GameSpy Daily: Fargo's Impression of GDC2006

Was just checking my email and Fargo who writes the very small daily column in the email had this to say about this year's GDC:

In the coming days I'll likely write up a full editorial about this, but this year's Game Developers Conference (see our GDC coverage) had a very different spirit than years past. There was a lot of hope in the air. In previous years a pall of gloom had almost seemed to descend over the place. Everybody was talking about the bad news: spiraling development costs, lack of innovation, difficult work environment, lack of opportunity... But this year, the outlook was positive.

Several factors were at work. Both Nintendo and Microsoft were fostering warm fuzzy feelings of innovation and outreach -- Nintendo with their unusual experimental wide-appeal games, and Microsoft with Xbox Live Arcade. (The latter looks to prove that small developers now have a platform to release simpler titles on and still turn a profit, and the company is really hungry for experimental games.) Meanwhile, Will Wright's talk last year spawned off a flurry of talks about prototyping at this year's show, along with other new ways of developing large games while still remaining flexible and innovative. In the past, attendees would complain that new and different game ideas were unseen by the masses and could never achieve success. This year, students showing off crazy game concepts could boast about millions of downloads and the Independent Game Festival was absolutely outstanding.

There were no big announcements at this year's show, no groundbreaking headline-grabbers. Despite that, I found this year's show to be inspiring for game creators from all over the spectrum.

And I would have to agree with him. I am once again a console gamer. There are actual gammes once in development that I want to play. So there is something changing and I think it is the abandonment of the cash cow squeesing that had been going on for so many years.