GDC founder says the event is “rapidly becoming a dinosaur”

The founder of GDC, Chris Crawford, has suggested that the “gigantic costs” of the event, compared with the “microscopic costs” of interacting over the internet, mean GDC is “rapidly becoming a dinosaur.”

Crawford – who worked at Atari in the early 1980s and later created the groundbreaking Cold War simulation Balance of Power for the Macintosh – founded GDC back in 1988. The first conference was held at his house in California.

He later stepped away from running the rapidly growing event in the 1990s, following disputes with board members over the conference’s direction.

Earlier this week, GDC rebranded itself as GDC Festival of Gaming. But The Guardian warned that “even a rebrand may not be able to save America’s most storied gaming event,” with games editor Keza MacDonald arguing that the conference is “prohibitively expensive” and noting that “a large percentage of the global video game development community is reluctant to visit the US.”

GamesIndustry.biz contacted Crawford over email to ask his opinion on the above. Despite protesting that he might not be able to “offer any useful thoughts on the future of GDC,” given that he has been out of the industry for so long, he provided the following statement:

“There has been profound change that undermines the value of GDC.

“When I founded it, there was no way for game developers to share their ideas; I created it to permit that idea-sharing that is so important. Nowadays, there are lots of ways for people to share. There are plenty of social forums for discussing just about every aspect of game design. We have interactive video for pulling people from all over the world together.

“Given the gigantic costs, in both time and money, of attending something like GDC, compared to the microscopic costs of interacting with people via Internet, it would seem that GDC is rapidly becoming a dinosaur.”

GamesIndustry.biz has reached out to GDC for comment, and we will update this article if we hear back.