Gaming has been one of the driving forces in computer innovation and development. Gaming and digital content creation (editing and creating images, video, and animation) are the things that are continuing to push computer hardware to greater performance. Every year in May there is E3, the gaming industry's big marketing show, but the people who develop the games meet two months earlier at the Game Developers Conference. It is here that the developers find out more of the state of the art in hardware, operating systems, and development tools plus what is coming in the future because they are designing and building games for release up to three years from now.

Microsoft at GDC announced XNA, a system where it will be far easier to develop software for both Windows and Xbox at the same time. This cannot just be for games, but can be for home entertainment and creation display of user created content. With the Xbox 2 believed to include a HDTV output and to come out in time for Christmas 2005, ahead of Sony Playstation 3, this becomes more important. Major development tools and digital content creation software makers have jumped on the XNA bandwagon and will have their software be able to integrate with XNA.

One part of the XNA concerns a downloadable upgrade to Windows XP originally intended to be released with the next version of Windows (Longhorn) that will come out before the end of this year. It is a new audio system/module that replaces the current one and is based on the Xbox audio system. One of the side benefits of the new audio system is that it does not allow highly intrusive audio drivers that have been known to cause problems with hardware and applications software.

Of course, Sony had major announcements too. Development of Sony's new handheld entertainment device, the Playstation Portable (PSP), is moving along and content is already being developed for it. They showed a game on a PSP emulator, the graphics and game play looking far superior to what one would see on Nintendo's Game Boy Advance. However, the word is now that release of the device has been pushed back from this holiday season to early next year. At Sony's press conference the question came up about Microsoft moving ahead of Sony on development of the next generation of consoles. Sony gave an Orson Welles "No Wine Before Its Time" type answer, saying their concern was bringing it out before they felt it was ready and not wanting to rush it because of the competition. But at the same time it looked like the news that Microsoft had gotten ahead of them was a surprise and unsettling. As with Microsoft, Sony's next generation console will be based on a home entertainment device, rather than just a game console, and is expected to have a HDTV output. Both Sony's and Microsoft's next consoles are expected to be 10 times as powerful as the current generation.

Nvidia and ATI could only show some of what their new high-end video cards could do; and gave very little technical details since they had not been formally announced. With new vertex and pixel shaders, even higher quality graphics are now achievable. The Nvidia launch event is on April 13 and one report places the ATI announcement of their new cards will be on April 26, so details should be available by the time this is published. This will also result in a significant price drop in the existing video cards. However, most games right now are more CPU limited than graphics card limited, with sometimes even memory bandwidth as the limiter. Some games starting to come out during the summer, such as Half Life 2 and Doom 3, are rumored to even tax the current crop of high-end video cards at times, making the possibility of the new crop making a difference.

One of the surprises was Nintendo's lack of presence. They have not been that big at GDC in the past, but it seemed weaker than normal this year. John Schappert, the head of Electronic Arts Vancouver, Canada Studios, spoke on the transition to the next generation of consoles. He said that Sony and Microsoft are giving some details of their next generation consoles to the game developers, but Nintendo has been totally silent. He said that Nintendo had blown the launch of their Gamecube and the way they were behaving now indicated that they were headed down a similar path by not getting the game developers on board now. There have been rumors floating around for over a year that Nintendo might go the way of Sega, stop making hardware and only do software. The Gamecube is rapidly dying in Europe and is rapidly being considered a non-player there, with Microsoft's Xbox replacing them in the marketplace as the number two game console (Sony's Playstation 2 is the market leader). Its position is continuing to weaken in North America despite promotional offers, and again Xbox overtaking them for the number two spot. It looks like Electronic Arts and possibly other developers have already written off Nintendo's next generation console, if there is going to be one, and concentrate on Playstation 3 and Xbox 2 for their next generation game development.

As usual, there were various sessions on both technical issues, the greater importance of game play and the experience that the player has in the game, but there should be some fun at a conference on games. They took three of the top game designers and gave them a challenge to come up with a write-up of a game design. Normally this would not be a problem for them, but the theme of the game had to be something that is probably the worst challenge for a game designer: Love. It was too tough for Warren Spector, known for Wing Commander and the Ultima series, who wound up just outlining the problems and challenges he found. Ralph Koster, Creative Director for Sony Online Entertainment's massively multiplayer online game Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided put together a game where players would walk through a romance novel with spectators urging them on what to do next.

The winner was Will Wright, creator of The Sims, SimCity, and all those other games that begin with Sim, with what he titled "Collateral Romance." Inspired by classic war romance movies, he placed his game right inside Electronic Arts existing popular World War II multiplayer first person shooter Battlefield 1942. Multiple sets of lovers would be randomly placed throughout the battlefield. After they found each other, they would be told where the safe haven was; then they would have to travel together to win the game. Of course, they have to keep from being shot or blown up by the actions of the soldiers who are playing the regular Battlefield 1942 simultaneously in the same environment. With the soldiers not only having infantry weapons like rifles, submachine guns, grenades and bazookas; but also jeeps with heavy machine guns, half-tracks, tanks, and airplanes too; there will be a lot of challenges for the lovers. The soldiers not only have the option of ignoring the lovers or groups of lovers, but also of trying to protect them or purposely bump them off. What if one group of soldiers decides to try to help and protect the lovers, but another group decides they want to bump the lovers off? This would increase the drama for both the lovers and the soldiers; therefore, increasing both groups' enjoyment. The audience at the game challenge session was just ecstatic about Will's idea. There were rumors at the Conference that the idea was so good that Electronic Arts was considering actually making the game.

This year's Game Development Conference showed what is coming, but it also reminded us that it is the playability and enjoyment of a game that is important for its success. Developers will make games, critics will review games, but it is the people who buy games that will determine a game's success. As a byproduct we will continue to get faster and faster computers.

Timothy Everingham is CEO of Timothy Everingham Consulting in Azusa, California. He is also Vice Chair of the Los Angeles Chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH, the largest chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques and one of Southern California's significant professional organizations within the entertainment and media industries. He is also on the Management Information Systems Program Advisory Board of California State University, Fullerton; which he also graduated from with honors with the double majors of Management Information Systems and Accounting. In addition he is the Vice President of the Windows Media Users' Group of Los Angeles. He is also part-time press in the areas of high technology, computers, video, audio, and entertainment/media and has had articles published throughout the United States and Canada plus Australia, England, & Japan. He is a member of TUGNET. Further information can be found at http://home.earthlink.net/~teveringham