I just flew in from California last night, so I have some serious jet-lag. I never used to get it, but I suppose I am at that point where I can’t just do anything I want to anymore. So the content will be light today.

I will have more to say about GDC later, but I had a good time. Nice to meet people I had never met, re-connect with people I had met once or twice, and exchange good conversation with long time conversationalists, either from work or from a forum. I had an hour long play session with the MMO Pirates of the Burning Sea, and a good fifteen minutes seeing the animation and artwork that is going into the cross-platform sequel to Sacred.

The conference seemed to be in a bit of a Next-Gen hangover. After years of looking forward to what the new consoles could provide, developers and publishers have to spend the next five years developing for a known quantity. It’s not about hope anymore, it’s about planning.

I remain optimistic that the PC can recover to become a solid gaming platform, and not just for independently developed titles or Sims type games. I believe that Spore can and will open the way to new gamers since it has a strong cross-audience appeal, potentially drawing in both casual Sims fans and hardcore gamers who like to build badass monsters. I may be in the minority though. There wasn’t a lot of PC specific stuff going on, and even the panel discussion on the future of the PC had an air of resignation about it, as if the only place for the PC to go was the MMO, or full user created content.

More coherent thoughts once I am caffeinated.