Game Developers Conference | Code Like It's 198x

In April 1988 Chris Crawford, the designer of Eastern Front (1941) and Balance of Power, invited other game designers to his house in the hills above San Jose, California. Computer Gaming World later counted 26 of them. They talked about their craft for a day, and they wanted more. Five months later a second meeting filled a room at the Holiday Inn in Milpitas, where Crawford lectured on creativity while cracking a bullwhip. That was the start of the Computer Game Developers Conference, now the Game Developers Conference (GDC). By 2007 it was drawing more than 15,000 people to San Francisco’s Moscone Center.

Fast facts

First meeting: April 1988, at Chris Crawford’s house near San Jose.
Original name: the Computer Game Developers Conference (CGDC); “Game Developers Conference” by 1999.
Where: Silicon Valley hotels and convention centres at first, including Santa Clara in the mid-1990s; Long Beach in 1998; San Jose from 1999; San Francisco’s Moscone Center from 2007, apart from 2006.
Size: 26 people in 1988 by Computer Gaming World’s count; more than 2,200 in 1995; about 4,000 in 1998; more than 15,000 in 2007; 20,000 in 2026.
Owners: run by its founders and board until the mid-1990s; the trade publisher Miller Freeman from 1996; today Informa.

A conference for a journal’s readers

The conference grew out of The Journal of Computer Game Design, which Crawford had started in 1987 so that designers, who were “functioning as individuals with no way to be in touch and no real community”, as he put it, could share ideas. Computer Gaming World described the September 1988 meeting at the Milpitas Holiday Inn as “held by and for subscribers to Chris’ Journal”: over 150 “designers, developers, programmers, and producers from all over the entertainment software industry” came “to continue building a sense of an independent artist’s community and improving the games we play”. Crawford’s own count of that meeting was 127, at $75 a head.

The magazine’s report gives a sense of the mood. Crawford waved the bullwhip “as an analog to creativity” and told the audience that 99 per cent of games were made by improving on an old idea, not by what he called “grand leap” design. Dan Bunten, the designer of M.U.L.E., challenged game designers, “with tongue in cheek”, to admit that they were nerds. The makers of computer role-playing games argued over what storytelling really was.

A third conference followed in the spring of 1989, and after that it settled into an annual meeting each spring. It kept the flavour of an argument among designers. In 1991 Lori Cole of Sierra and Ron Gilbert of Lucasfilm Games debated whether adventure games should let the player die, and in 1992 Crawford ended his talk, later known as the Dragon Speech, by charging out of the room.

Growing up

The conference grew quickly. Computer Gaming World counted more than 500 people a year by 1992, and more than 2,200 at the eighth conference in 1995, “from as far away as Moscow and Melbourne”. At that 1995 conference Crawford used the end of his lecture to announce that he had been removed from the board that ran it. In his own account, the board took the chairmanship from him after he proposed sharing its stock with earlier members, and later accepted an offer of $3 million for the conference. From 1996 it was run by Miller Freeman, a trade publisher.

By then it was a business event as much as a gathering of designers. Its 1996 conference in Santa Clara advertised 150 classes. It had a job fair, and an expo where almost every stand showed some kind of 3D tool, and Computer Gaming World’s columnist found “hundreds of ‘job opening’ fliers plastered everywhere”. For Crawford, the magazine wrote, the conversation had become “too diluted by the masses of attendees”, and that year he paid for his own one-day meeting for 43 hand-picked people. The 1998 conference moved to Long Beach, where the German magazine PC Player reported about 4,000 attendees and four main topics: DVD, 3D accelerator cards, online games and DirectX 6.

San Jose and San Francisco

By 1999 the event had become the Game Developers Conference and moved to San Jose, where Shigeru Miyamoto gave that year’s keynote in the Civic Auditorium to two standing ovations. The keynotes became the place for platform holders to address developers: in 2000 Bill Gates used his to announce Microsoft’s Xbox. The conference also added awards of its own: the Independent Games Festival was taking entries by 2000, and by 2001 the Game Developers Choice Awards were being presented at the show.

GDC 2002 in San Jose was a quieter year. Edge found “academia and game design issues at the fore”, with two-day tutorials “devoted to game tuning and the other to the role of academia”. Warren Spector suggested that “next year’s show should be called ‘Pose and Discuss.’” The magazine thought the flat mood was a good sign: developers were “spending less time talking about what they hoped to do and more time actually doing it”. There were fewer British and European speakers than usual, because the organisers were putting their effort into a European version of the conference, first held in London in 2001.

The conference first moved to San Francisco’s Moscone Center in 2005. It went back to San Jose in 2006, for what Edge expected would be “the last ever time in its spiritual home”, and returned to the Moscone Center in 2007, which Edge described as its “new, permanent home”. With the E3 trade show cancelled in its old form, Edge called GDC “the largest, and the most important, games-related trade show in the US”, “now boasting attendances of over 15,000”.

The conference today

GDC is still held each spring at the Moscone Center, and its owner is now Informa. Recordings of many of its talks are kept in an online archive, the GDC Vault. In 2026 the event was renamed the GDC Festival of Gaming, with passes and a programme aimed at the wider industry, and its organisers reported 20,000 attendees from more than 85 countries.

Sources

“Notes on the Conference on Computer Game Design”, Computer Gaming World issue 56, February 1989, pp. 16–17: the September 1988 conference at the Milpitas Holiday Inn, “over 150” attendees, the Journal, Crawford’s bullwhip and his lecture on creativity, Dan Bunten.
Computer Gaming World issue 100, November 1992, p. 24: the first conference of 26 designers in April 1988 at Crawford’s house; the second at the Milpitas Holiday Inn in September 1988; more than 500 attending by 1992.
“More Than 2,200 Attend Eighth Annual Computer Game Developers Conference”, Computer Gaming World issue 132, July 1995, p. 26: attendance, Crawford’s announcement of his removal from the board.
Paul Schuytema, “The Gamester”, Computer Gaming World issue 143, June 1996: the 1996 conference, the job fair, Crawford’s one-day conference for 43 people. Computer Gaming World issue 140, March 1996: conference advertisement (Santa Clara, 30 March to 2 April 1996, 150 classes).
Computer Gaming World issue 111, October 1993: call for papers for the conference of 23–26 April 1994 in Santa Clara.
Computer Gaming World issue 83, June 1991, pp. 44–45: Lori Cole and Ron Gilbert on death in adventure games.
Mindy Skelton, “An Interview with Chris Crawford”, INFO issue 29, November/December 1989, pp. 40–42: the Journal and why he started it.
“Messebericht: Computer Game Developers Conference”, PC Player (Germany), July 1998: Long Beach, 4–8 May 1998, about 4,000 attendees.
“1999 Game Developers Conference”, Nintendo Power issue 120, May 1999: San Jose, Shigeru Miyamoto’s keynote.
Edge issue 84, May 2000: Bill Gates announces the Xbox at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose.
Edge issue 86, July 2000: entries invited for the Independent Games Festival.
Edge issue 97, May 2001: the Game Developers Choice Awards at GDC.
“Deep thought at GDC”, Edge issue 110, May 2002, p. 10: GDC 2002 in San Jose, 19–23 March; Warren Spector; the European conference in London; talks that had made their debut at the European conference in 2001.
Edge issue 149, May 2005: GDC’s move to San Francisco.
Edge issue 162, May 2006: GDC 2006 in San Jose.
“GDC comes to the fore”, Edge issue 173, March 2007, p. 91: the return to San Francisco and the Moscone Center as its “new, permanent home”; attendance of over 15,000.
“GDC turns 20”, Edge issue 175, May 2007: two decades from Crawford’s living room to San Francisco.
Chris Crawford, “The Computer Game Developers’ Conference”, erasmatazz.com (web, secondary): the first meeting at his home, 127 people at Milpitas at $75, the annual spring conferences from 1989, his removal from the chairmanship, the sale for $3 million. https://www.erasmatazz.com/personal/experiences/the-computer-game-developer.html
Wikipedia, “Game Developers Conference” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): Miller Freeman running the conference from 1996 (citing Next Generation, July 1997); the change of name in 1999; the European conference’s first year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Developers_Conference
Farouk Kannout, “GDC organizers reveal details of latest rebrand to ‘GDC Festival of Gaming’”, The A.V. Club, 24 October 2025 (web, secondary): the new name, the passes and the GDC Vault, the March 2026 dates in San Francisco. https://www.avclub.com/gdc-organizers-reveal-details-of-latest-rebrand-to-gdc-festival-of-gaming
“GDC Festival of Gaming 2026 Delivers Five Days of Transformative Connection and Insight for an Industry in Transition”, press release, Game Developer, 13 March 2026 (web, secondary): the renamed event, 20,000 attendees, Informa. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/rebranded-gdc-festival-of-gaming-attracts-20-000-attendees