The Game Developers Conference sees a lot of creativity and interesting ideas pass through the halls of the convention center it's hosted at. Production company iam8bit put together their own creative project that spawned some abstract and quirky game ideas.

Using oversized fridge magnets—you know, the ones with…

It's not only smaller, younger developers who have to worry about cloning. Idea theft is on the minds of the people at Epic Games, too. Even though they make big, burly games like Gears of War and Bulletstorm, the developer still sees themselves as an indie, said Epic CEO Tim Sweeney. People could try and do what…

Only one award-winning video game developer got violent when I played Tic-Tac-Toe with him last week.

Steph Thirion's games understand the power of touch. While most iOS games require tactile contact to play, so few translate what it means to touch in real life. Touching a thing or a person can connect you to it intimately. Think about touching ingredients when you cook or affectionate laying hands on a romantic…

I've never done hard drugs. But I've heard that they're supposed to make you feel invulnerable, ecstatic and connected to the universe. Y'know, the things video games aspire to but with none of the messy addiction. Mostly.

Markus Persson thinks of himself as more of a programmer than a game designer. "I don't spend a lot of time on mechanics," the creator of the hit sandbox/adventure hybrid says. " I play [Minecraft] more than I write it, because I want to make sure the things you can do in the game can be fun."

Games designer, author and all-round very smart man Raph Koster has written a rather interesting piece on his personal site laying down some framework for just when you can call something a video game (or a game in general) and when you can't.

The creative teams who've made the God of War games have done cruel things to the members of the Greco-Roman pantheon, with series hero Kratos wreaking jaw-dropping vengeance on Ares, Hermes and Hades. Each god Kratos came up against met a spectacularly bloody end but a talk at last week's Game Developers Conference…

Motion-capture technology's changed the way that today's movies, TV shows and video games look and move. Usually, sessions where special cameras and suits upload a person's movement to computers happens in sequestered studios, far from prying eyes. At GDC 2012, mo-cap happened right out in the open and it was a…

Christina Norman worked for BioWare on Mass Effect. She's with Riot Games now. But she must have felt pangs of sympathy when BioWare got raked by gamer complaints about day-one DLC in Mass Effect 3. Because she basically gave them a double-barreled middle finger in a rant at GDC.

Why are so many games just copies of past games? Who is responsible for this state of affairs? Does the industry need more variety to survive?

The Game Developers Conference is nearly done. And what have I learned?

This is from Dan Pinchbeck, writer of PC indie story/thing Dear Esther, while giving a presentation at GDC earlier today.

Epic Games' Cliff Bleszinski, speaking at a GDC panel earlier today, gives some practical advice to the fledgling developers of tomorrow.

When EA first showed off the new SimCity, it didn't show a snip of gameplay footage. It was all idealised, stylish stuff. Leaving many to wonder, hey, what does this game actually look like.

The original Fallout was a gamble that paid off big-time; it set in place a tone, gameplay philosophy and fiction that is still going strong today. Fallout games are best known for their evocative, funny, dark and violent post-apocalyptic world. But it could have been another kind of game entirely.

If you want to make trees in video games, you can grab a program called SpeedTree and get to growing, pruning and playing god. This is what game developers do, including apparently the makers of Batman: Arkham City, whose game had trees I forgot about.

Clothes often look horrible in video games. People look like they have their suits and dresses painted on their bodies. Or their capes clip right through their arms.

By Wednesday, the Game Developers Conference is really happening. It ramps up slowly every year. You get your mobile games panels and your social gaming talks on Monday and Tuesday. Indie developers dream and inspire for crowds of their peers.

For as long as there've been video games, there've been attempts to classify the various types of people who play them. It's a bit of a parlor game that reveals bits of human behavior. What do you call the person who tries to parse a game's inner workings? Legendary designer Sid Meier's coined his own categories and…