Different Games
hosted a mini-conferences for all the ambassadors to introduce themselves and
their work/research on the day before GDC opened which served as a great way to
begin some conversations that would last the week as we bump into each other at
different north east south west halls of the Moscone Center half zombified. I
started off GDC by attending most of the level design workshops and the rest of
the week was filled with other level design related talks and a few narrative
and storytelling talks. I consciously chose to go with more workshops as oppose
to social and political talks. Not to diminish the importance of politics and
activism in games and games industry (it was a good year for that too
#unionization), and of course in my academic work I write extensively about the
political dimensions of video games and play as a necessarily counter to capitalism,
I just felt like since I have been to many academic conferences in my life and
I will be presenting at the Canadian Game Studies Association Conference in
Regina later in the year, I would do something different. Some highlights
include: