San Francisco during a rare sunny moment of GDC
It’s been another stellar GDC in the books, filled with great game discussions, industry trends, old friends and colleagues, and seemingly endless conversations about San Francisco’s crazy rent prices.
Last year, there were many discussions around virtual reality and the Nintendo Switch launch; this year, most non-SF rent conversations were around Sea of Thieves, Far Cry 5 and the stunning, meteoric rise of Fortnite (pre and post-Drake). VR discussions took a backseat to Steam, which continues to see a huge number of games releasing monthly. In 2017, a whopping 7,500 games launched on the platform according to SteamSpy, and it’s likely 2018 will eclipse that number.
While most of the Sandbox team handled biz dev meetings, I coordinated press appointments for the first hands-on gameplay of Rune from Human Head Studios (Prey, support for BioShock Infinite). The team has been working on this one in stealth mode for a while now. It was great watching the reactions from those who knew the original Rune from 2001 alongside those who were brand new to the game. You can read some early hands-on impressions of these demos from Game Informer, Destructoid and Tom’s Guide.
Game Informer’s Matt Bertz teams up with Human Head co-founder Chris Rhinehart
Scootin’ around the Discord office
Throughout the week, I also found time to catch up with friends and colleagues from places including Capcom, IGN, The Verge, Discord (where I rode a scooter and regret not riding it longer), Epic, Game Informer, USC, Microsoft, Uber, Harmonix, Unity and many more. GDC is one of my favorite events to simply catch up with people I don’t get to see often enough, and to share stories from our various cross-sections within the industry.
Next up, Team Sandbox will be making its way to Boston for PAX East, kicking off on April 5!
– Valerie Turpin
