GDC disappointment?

[DarkRage]

Well, maybe it is just I haven’t found the right news.

GDC is supposed to be a conference for developers. With loads of talks about new technologies, engines, APIs, programming models, performance considerations and so on.
I wonder if it is happening, or we have a mini-E3.

As I am not there, it is hard to know what it is going on there in the GDC. Web sites are chit-chatting about the minimal details and presentations oriented towards general public, no developers. And forums are discussing to death about the different interpretations of “jaw-droppingâ€￾ by journalists, or on pictures 100x50 pixels. No discussion about how the amazing CryEngine2 is using new lighting techniques, the important issue looks to be if it could be exclusive for the preferred console of each one.

What about all the real Games Development Conference, where the talk is on developing games?

We have something about XNA. Well, we even have an early build we can test, but no comments from developers if it REALLY make their lives easier. We have ZERO about RSX. Well, maybe it is going to be under NDA forever. We have ZERO about technical capabilities in Revolution.

I am extremely disappointed about GDC, am I alone with it? And I am so tired about finding meaningful information has become so hard. A couple of years ago it was a pleasure to read this forum, with first-hand knowledge from developers and far from flame wars. Now flame wars happen here too, most frequent posters have very little knowledge about what they post and obviously developers have better things to do than getting involved with them.

 

[nintenho]

Well, there's still the Friday show...

 

[rabidrabbit]

Information to the general public from GDC's have traditionally been a bit sparse if I remember correct.
Actually I do think it has only become more "public friendly" during the last couple of years, at least I personally don't remember even this much coverage from the event being available until the last couple of GDC's. I remember I used to see just a page wort of article in the Edge magazie some years ago.
It's not E3 that's for sure, I'm surprised the companies are even releasing this much new "PR worthy" info there as they do.

 

[rabidrabbit]

What's the "Friday show"? Is it akin to the "February event"?

 

[London Geezer]

Friday is... TODAY!!

TODAY'S FRIDAY YAY!!!! WEEKEND HERE I COME!!!

 

[rabidrabbit]

l-b's signed to "entertain" in the GDC "Friday show"?

 

[nintenho]

What's the "Friday show"? Is it akin to the "February event"?

GDC lasts from Monday to Friday of this week. Over here in San Jose where it's taking place, it's 1:40 A.M. on Friday so some companies could be saving some juicy news bit for today. I don't know of any big speakers left though.

 

[StefanS]

Well, as it is GDC is a developer event. Plus, this year's E3 is less than 2 months away. Do you expect the Sony or Nintendo to divulge significant information at this point at a more or less public event? They'll save all their amunition for the big event where they want to make an impression.
As for technical details I doubt that we are going to see details within the next year. I remember that the Gamasutra article on Flipper was published quite a while after the GCN launch and even now some technical details of the XGPU are somewhat unknown. So don't expect anybody breaking their NDA pretty soon with regard to technical knowledge.

 

[DarkRage]

Well, as it is GDC is a developer event. Plus, this year's E3 is less than 2 months away. Do you expect the Sony or Nintendo to divulge significant information at this point at a more or less public event? They'll save all their amunition for the big event where they want to make an impression.
As for technical details I doubt that we are going to see details within the next year. I remember that the Gamasutra article on Flipper was published quite a while after the GCN launch and even now some technical details of the XGPU are somewhat unknown. So don't expect anybody breaking their NDA pretty soon with regard to technical knowledge.

Yes, I was expecting technical details in the GDC.
For example, and above all, how RSX is and what kind of programming paradigm Sony is working on for Cell-RSX cooperation.
And technical info for Revolution.

You can leave all the Teraflops bullshit for the E3. That's fine, they don't mean anything, but are great for PR. Then you can show as many stupid PowerPoint presentations about Gflops, bandwidth comparisons and other graphs meaning nothing for a developer, but great for flame wars in the forums. It happened last E3, it will happen next year, and it is fine, is just PR for the average consumer.
But for developers the details about what kind of graphical tasks and how can be done in the SPEs, for example, are pretty relevant. How RSX works is relevant. What is Revolution from a technical point of view. If I would have to put my money on new projects for creating games, I would need that information, as far away as possible from the PR nonsense E3 is accepted to be.
“Casualizationâ€￾ of the GDC could mean its death. If it is not valuable for the developers, and it is oriented for general public, E3 is much bigger and in just a few weeks.

 

[StefanS]

You can leave all the Teraflops bullshit for the E3. That's fine, they don't mean anything, but are great for PR. Then you can show as many stupid PowerPoint presentations about Gflops, bandwidth comparisons and other graphs meaning nothing for a developer, but great for flame wars in the forums. It happened last E3, it will happen next year, and it is fine, is just PR for the average consumer.
But for developers the details about what kind of graphical tasks and how can be done in the SPEs, for example, are pretty relevant. How RSX works is relevant. What is Revolution from a technical point of view. If I would have to put my money on new projects for creating games, I would need that information, as far away as possible from the PR nonsense E3 is accepted to be.
“Casualizationâ€￾ of the GDC could mean its death. If it is not valuable for the developers, and it is oriented for general public, E3 is much bigger and in just a few weeks.

It is a dilemma: If the GDC is public, no technical information will be exchanged. If it's under NDA and non-public, technical information might be exchanged, but nobody except those involved will know. Don't expect miracles. As I said it will take at least 1 yr before somewhat confidential information will be leaked. That's just the way it works.

 

[DarkRage]

It is a dilemma: If the GDC is public, no technical information will be exchanged. If it's under NDA and non-public, technical information might be exchanged, but nobody except those involved will know. Don't expect miracles. As I said it will take at least 1 yr before somewhat confidential information will be leaked. That's just the way it works.

You can have a public GDC with lots of technical discussion.
It would be boring to death for most of the people. And flame wars is many forums would happen because ******s would get a tiny piece of information, with neither background or knowledge, to create useless comparisons.

But it would be useful for both the developers and for people willing to learn. Yeah, it would be relevant for a much smaller audience, but it would be much more relevant.

 

[nintenho]

You can have a public GDC with lots of technical discussion.
It would be boring to death for most of the people. And flame wars is many forums would happen because ******s would get a tiny piece of information, with neither background or knowledge, to create useless comparisons.

But it would be useful for both the developers and for people willing to learn. Yeah, it would be relevant for a much smaller audience, but it would be much more relevant.

Why would you need a big glamorous show to talk about technical details?

 

[Platon]

A bit dissapointed as well, was expecting lots of tech talk, and then I mean real tech stuff, no crapy FLOPS here and there, but what ever...

 

[DarkRage]

Why would you need a big glamorous show to talk about technical details?

You don't need it, that's the reason GDC is supposed to exist.
For glamour and PR you have E3.

 

[Carl B]

You can have a public GDC with lots of technical discussion.
It would be boring to death for most of the people. And flame wars is many forums would happen because ******s would get a tiny piece of information, with neither background or knowledge, to create useless comparisons.

But it would be useful for both the developers and for people willing to learn. Yeah, it would be relevant for a much smaller audience, but it would be much more relevant.

But why? Why would you need/do that? I'm sure GDC is going just great for the people it's intended for: developers. Frankly as far as I'm concerned the public's gotten more information as it is than we ever should have expected, so I dub it a 'good' GDC.

I'm not sure I'll ever understand when people get upset for not getting 'more' out of an event - that in all truth - they never should have expected hard info out of to begin with.

Developers working on PS3 games already know about RSX, and I'm sure that RSX was discussed at Devstation, if not GDC itself. It's just if it was, we'll not know about it/hear the details. You know, NDAs and such.

 

[StefanS]

But why? Why would you need/do that? I'm sure GDC is going just great for the people it's intended for: developers. Frankly as far as I'm concerned the public's gotten more information as it is than we ever should have expected, so I dub it a 'good' GDC.

I'm not sure I'll ever understand when people get upset for not getting 'more' out of an event - that in all truth - they never should have expected hard info out of to begin with.

Developers working on PS3 games already know about RSX, and I'm sure that RSX was discussed at Devstation, if not GDC itself. It's just if it was, we'll not know about it/hear the details. You know, NDAs and such.

Exactly, that was what I was getting at. This is a multi-billion dollar business and you don't tell any of competitors anything: You don't tell them the workings of your CPU, GPU etc. Remember MS never did tell if NV2a texture cache worked with compressed or uncompressed textures etc.
At the moment those who need to know, the developers and coders, already know about the details and are working with the devkits. Those who don't need to know, namely the average consumers, probably will never know. Now, us, the enthusiasts, will probably learn in time a lot of interesting things. But don't expect anyone to publicly announce anything. That's just the way it works.
The two big speeches (Harrison and Iwata) did exactly what they were supposed to do. They outlined their corporate strategy, and gave the devs an idea of how the platform will develop.

 

[DarkRage]

Exactly, that was what I was getting at. This is a multi-billion dollar business and you don't tell any of competitors anything: You don't tell them the workings of your CPU, GPU etc. Remember MS never did tell if NV2a texture cache worked with compressed or uncompressed textures etc.
At the moment those who need to know, the developers and coders, already know about the details and are working with the devkits. Those who don't need to know, namely the average consumers, probably will never know. Now, us, the enthusiasts, will probably learn in time a lot of interesting things. But don't expect anyone to publicly announce anything. That's just the way it works.
The two big speeches (Harrison and Iwata) did exactly what they were supposed to do. They outlined their corporate strategy, and gave the devs an idea of how the platform will develop.

Ok, fine, then I don't see the point of having a Games Developer Conference.
I understand some information will be under NDA, but if everything is under NDA, a GDC makes no sense.
I would like to hear form an actual games developer if this kind of events are useful for them. Even if it doesn't get to the general public, if there are conferences about how to extract parallelism from the code, how to efficiently use Cell or Xenos, or what changes are required for RSX. Even if it is not the most detailed information, I would expect some info to be shared with developers. Sony/MS/Nintendo want developers to consider their platform their main focus and development environment. In order to get to that point, some information has to go public.
As no information has got to the general public, I can make two assumptions: there was no information or there was but it is under NDA and it can not be shared. In both cases, GDC is pointless.
And as a general public conference, E3 is much bigger and better than this.

What have we learned with this GDC?

I have learnt only one thing: Crytek is creating an amazing engine. And even with that, I am not able to get more details than that 30 seconds demo. Maybe I am not looking at the right place.

 

[London Geezer]

What have we learned with this GDC?

I have learnt only one thing: Crytek is creating an amazing engine. And even with that, I am not able to get more details than that 30 seconds demo. Maybe I am not looking at the right place.

Now now... AGEIA came out at last, with lots of demos...
Besides, it's a developers conference, it is never meant to attract the public in a big way, the public just happens to roam around scavenging for news.
There are other events that are made for the public, which obviously have a lot more info for us to be happy about.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Ok, fine, then I don't see the point of having a Games Developer Conference.
What have we learned with this GDC?

http://www.gdconf.com/conference/index.htm

More than 300 sessions, keynotes, tutorials and roundtables will be at your disposal at GDC:06

For the developers, if they're interested in any of those seminars and keynotes, there's plenty at GDC for them. And they pay money to attend, so for all that info to be freely available to the general public over the internet makes no sense.

GDC is for people who work in creating games, talks about the industry and how they can do stuff, and they pay to attend. What snippets we hear, based on what is open to reporters, is a tiddly little bit of info. Most info would probably be pretty boring to hear.

 

[dukmahsik]

any rsx info??