GDC 2023's AI buzz has a familiar feel | This Week in Business

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Last year in this space, we proclaimed that GDC was back, largely because the things that accompanied so many of the GDC weeks of years past were there.

But when I speak to people who were actually at the show last year (I was not), they have been quick to tell me that it was by no means a "normal" GDC, with far fewer people. A significant chunk of those who did show up also demonstrated considerable unease with the idea of going back to in-person events.

This year, a lot of those same people are telling me GDC feels much more like the GDCs of old. Having been to more than a dozen of those pre-pandemic shows myself, I basically agree with that assessment. The crowds are slightly less packed (unless it's a session on AI), but it's paradoxically surreal how normal the show feels to me.

The pandemic isn't entirely invisible here. GDC required attendees to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test, and that resulted in badge pick-up lines that wrapped down the street outside and around the corner, the sort of lines I've only ever seen at the show once before, for Shigeru Miyamoto's keynote address at the 2007 event. And when I finally got my badge, I was offered helpful green, yellow, and red stickers so that other attendees could roughly know my social distancing preferences.

That said, once you were inside the show itself, it was right back to the GDC of old, with the yellow-shirted volunteers "requesting" that people squeeze into the middle of every row and leave no empty seats so that that could cram each session to the brim with relentlessly respirating attendees.

Similarly familiar was the hard sell for the next big thing.