Hey, this is Andrew Brasher, International Coordinator. Last week I led a few of our staff to my second GDC (Game Developers Conference). I’m going to give you a run through of our GDC experience, for those who aren’t familiar with exactly everything that goes on.

Being based in Osaka, GDC is a bit of a trek for the PlatinumGames team. Our route is Osaka-Tokyo-San Francisco, and it takes more than half a day to reach our destination.

When we arrived in San Francisco, the cherry blossoms of Union Square were almost in full bloom, which was definitely a treat for a Japanese company.

We arrived on Tuesday and had a little time to explore the city before the main conference began.

The PlatinumGames staff takes a walk around San Francisco.

Being an unusual sight, the trolley downtown got brought up in conversation more than a few times.

I feel like I’ve seen this building before… where was it… Oh yeah, we blew this up with a giant microwave. GDC gets fully underway on Wednesday morning and lasts until Friday afternoon.It takes place in the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The events are spread across three buildings: North, South, and West.

Here’s the North building.
The Keynote speech on Wednesday includes dozens of presentations by different people who will be speaking at GDC.
The presentations are short—under a minute I think—existing just to give a quick idea of what is available to participants.

Sessions come in all different shapes and sizes. Some are slideshow presentations to rooms of hundreds of people, some are round table discussions between 30-50 participants, and some are poster sessions that have data graphed out in hallways with an exhibitor nearby to answer any questions.

We sent a team of visual artists and programmers to pick up on what GDC had to offer.

Our Visual Artist Yoshiomi Kure (pictured on the left) on his way to the day’s next session.We had a lot to take in the three days we were there:

Character studies in BioShock Infinite,
Lighting in The Last of Us,

Design talks on Rayman Legends…
There were plenty of interesting talks providing all kinds of interesting information from some of gaming’s greats, so we kept our schedules packed every day.

The rare times we had a moment to step out of the lecture halls, we wandered through the expo floor to see what new announcements there were for game middle-ware. The expo was full of companies of all sizes, ready to show off their newest developments to the crowds of visitors. Every morning there were long lines of participants waiting for the doors to open.

Take a look at what went on inside:

We got to see our friends at Quixel, who Platinum’s been using since their freeware days. It was exciting to see how far they’d come.

Some of the biggest news this year, as you may have heard, was Sony announcing its new Project Morpheus, a VR gaming headset for PlayStation 4.

For some discussion outside of current game development, The Video Game History Museum has a special exhibition on Nintendo this year.

I can’t believe there’s an old Milton Bradley Legend of Zelda board game. I wanted this so badly after seeing it.
The days go by quick but there’s a long time left to digest all the new information. I look forward to checking out GDC next year as well!