New feature: HYPETRAIN gaming news by Space Hamlet

Top Tier Tactics would like to welcome Space Hamlet to our staff of regular writers. He’s a creative writing student with a passion for wordplay and subtle nuance, so I’ve assigned him to cover weekly news! By confronting his fear, he will gain a deeper understanding of his own potential and of the sadistic malice a blog editor can wield. Hopefully he can channel his anger into constructive coverage that covers everything the game companies pay us to relay. ~WiNG

The Game Developer’s Conference has given me more than enough to cover this week, and I mean that quite literally; to discuss all the interesting things that went on would require that I write at least three dozen pages more than WiNG allows me. The GDC might be the only time of the year when the number one priority for game industry announcements is not to make sales pitches to gamers, so I would sing a little song in my heart if you would all take a look at the full offering.

With that said, how would you like to hear my personal highlights? Thank you for trusting me, I can tell we’re getting off to a great start here.

• The GDC Choice Awards were held for the 11^th time, and no doubt there’s plenty of debate to be held about the results. However I’d like to imagine that T3 readers in particular can get behind the Pioneer Award recipient this year: Yu Suzuki. He’s most famous for creating Shenmue, but the competitive community knows him as the designer of Virtua Fighter, the first 3D fighting game, with one of the most enduring tournament scenes still alive. In Japan, at least. Please leave me a note of solidarity if you understand my pain.
• For the graphic whores among you, new tech demos of the CryEngine 3, Frostbite 2.0, and the newly improved Unreal 3 engines. All look more than ready to trigger YouTube arguments about whether game trailers are pre-rendered.
• The project director for Deadly Premonition, of all the games, delivered a talk about how to write a good game story. Despite the game being a little strange, as a writer I am telling you – his points are all spot-on.
• Artistically-minded indie developer Jason Rohrer described a novel concept of how to play that game we’re all sick of hearing about, Minecraft. His idea: create a world and only play it until your death,  then give the save file to another player, having him follow the same rules. Each player builds upon the leftovers of the last, hopefully creating a spiritual experience for everyone involved. Perhaps some of you would like to organize such a game amongst yourselves and let me know if any of you attain Nirvana?

Enjoy the news I don’t hate while it lasts. Oh, by the way! Speaking of Minecraft, you all know the soundtrack’s out, right?