Google’s Genie 3 draws a crowd at GDC

And, no, making video games with it is not the goal.

Photos in this story are from Google’s DeepMind GDC talk. Zoomed-in photos taken by me, from a seat near the back.

SAN FRANCISCO - You can’t take a step near the Moscone Center in San Francisco this week without running into a game developer. They’re here through Friday for the GDC Festival of Gaming (previously known as the Game Developers Conference).

On line for lunch, I hear people talking about jobs at Riot Games.

Crossing the street, I spot PlayStation architect Mark Cerny.

Near the Yerba Buena park, a developer I’ve known for years flags me down and gives me an update about his career. He took some consulting jobs in recent years that paid in crypto.

On Monday, after a panel I was on about The Rise of Independent Games Journalism, there’s a developer who swings by to say hello. We spend some time talking about a poetry contest he nearly won.

On Tuesday, while I’m typing these words at a table on the second floor of Moscone West, a guy who goes by Skitch eyeballs my official GDC name tag and double-checks that I did indeed previously work at Kotaku. I did, but why’s he asking? Skitch tells me he was the winner of a contest we ran on Kotaku. It was tied to the Nintendo game WarioWare DIY, which let players make their own games. Skitch had created a role-playing game in DIY. This contest was held 16 years ago. Grand prize had included a $1,000 shopping spree at the Nintendo store in New York City (My memory about the contest is hazy, but it must have been Nintendo-sponsored). Skitch tells me he spent the money on a second Wii and a stack of games.

At the same table, coming and going, are people from Bungie, ZeniMax, Tencent, and more.

Across two days into GDCFoG (so far), I found the densest concentration of game developers at 12:45pm PT on Monday, packed into Moscone West room 2020. GDC is always full of talks, some better-attended than others. This one is standing room only, with at least 100 people turned away. The topic: The Future of Playable Worlds With Google DeepMind, presented by Google

I squeeze into the room late, only because other people leave.