After touching down in San Francisco this morning, a strange man in a top hat directed me to my destination, adding the following: "You're one of the gamers, right?"

Not quite. The annual Game Developers Conference has its games fans, sure, but this is a closed-door affair meant for the people who design, distribute, and market video games. Seattle-area big'uns like Nintendo and Microsoft made the trip and have made their presence known. But they aren't here to show off new Halos or Marios. They're here to woo.

The little fry is king at GDC, and most of the panels, talks, and chatter are revolving around the worlds of iPhone, Xbox Live, and online-only games. The common theme: boxless (online) games.

Microsoft is set to make a gaming splash with its Windows Phone 7 Series. Today, they formally announced that the basic tool set to make Xbox Live games, called XNA, has been updated to make Xbox Live games work on Windows phones. That means the phones may launch this fall complete with some of the best Xbox Live games in the world. That'd be a feather in Microsoft's cap.

They'll need it, because it's iPhone land here. One developer roundtable, billed as a discussion about the whole phone apps, quickly turned iPhone-only. A developer from Ghana walked up to the microphone, telling his two-man company's story and then getting to the point of his international trip to the GDC: "Apple frustrates you to get anything on their store. I don't understand the store." Another developer leaned over to me and whispered, "None of us understand it, either!"

The rest of the panel reflected this confusion, as the entire room erupted with their marketing strategies: "freemium" apps that start free, then unfold with paid content; pay-as-you-play apps, which have a $1 entry point for, say, 10 puzzles, then $1 for each additional series of 10; time-limited demos whose limits are lifted by payment ("but Apple doesn't allow time-limited apps!" a Taiwanese man complained while wearing a colorful, paper crown); and "app longevity," a strategy for keeping a $1 app by making small, frequent updates that keep users coming back and recommending the app to friends.

What about Google's rival phone platform, Android? The developers weren't talking about it—probably because they were all lined up to pick up their—holy crap—free Droid or Nexus One phone. Hundreds of phones were boxed behind a counter, and hundreds of game makers stood in line (see photo below) to claim their free treat. The line is still going, hours into the day.



The devs who weren't busy waiting in line had plenty to say about their forthcoming projects. Notably, a Sony Music representative, Mark Kozlov, spilled the beans about a forthcoming, unannounced Michael Jackson video game: "We were trying to get a re-release of the old Moonwalker game out at the same time as the This Is It DVD, but we couldn't work a deal out with [original game maker] Sega in time. [MJ's] estate is working on [releasing the new game]. You'll have to wait and see." Kozlov had no other details, adding, "It's super secret." Umm...

I'm here for the next two days, where I'll be on hand for Microsoft-hosted panels, along with a special keynote presentation by Nintendo's Yoshio Sakamoto (famous for Metroid, among other hits), and an indie games award ceremony loaded with Seattle-area nominees.