovered. What I've seen makes me want to keep my life small and focused, make games by any means necessary on shoestring budgets and ignore the industry completely. I think for me, for now, that's how it needs to be. It's not like the industry has any answers or knows what is next. It's not like I see myself in the majority of these quickly-vanishing roles. Maybe my small, focused world is all there ever was.

May we all find our own way, with the blessing of the friends we've made.