GDC. Day Three.

7:19pm.

My sandals are unevenly clacking down the marble floors of the Moscone Center South as I run towards the Independent Game Festival award ceremony. Late again. Anticipating the room’s layout, expecting a few hundred hardcore indie developers and their fans, I plan to quietly sneak in and find a seat in the back. A yellow-shirted Conference Associate greets me at the door, and kindly waves me in.

The room is dark. One hundred silhouetted heads cast their shadows against the stage, some occluding my view of the projection screen. I scurry to the right, looking for a free seat. As my eyes adjust to the blackness, the enormity of the scene rushes into me.

The room is dark. One hundred silhouetted heads cast their shadows against the stage, some occluding my view of the ceremony host who is projected on a large screen. I look past the shadowy heads toward the rest of the amphitheatre. A muddied roar of conversations arrests me and my eyes widen, trying to take it all in. There are one hundred rows of one hundred heads. Almost every seat is filled. Thousands of eyes shine at the stage, like fireflies in the night. Thousands. My God.

The host, dressed in a black tuxedo, welcomes the legion of game fanatics whose clapping sound like the Niagara Falls. The ceremony is slick, emulating the Academy Awards. I realize for the first time that “indie” no longer means small or free. Indie is now big business, and the seeds of corporatisation planted long ago have begun to bear their fruit. A young man wins $30,000 for his creation and barely can contain his excitement as he receives his award.

The machine has been set in motion, and we only can hang on to the rails for our dear lives.

10:42pm.

I’m sitting in the hostel, absently listening to snatches of conversation as a TV blares in the background. My friends Dan and Oskar are sitting on the couch beside me, looking just as haggard as I feel. We are reminiscing about the people we’ve met, the talks we’ve been to, and the outcome of the GDC Awards Ceremony. We share a few exhausted laughs about the hilarious “Mega 64″ videos that were screened at the ceremony. Dan mentions that he drank a free beer on the Expo floor, after playing the upcoming game Punch-Out!! at Nintendo’s Wii booth. Hearing the word ‘beer’, my stomach turns a bit, reminded of my Belgian beer jaunt with Corvus the night before.

We all pause for a moment, drunk on our thoughts. Oskar breaks out into a delirious grin, and we laugh at the sheer madness of it all – we have flown hours upon hours to a large and faceless city, each with our own plans and anxieties, each leaving behind a partner or loved one at home, all sacrificing our time and money. We are out of our minds doing this, and we know it. 

In that moment we all know why we’re here. We define ourselves, at least that part of us still capable of expressing joy, as people who love and care about playing games. That part of us, buried by years of maturation and worn away by those who told us that playing games is depraved or deplorable, has become unearthed. And there are thousands of us who have made the pilgrimage to this New Mecca, all hazy with the realization that all of us unashamedly love the same thing.

The moment passes as quickly as it came. Dan, Oskar, and I are slumped against on an old couch in the Adelaide hostel. And we are loving it.