A few feet away from Sony booth was that of German developer Crytek. The developer of the slick PC shooters Crysis and the original Far Cry was touting its just-announced CryEngine 3 middleware, which can also run on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. To lure prospective customers, they had a two-minute demo clip showing the engine running on both consoles--and this video doesn't do the impressive footage justice.

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Behind Crytek's booth was the Independent Games Festival area, where attendees could play both the winners and losers of the previous night's Independent Games Awards.

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Those included Excellence in Game Design winner Musiac Box, a combination music and puzzle game:

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And Student Showcase winner Tag! The Power of Paint, which sees players spraypaint strips which launch them from rooftop to rooftop, Mirror's Edge-style.

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SOUTH HALL
Across Howard Street is the Moscone Center's South Hall. Its central Esplanade Room is where all the BIG events are held, including the Satoru Iwata and Hideo Kojima's keynotes and the Game Developers Conference Awards. To see extensive video footage of those events, click on the link stories above. The clip below conveys a sense of the Esplanade Room's vastness, however.

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WEST HALL
Though it is where the vast majority of knowledge is disseminated via GDC's dizzying array of sessions, the West Hall was pretty low on spectacle. Its most notable feature was the throngs of people bustling about, going from sessions to session, pausing only to pounce on the tables of free lunches put out each midday.

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Thrilling, eh? However, for those attending GDC to try and get a job, the West Hall held the most important place at the expo--the recruiting fair. Inside yet another massive room on the ground floor, a range of developers and publishers with internal studios were taking applications.

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Besides the cash-flush Activision Blizzard, which wooed potential employees with a Guitar Hero stage:

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Curiously, companies which had recently seen massive layoffs--like THQ and Sony Computer Entertainment--were also actively recruiting at GDC. Hopefully by the time GDC 2010 rolls around next March, they'll be in better straits.