GDC was fun, informative and productive for me and iQ212 this year.  I think my GDC Mobile lecture accomplished its goal of getting people thinking and talking about casual and mobile design and the issues that even good games face when entering the mobile gauntlet.

My talk was called “Tetris: the Best/Worst Mobile Game Ever”.  Nice coverage of the talking points is here. 

In short, I declared Tetris as the best game ever.  Then I deconstructed the game, to look at the design elements and to see why it was such a great game, and how its play transferred to mobile. 

Slim Jim brand beef jerky was used as an example to illustrate the shelf space problem on mobile carrier decks.  A supermarket has all kinds of beef choices: filet mignon, short ribs, and prime rib roast, etc.  They have the shelf space for it.  But a convenience store only sells one type of beef, Slim Jim.  Small footprint, long shelf life, broad appeal, always in season, and in snack size portions.  It is because of this shelf space issue that carriers feature Tetris and that Tetris is a perennial best seller.  So Tetris is not beef jerky, but carriers are a bit like 7-11.

At the end of my talk, I asked the room, “If Tetris were invented today, how many of you think it would get published by mobile carriers?”  Exactly one guy in a room of 75 people raised his hand.  It is a telling indictment on the state of mobile when the best game in the world would not get published today.