james is here4d ago
Highlight of the evening was #MADE party. I'm not officially staff or volunteer but I had a little role in configuring the MS-DOS/Win machines showing off first-person shooter games. There were some Japanese guests there who were like "ahh sugoi" at the PDP-10 emulation setup with Mazewar(as explained by our one Japanese-fluent staff member) and they spent a little while with the 386 running Wolf3D. The event also brought in a lot of local people who hadn't been before and were interested in getting more involved. #retrogaming #retrocomputing
Show threadjames is here

This year the phrase I started using was "deprofessionalization" since the overall mood from my perspective was one of: corporate sponsors were largely absent, AI hype was already on its way out and merited little discussion, indies were not trying to chase after publisher money with a pitch since that funding has dried up, international presence was torpedoed and consisted mostly of "paid by my company or school to be here", lots of the attendees had found the day job and are in a hobbyist role right now. The only person I talked to with a growing company was doing retro remasters. The highly structured creator-consumer divide from not so long ago has blurred into content creation, modding, local events and niche scenes. Graduates from game schools have (mostly) prepared themselves to seek an entrepreneurial route.

There was still a density of action and conversation to be had, but with relatively less of a frenetic need to advance career goals backstopping it all.

#gdc2026 #gdc #gamedev

Mar 16 at 1:56amWeb
Show thread🍂Evan Balster🍂2d ago
@Triplefox To me it felt like the elite/amateur divide was drawn more weakly in 2026 than it has been in perhaps 15 years. But that perspective is influenced by my habit of gravitating towards open people and open spaces, and engendering both with the ways I've learnt to hold space.