Walking Around GDC
Walking around the Expo floor at GDC is always interesting. What’s the hot new thing? What’s old that’s different? What are the new trends that companies are trying to push?
First of all, there are too many motion capture companies. Everywhere you turned, there was a model or two dancing on the floor with their actions mimicked onscreen in realtime behind them. This was a really cool technology when I first saw it in 1996. While interviewing with a now-defunct game company, I was with them taking motion capture for a Steven Seagal title at his dojo in Santa Monica. Today, I expect small companies have over-invested in the technology and are busy beating at each others price-points.
The biggest buzz at the show was for OnLive. 
Their idea is to house a console in the “cloud” and allow gamers to play to the heart’s content through their internet connection. There is substance to this idea. After all, the amount of data going back and forth is limited (screen refresh data, control signals, audio, voice). There is no reason why this idea shouldn’t work.
I talked to the chief engineer for about five minutes and he seemed extremely confident until I started asking him questions. Since I handle international issues, I asked him when he would be ready to deploy in Europe and Asia (after all, the Asian internet systems are much better than the US ones). He hesitated a long second and answered that Europe and Asia wouldn’t happen until the system works in the US. My take-away: there’s still a lot of work to be done.
There were several 3D systems. The two that I liked were a demonstration of a 3D monitor using World of Warcraft. It was slick, fast and the glasses worked well. They weren’t the old color sensitive glasses, so the 3D image was really crisp, in all the normal colors. Very cool. I did not ask how much they charged for the monitor; an answer wouldn’t make much sense either. If they can fit it with a killer app, they can sell enough to make it cheap. Which is clearly why they are showing the technology here.
A more innovative technology was augmented reality. This was a very heavy set of glasses that you put on and look around a table with assorted objects. They look exactly like they did in real life, but now you see a dinosaur walking across the table top. Very cool! Lot’s of potential applications (military ones come to mind first, games are pretty far down on the list).
Finally, booth babes have come to GDC! Brought this year by Nokia, which had the front door position (along with Crytek). They made my eyes cry with joy and wish for a return of the old E3. We’ll see this June if the new masters of E3 can get it right.