Ok, perhaps that's an overstatement, but there was a reasonable amount of Genesee-based action at the industry's annual gathering.

The Game Developers Conference is the place where video and computer-game programmers, designers, artists, and marketers get together, share their tricks of the trade, and assess the future of the growing industry. It's also where they do a substantial amount of recruiting. Sessions at this show aren't "How to Level Your Character Fastest" or "Secrets of the Gameplaying Gods." Though the industry may be all about may be fun, there's some serious business in this conference. On the technical side, you'll find sessions like "Physics for Game Programmers" and "3D in 3D: Rendering Anaglyph Stereographics in Real-Time" (making those red-and-green, 3D-glasses-type images). On the design side, you'll find "Challenging Everyone: Dynamic Difficulty Deconstructed" or "Comparing First-Generation Drama Engines": serious business for sure.

There are also business meetings and a trade show, where the tools and technologies related to game development are displayed. As mentioned in last week's article, representatives from Rochester's Second Avenue Software met with some of the major players in the industry and got an encouraging reception from most. They left the conference with the information they came for: what kind of games they needed to produce in time for next year's conference so they'll be in a position to land development contracts. When they return next year, they should be equipped to start negotiating contracts with the majors, if they've got the right stuff.

This year, RIT was well represented as well. As we have for several years, Professors Andy Phelps, Kevin Bierre, and I had work presented in the realms of Gamed Education, Game Accessibility, Game Writing, and Industry Standards boards. New this year was an RIT booth on the show floor promoting the BS and MS in Game Design and Development and showing the student demo game "Rocktropolis." Developed by Ada Tse, Peter Khun, Chris Cascioli, and Chris Baker, the Guitar-Hero-style game got attention from Harmonix (the developers of Guitar Hero), Microsoft, Sony, and others. The four plans to continue to develop it during the rest of their academic studies this year. More information on the programs can be found here.

Literally across the aisle from RIT was the booth for Rochester video-goggle company Icuiti. The company has been developing video eyewear for computing, entertainment, and military markets for several years. They were at the show to encourage game developers to include support for their devices. The systems have head-tracking capability, which would allow you to move your head naturally in the real world and have the game world respond to it. To get an idea of how it works, you can take a look at an interview PC World shot with Icuiti's Paul Travers here. I'm looking forward to reviewing their product here when it becomes commercially available next month.

In today's decentralized game industry, it's not out of the question for Rochester to become a player in the industry. Troy-based Vicarious Visions, fueled by RPI and RIT grads, has done well in the industry. With our concentration of technical and visual-arts skills and the incubators and other entrepreneurial support systems in Rochester, we have all the resources we need to see successful game development start-ups emerge here.