I wish I’d gone to the Game Developer’s Conference last week. I didn’t even know they had an expo space open to the public until it was wrapping up. I could have brought back some quality anecdotes like these.

- Goichi Suda (Killer 7, No More Heroes) asks Emil Pagliarulo if Bethesda Softworks would set an installment of the postnuclear Fallout series in Japan. Pagliarulo replies, “Well, what can we destroy in Japan?” to which Suda can only say “Wow…” after an awkward silence.

- Writer and game critic Heather Chaplin went off on the whole video game industry at a panel.

“It’s not that the medium is in its adolescence, it’s that you’re a bunch of ****ing adolescents,” she said. “It’s even worse because you’re technically supposed to be adults.” Chaplin traced the paucity of more mature content in games to four basic ideas that frighten men the most: responsibility, introspection, intimacy, and intellectual discovery. She described game developers in terms of neoteny, an idea from developmental biology that describes adults of a species who have juvenile traits.

That’s crossing the line, Heather. It’s one thing to call everyone in the industry a giant manbaby, but you leave the axolotls out of this.

- Speaking of awkward silences, Chris Kohler over at Wired asked Square-Enix folk about the PS3.

“The Last Remnant,” I said, “was originally announced to be Square Enix’s first multi-platform game. But the PlayStation 3 version hasn’t come out yet. Is it still happening?”

Silence.

No one wants to speak. Finally, someone ventures: “Well, the PC version came out this week.”

Me: “Yes, it did.”

More silence. Everyone’s kind of glancing around.

Takai: “Well, as for the PS3 version, I can’t say anything about that.”

Me: “Alright, then.”

- Adam Saltsman shed some light on the iPhone game market.

But from their experiences, these guys have gained a key insight: “I think quality is largely irrelevant,” said Saltsman, whose newest iPhone game is about popping zits. “I think the defining thing is how quickly you can describe your product to someone else.”

I have to admit, I kind of suspected.

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