In case you somehow missed every last bit of gaming news in the past bunch of days, the 25th annual Game Developer's Conference happened in San Francisco, Cali last week. More than just a trade show, GDC celebrates those who make the games we play while also providing them with a forum where they can educate themselves and network among peers. This year's gathering was the biggest yet, drawing in a record-breaking crowd of 19,000, up from last year's number of 18,250.
There were some major happenings at this year's show, starting with a keynote address delivered by Nintendo president Satoru Iwata in which he announced the coming of a "Super Mario" game for the soon-to-launch 3DS handheld as well as a Netflix Watch Instantly app for the same.
Veteran Sega designer Yu Suzuki also appeared, his first United States conference appearance. The "Shenmue" creator looked back over his long and storied career during his talk, though he also squeezed in some time to talk about the upcoming mobile game "Shenmue Town" as well as fan the hopes of franchise fans that all is not lost for a third console game in the series.
That wasn't it for big-ticket game announcements however. Tim Schafer, who hosted the show's Game Developer's Choice awards -- at which "Red Dead Redemption" and "Minecraft" were the big winners -- took a few moments at the tail end of the event to share a teasing glimpse of his studio Double Fine's next game, "Trenched," which brings customizable mech fighting action to Xbox Live Arcade.
Speaking of "Minecraft," creator Markus Persson revealed the next project that is in development at Mojang, "Scrolls." A board game/card game hybrid, "Scrolls" is about as far as you can get from "Minecraft." It also sounds a little like chess, but with magic. Nothing wrong with that.
MTV Multiplayer editor Russ Frushtick was on the ground in San Francisco, and he got to see some cool stuff while he was there. The one that we should all be jealous of is his time spent staring at the latest build of "Batman: Arkham City." He also got to peer at the upcoming PlayStation Network exclusive "Rochard," which he described as the mutant demon-baby of "Team Fortress 2," "Dead Space" and "Portal."
Russ also spent some time at the PopCap panel, because... well... badass games are made there. Did you know that "Bejeweled" grew out of idea theft? Or that there's an official, developer-conceived drinking game for "Bejeweled Blitz"? No? That's because you weren't at the panel. Russ was though, so check out his report.