If you know how to program a game, your job prospects are good. There was a large job fair section of the show floor, and we got the distinct impression that work is not scarce. For those looking to break into the game development industry, GDC is definitely the place to start. While E3 is larger, it is more of a consumer oriented show.

GameSpy had quite a crowd gathered at their booth. They had a female Quake III Arena champ and were offering a shirt to anyone who could frag her. Judging by the bored look on her face, the competition wasn't all that stiff.

Elsa and Guillemot were showing off their product lines but didn't have anything new. Guillemot did mention that they would have announcements at E3. Elsa had Elsa, a booth babe in some funky translucent garb and even funkier shoes.

One thing that puzzled us about this year's GDC was the lack of games on display. Monolith had their LithTech engine on display, including a version running on the PlayStation 2. Sega was showing off several Dreamcast titles including MDK2. Most of the games on display were outside of the main hall at the Independent Games Festival, including Longbow Digital Arts' very cool Tread Marks tank racing/combat game.

But that was pretty much it. Unlike E3, the GDC exhibit hall is more of a hardware show aimed at game developers while the game developers tend to keep their latest products under wraps and out of view of the competition.

Other than X-Box (and the interesting timing of both 1GHz CPUs), this year's show didn't have any major announcements, but it does look like the lull in 3D hardware news is coming to a close. Our next generation ATI article recently appeared as well as our Dell 64MB DDR SGRAM GeForce article. And with NV11, NV15, and Voodoo4/5 announcements not too far off, things are looking good.

Jon Simon
Assistant Editor

Chris Angelini
Editor