There’s more going on here than just good game design. The polite and supportive questions from the audience, more than anything else during the week, reminded me about the real community of people behind these games. This is, after all, the game developers conference. Many of those who attend every year have worked on games of their own, and when a speaker talks about something going horribly wrong, folks commiserate – they’ve been there themselves. That’s an experience that’s hard to get at bigger, flashier game conferences.