Bendik and I are just back from four long and content filled days, primarily at GDC but also half a day of wandering the halls and booths of gamescom.

Starting with the highs, GDC was one long high of relevant, high quality sessions one after the other. Mostly we split and followed separate tracks and probably covered 20 plus sessions together. Rather than delving into each or some of them, let me instead try to share some general trends that seemed to cut through the whole event. First, the gaming industry has never been more exhilarating, promising and confusing than in its current creative destruction of everything just recently seemed tried and true. The future never looked more promising. The gatekeepers of the old order, both the platforms and the publishers are no longer the only game in town. They have to change and they know it. Power that first shifted to the developer, now clearly is moving towards where it ought to have been all the time, to the gamer. But the gamer is also changing. The stereotype of yesterday is there, but is now a minority. Large new groups of players have expanded far beyond the young male demographic and this is where the growth and action is currently. Zynga was bashed both in the creative and business sessions, yet grudgingly it was admitted that the social gaming and free to play mechanisms perfected by the likes of Zynga mainly are responsible for this phenomenal player growth. Who are these players, and what do they want in the future? Hardly another FarmVille, most agreed. But they want choice, they want free to play, or at least free to try, and they will vote with their wallet, but most of all they want to be entertained, and they will pay for quality and sustained entertainment value.

As for independent developers such as us, the bonanza of the early iOS period definitely is over. The competition is fierce and the marketplace is maturing with the big players muscling in on these new platforms. Yet this is where the action still is. If you had to sum up GDC 2012 in two words it would have to be mobile and free to play.

Than you to GDC and to all the speakers, no one mentioned, no one forgotten! Great job! We’ll be back! You confirmed our belief: We are in the best industry ever!

Photo: Koelnmesse

As for gamecom 2012, I am sorry to say that, on entering the first hall, pangs of doubts hit me, literally, in the stomach, with ear-splitting immediacy: Is this juvenile testosterone driven megalomania the same industry I just professed I loved? Will it ever grow up? Seriously, are the booth babes still necessary? And why do these mega displays all look the same, hall after hall of continuous sensory rampage? Is this what we want to be known for? It is certainly something not deserve being remembered for.

Or is it just me getting too old?