The annual Game Developers Conference is the most important gathering for the video game industry, and attempts by corporations to turn the GDC into a promotional campaign for products should be resisted, because the GDC is not about video games, it’s about making video games.

Here’s a sampling of what was offered this year: a formal lecture by programmers on the software solution they implemented in creating Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and a presentation of motion-capture techniques in creating the virtual Beowulf; a review of music in the video games Killer7, God Hand, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, and roundtable gatherings and discussions about topics ranging from artificial intelligence to expanding the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgenedered (LGBT) development community and preserving games for history; seminars sponsored by companies like AMD, Intel, Havok and Autodesk, which function as tutorials for game developers.

What amazes me is the careful thought that goes into making video games, no matter how blood-spattered they may be. I bet you didn’t know that the upcoming Far Cry 2 was inspired and informed by Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Hammett’s Red Harvest. If critics of video gaming took the time to attend GDC, they might not be so knee-jerk in their treatment of this medium of the future. The people who make video games are, to a person, deeply intelligent, profoundly committed and extraordinarily passionate about what they do.

Why is the GDC important? Because it’s the place where Vancouver’s Eric Holmes can admit that Prototype, the new open-world game he is creating, is for players who, rather than saving the school bus teetering on the edge of the bridge, are more interested in pushing it off.

Because it’s the place where Clint Hocking can, in one day, talk about reconciling sensual and rational immersion to make video games “be to film what film today is to radio,” and on the following day quote a programmer — “Dude, it’s just code, we can do anything” — as a way of demonstrating that video game developers aren’t limted by their creativity, but by their courage to create games that have meaning. “The mechanics of trust are not harder to code than the mechanics of rope,” said Hocking.

Because it’s the place where Ken Levine, the writer and designer behind BioShock, can admit that he “pissed off some people on this project.” His story writing, he explained, was submitted late in the development process. Levine justified this, though, by insisting that a writer needs to be open to the game telling him what the story is, and that story elements should also be malleable until the end of the process.

Because it’s the place where Jane McGonigal can implore designers to make the real world as good as they make virtual worlds. Psychologists, she said, have determined that happiness is based on four things: Having satisfying work to do, the experience of being good at something, spending time with people we like and the chance to be part of something bigger than ourselves. Games do these things better than anything else, said McGonigal. “If you are a game designer, you are in the happiness business. Games are the ultimate happiness engine.”

Because it’s the place where Sims creator Will Wright can talk for 40 minutes on “worlds” — his word for entertainment franchises like Star Wars, James Bond and Lord of the Rings — without even mentioning his new game, Spore. With a break in the middle of his presentation for the “Russian space minute,” in which he told the true story of a failed Soviet rocket launch, Wright concluded that the best stories can be deconstructed, because that leads to play, which, when generative, results in myriad stories being told.

Because it’s the place where Peter Molyneux, in talking about his new game Fable 2, can suggest that when people play video games they should feel good, and can offer that only five per cent of the players of the first Fable — in which players suffered consequences for their actions — “had the stomach to be evil.”

Because it’s the place where a Kim Swift and Erik Wolpaw, the team lead and writer, respectively, for Portal, named game of the year at the GDC Awards, can explain that having to cope with constraints — such as limited time and resources — was a big reason their game came out the way it did. “Embrace your constraints as fuel for creativity,” offered Wolpaw.

Because it’s a place where indie developer Jonathan Mak’s eight-minute presentation about game design can consist of nothing more than getting 750 game developers to stand up and bat balloons around the room to a pop guitar soundtrack.

That’s why the GDC matters.