Game Developers Conference 2008 is over and it’s time to return to the snowy North. Here are my picks for the best and worst of everything i experienced there.

Best Party

i’m not a party person, but i can be astoundingly frugal when the mood takes me. That’s why i went to the Game Developers Conference hoping to catch a few free meals of hors d’oeuvres (the best part of the hors) before leaving for home. That’s why my pick for best party might not be status quo.

Last year, the best “partay”, in the strictest (and sleaziest) sense of the word, was thrown by local game dev team Three Rings, the folks behind Puzzle Pirates. That party was bona fide out of control, with plenty of free booze and a mad science theme, with a Doc Brown-inspired deejay inviting guests to spin the Wheel of Mash-Ups, from which he’d choose two songs to blend on his turntables. i was also floored at the amount of decoration going on in the Three Rings office until, nearly a year later, i read this article about how Three Rings’ workspace was custom-designed.

Apparently, the party got a little out of control. Something about a bloody stairwell and an angry landlord - the folks who work there tell the story sheepishly.

This year’s most outrageous party was thrown by CCP Games, who make the backstabby space-themed MMO Eve Online. i didn’t actually go myself, but apparently it was held in a San Francisco fetish club, with midgets in plasma backpacks and topless women flogging people who were tethered to a central whipping post. Erm … sounds like “fun”, but i can’t imagine how i could polish off a whole tray of free crabcakes with a topless lady going at me with a cat o’ nine tails. And believe me, i’ve tried.

Instead of basking in the unholy delights of an open bar (i don’t drink) or a loud club atmosphere (how can you network if you can’t hear each other?), my nod to Best Party goes to the Autodesk shindig thrown on Suite Night, where a few companies deck out some ballrooms at the W Hotel and invite the whole conference over.

The Autodesk party was really great. They had a candy bar filled with bonbons, flavoured popcorn and big bowls of Skittles. That’s what i’m talking about. The room was filled with inflatable couches in front of teevees hooked up with Atari 5600’s. One of these was playing Yars Revenge, which is only the best Atari game ever made, thank you very much.

i spent an hour parked on a plastic sofa eating Skittles and daring all comers to beat my Yars Revenge score. It was glorious. The deejay played nothing but the hottest late-70s tunes like The Hustle and Le Freak. i was in my element. i was eventually dethroned when someone beat my score of 49312, but it didn’t matter. The Autodesk party was a groovy reminder of why we were all gathered at the conference in the first place: the rec rooms of our youth.

Just after i left, Hair Supply, an Air Supply cover band, played a nostalgically horrible set. i’m both sorry and relieved that i missed it.