This year’s Game Developers Conference featured a rage poetry reading (courtesy of Anna Anthropy), two (!) video game museum exhibits, revelations from the developers of the classic games Myst and X-Com: UFO Defense on the trials and tribulations they faced while forging their creations using arcane tools such as HyperCard, and a session called “Caring About Chrono Trigger” which showcased how the work involved in the preservation of video games is now a common interest and responsibility spread across multiple industries.

Since this was my first time attending GDC, I didn’t have a specific agenda and was free to wander the halls and attend diverse sessions at whim. Here are some photos from the show floor and short recaps of the sessions I attended. I apologize in advance for the terrible quality of some of these photos, which I took with the iPhone model circa obsolete.

Video Game Museum Exhibits

1) The Museum of Art & Digital Entertainment
http://www.themade.org/

After a long hiatus, some personnel changes, and the launch of an ambitious cross-country collaboration between the Stanford University Libraries and the National Institute of Standards and Technoglogy, the spotlight on the Stephen M. Cabrinety Collection in the History of Microcomputing, 1975-1995 returns!

I first read about the Cabrinety collection on the HTGG blog, back when Eric Kaltman was generating content on a more regular basis. I was still in library school at UCLA, embarking on a second career (in my previous life I wrote strategy guides and columns for Tips & Tricks Magazine), and daydreaming about places to work that might need someone with my odd mix of experience, interests, and credentials. I feel very fortunate that I now have the opportunity to work directly with an archival collection that sparked my interest so many years ago. They’re letting take me take the shrinkwrap off titles that haven’t seen the light of day in 30 years? It’s like opening a present – many presents –every single day.

For more information on the collaborative project, check the sites below: