GDC 2007 Programmer's Challenge Video Showcased

Author: by Staff

Gamasutra has made the GDC 2007 Programmer's Challenge, the uber-geeky tech quiz that was one of the highlights of this year's Game Developers Conference, available in streaming video form. As we explained in our GDC write-up of this panel: "Six of the industry’s most well respected programmers were brought together to form teams and answer some of the silliest video game and programming questions conceived. Written by Jeff Roberts and Casey Muratori, who also hosted the event, questions on everything from Dijkstra’s algorithm to strangely named Gundam games garnered huge laughs from competitors Josh Adams [Epic], Brian Jacobson [Valve], Chris Hecker [Maxis/EA], Eric Malafeew [Harmonix], Jonathan Blow [Number-None], and Chris Butcher [Microsoft], as well as the audience. As funny as the questions were, many of them communicated some of the serious hardware and software issues that exist among game industry programmers. One category of questions - “Compensation: Questions about the largeness of things (or lack thereof)” - dealt primarily with console architecture and how they never seemed to have enough memory available." [Many thanks to Challenge MC Casey Muratori for posting the original version of this video online, to Eric Malafeew of Harmonix for encoding the video, and to Mitch Soule of RAD Game Tools for manning the camera.]