For game developers, GDC 2022 was a battle for reality

digitaltrends.com:

With this year’s Game Developers Conference returning to an in-person format for the first time since the pandemic began, there was a full house for this year’s Game Developers Choice Awards. Host Osama Dorias took the stage for an opening monologue filled with puns and nods to the biggest stories in the video game industry today. The audience warm-up work reached its peak when Dorias hit on one of gaming’s most controversial topics.

“I promise, there are no NFTs,” he quipped, eliciting loud applause and cheers from the crowd – the biggest pop of the evening.

If you watched that moment via livestream, you might have assumed that this year’s GDC was a haven from a storm of buzzwords that have swirled around the industry like a hurricane over the past year. That wasn’t the case. Between a myriad of panels, show floor booths, and even banners advertising “play-to-earn” games, Web3 advocates and blockchain-believers made their presence known this year — whether or not they fit in.

GDC 2022 acted as a perfect microcosm for the video game industry at large right now. It felt like two conferences in competition with one another. On one side, it was a space for traditional game makers to advocate for change and connect with one another after years of physical distance. On the other, it was a summit for tech idealists eager to chart a new course in a digital world. Both stressed the importance of community, though they couldn’t have been farther apart from one another.

A quick glance through this year’s GDC presentation schedule turned up several talks about every modern tech trend, from NFTs to the metaverse. In between panels on games like Halo Infinite and Deathloop, attendees could pop into talks like “How Web 3.0 Can