I may not have a tremendous knowledge of fine art, but I know what I like and I like what I know. So when I was walking through the Game Developers Conference and stumbled upon a preview gallery for the "I am 8-bit" exhibit, I was surrounded by something I know and like: video games. More specifically I was surrounded by artwork that was based on and inspired by video games.

Because you don't see paintings depicting two children playing Mario Kart or artwork with characters from Punch-Out!! every day, I thought it would be interesting to videotape my stroll through the exhibit. I hope you enjoy it! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to see how much that Soda Popinski painting will set me back...

If you're in the Los Angeles area and you'd like to see more of this fantastic art, the exhibit will be in town from April 17th until May 12th.

Growing up, you're always told that when it comes to determining a
career path you should "do what you love." But what if what you love is
video games? No matter what your talent is there are many ways you
could wind up working with or around video games. If you're strong at
math or good with computers you could become a programmer; there's
plenty of demand for gifted artists to create and design characters and
levels; talented musicians are behind all great game soundtracks; and
of course, every game needs hardworking people with an eye for detail
to do QA testing for bugs.

It's not necessarily easy to have a career in the video game industry,
but as you see every time you try to pick out a single game from packed
store shelves, it's a pretty big field and there are lots of companies
out there. With the 2007 Game Developers Conference in town, I thought
it would be interesting to find out what advice game developers themselves have for people looking to break into the business, so I grabbed
my camera and headed to the convention center.

The show floor was pretty loud (thanks Singstar demo kiosk!), so it can
be a little tough to hear, but the folks that I spoke with had a lot of
interesting and informative things to say. A common theme in most of
their answers was that you've got to be willing to work really hard and
pay your dues, but judging by the plentiful "now hiring" signs and
numerous recruiters at the conference, if you're willing to put in the
work you can get your dream job.

*Thanks to Sunshine and the folks at Disney Interactive for their time.
I had to cut their segment because it was too hard to hear. Sorry!

GameSpot News has been attending some of the Game Developers Conference sessions because we want to. Others we've been attending because the names associated with them are so big we simply have to.

One such session was Wednesday afternoon's "MMOs, Past, Present, and Future," which featured an all-star panel of outspoken massively multiplayer online game designing celebrities. The murderer's row of MMO designers included World of Warcraft lead Rob Pardo, Mythic founder Mark Jacobs (Warhammer Online), Three Rings CEO Daniel James (Puzzle Pirates, the just-announced Whirled), BioWare Austin's Gordon Walton (The Sims Online), Red 5 founder Mark Kern (World of Warcraft), and Areae founder Raph Koster (Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online).

That lineup of brain power and success packed the conference room with people eager for whatever gems they could glean from the assembled intellectuals, but just as the MMO space has been dominated by World of Warcraft for years, so too has discussion of the market settled around Blizzard's runaway hit. And while these creators all offered their insights on the issues, they're largely the same insights and concerns they (and their peers) expressed repeatedly before, typically at events like last year's online-focused Austin Game Conference.

Several panelists mentioned the abundance of level-grinding and an expectation that new styles of MMO play would be introduced in the near future. That prompted Koster--for the first of several times during the session--to ask the audience members if they had heard of multiple obscure MMO games which apparently have larger fanbases than most big-name MMOs could ever dream of attracting.

Sony's unveiling of the PlayStation Home that morning garnered a few mentions from the panelists, but was used more as evidence that Second Life-style "gameplay" is going to become more common in the future than any sort of watershed moment in the MMO genre.

There was ample nostalgia as the names of seminal MUDs were dropped with reckless abandon, and a general acknowledgement that the MMO niche is awash in "dumb money" from outside investors looking to recreate the success of World of Warcraft. As for Blizzard's megahit, most of the panelists agreed it was suicide to try and tackle the game on its own turf (Jacobs scowled and shook his head at the notion, as one might expect from the man behind Warhammer Online). But they also agreed that just like Ultima Online and EverQuest before it, its time as the perceived unassailable juggernaut of the MMO industry would inevitably come to an end.

As one of the last panelists to give his predictions about the future of the MMO genre, James said his basic answers had been taken, so he'd go out on a bit of a limb. James believes that MMO games (probably of the mainstream and social networking sort) will eventually destroy television--which he called "an awesome thing for humanity"--with the downside being that displaced advertisers will then move into the space. He also believes that as yet unforeseen regulatory issues will rear their head due to differences in "what players want and what the government thinks is good for them."

"I find myself wondering if I should offshore my company now so that the US government can't shut it down in a couple of years when they decide that I'm gambling, or porn, or whatever the hell they think I am."

The canine is out of the bag: Peter Molyneux wants Fable 2 players to feel unconditionally loved, so he's giving them a virtual dog to call their own. In addition to simply loving the player, the quadruped companion will join in the fighting, act as a guide, ask to play fetch, and perform all manner of other doggy doings. Earlier this week, Molyneux took time out of his Game Developers Conference schedule to speak with GameSpot News about the decision to add a dog to the game and a handful of industry trends he has yet to participate in. Check out the video below to hear it from the man himself, then head over to GameSpot's preview for the newly revealed nitty gritty on Fable 2.

Among all the hardcore tech talk that permeates much of the sessions at GDC, there are talks that us mere mortals can appreciate; sessions that discuss the process of making games in terms that are a bit broader in scope than the nitty-gritty elements of coding. One such example was Cliffy B's session this morning: Designing Gears of War: Iteration Wins. In it, Mr. B made a strong case for the creative process as a process something that takes equal parts creative muscle and rigid discipline, along with a complete lack of ego in order to ensure that the final product is as strong as possible. Of course, Cliffy's resume speaks for itself so he must be on to something. Among the interesting little nuggets from this morning's session:

- When it was first envisioned, Gears of War went by the code name of "Unreal Warfare," and was initially going to deal with large-scale class-based battles ala Team Fortress.

- The Locusts in Gears were initially known as geists (from the German word for ghost), until the team ran into legal trouble with Nintendo's sci-fi shooter, Geist.

- As the game evolved, the team referred to the game internally as "Resident Killswitch" a reference to two of the games from which Gears draws its main source of inspiration--Resident Evil 4 and kill.switch. The intense narrative of Resident Evil 4 inspired the action, while kill.switch's innovative cover mechanic was the basis for the system used in Gears.

- Another idea borrowed from RE4: off-set characters on the screen. Cliffy made a special point of criticizing action games that put the hero in the center of the screen, saying this placement only serves to block the player's view of the action.

- The four most valuable tools in Cliffy's design arsenal: FRAPS (for capturing footage of games to show developers), Test Track Pro for tracking bugs, Outlook for communicating with the team via e-mail, and, perhaps most importantly, personally harassing his team until a feature or element fit his vision of the game.

- The low-down wobbly sprint used when the Gears are sprinting from point to point is known internally as the "roadie run"--a reference to the crouched motion rock band roadies use when running on stage to fix a broken amp or replace a microphone.

- Thanks to a number of factors--as the wobbly camera, the slightly lower and wider field of vision--the "roadie run" mechanic makes it look like you're really trucking along. It's an optical illusion of sorts, however--in actuality Marcus Fenix and his crew only move 1.2 times faster than their normal jogging pace.