I've slowly been catching up on transcripts of the speechs from last week's Game Developers Conference. There are some great speeches, like this rant from uber-designer Warren Spector on the state of the industry. That speech contains the quote everybody and their mom has been posting on the web:

"I never minded piracy. Anyone who minds about piracy is full of shit. Anyone who pirates your game wasn’t going to buy it anyway!"

Interesting stuff. My favorite quote from the GDC comes from Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, who gave an impassioned speech reaffirming his core love of playing and developing games.

"If you don’t mind, I will finish today with memories from one more franchise in my development career—Super Smash Bros. At the time it was being developed for Nintendo GameCube, I was already working full time for Nintendo, but my heart told me I was still a developer. So, as president, I assigned myself to HAL—to rejoin the team finishing the game.

Once again, I was living on the Japanese developer’s diet of chips, pizza and rice balls ... and working through the night. From their offices, it was possible to see Mount Fuji, which many say is most impressive if you’re willing to wake up and see it at dawn. But during this period, just as years before with our Kirby games, we at HAL would see the sun shining on the mountain before we ever went to bed! Many say the sight of first light on Mt. Fuji inspires them. But for me: I hope I never see it again!"

I think this is a quote that all of us computer programmers and other creative types can identify with, even if we're not lucky enough to work within sight of Mt. Fuji. :-)