The Game Developers Conference 2009 is over, and I’m starting to get back into a semi-routine — despite the fact that I’m not yet home. It was a crazy week, but I learned a lot, met many new people, got some free stuff and saw a ton of cool games.

I got a lot out of GDC, but I also feel like I could have seen a lot more. My schedule wasn’t really set, and I didn’t do enough preparing beforehand, so I didn’t sit in on a lot of panels. What I did see was very informative, and I think that next GDC I’ll be better prepared so that I can learn more about the industry.

If you haven’t read my first post about GDC, I recommend you do so. It pretty much covers the bulk of what I experienced. The last couple of days for me were spent covering a lot of games on the Expo floor, sprinkled with meeting with companies offsite to take a look at their games.

There were so many games, and hopefully we’ll soon be able to get some previews and reviews posted. The bulk of the games were Independent Games Festival 2009 finalists/winners. I couldn’t see all of them, but I did get to check out quite a bit. My favorite was Cletus Clay; it was developed using stop-motion animation, much like the Wallace and Gromit shows but in an interactive game setting. Even the explosions were stop-motion animation. I love claymation, but the humor in the game is also right up my alley.

Other IGF games I saw include Incredibots, Zeit 2, Power of Paint, Kid the World Saver, Dyson and Snapshot. All of the games were rather inventive, and I look forward to playing most of them at some point.

I learned a lot at GDC, and I can only hope I’ll be able to return next year — or even GDC Austin. I also hope that many of the developers I talked to will take my suggestion and toss some monkeys into their games. That would just be icing on the cake. Everyone loves monkeys.

One of my other favorite things about GDC was the free food and drinks. I love when people give me free food and drinks, especially since I’m rather poor. Pretty much everyone at GDC got at least one free meal.

The week was long, and it was busy, but I’ll definitely do it again. The vast knowledge and great networking opportunities is definitely worth the trip. However, by the end of the week, I was so exhausted that I kept yawning. I had to explain that people weren’t boring me and that I was just tired. Keep checking back for individual game reviews from GDC 2009.