Independent 
filmmakers may have Sundance, but indie gamemakers head to San Francisco.
More than 20,000 are gathered at the city’s annual Game Developers Conference through March 29, looking to generate buzz — and hopefully land distribution — given it’s the only show where smaller titles made by teams of fewer than a dozen people can stand on even footing with deep-pocketed studios.
You’re 
driving along, minding your own business, when suddenly “Doo Wah Diddy” or “Call Me Maybe” blares out of the speakers, and the pesky chorus lodges itself in your head for the rest of the day.
You try passing it on to someone or replacing it with a different song, but it just doesn’t work. These so-called musical ‘earworms’ burrow into your brain and refuse to get out, running on a seemingly endless loop.
As 
foreign hackers probe the U.S. infrastructure grid in an effort to infiltrate and undermine the government, the Department of Homeland Security is looking for a few good gamers.
Well, technically, it’s looking for a few good hackers of its own — but it’s using games to find them.
When 
it comes to video game conventions, GDC — the Game Developer’s Conference, if you’d care to be formal about it — tends to live in the shadow of E3.
Unlike its flashier cousin, which is loaded with new console details and flagship game announcements, GDC is more about how those games are made. While it might not have the consumer pull of E3, however, GDC delivers an unvarnished look at the games business and often tells us where, exactly, we’re all headed.
Here are five topics we expect to dominate this year’s show, which runs from March 25 – March 29 in San Francisco.
Companies 
don’t innovate. People do.
But in today’s business world, the people behind the innovation and groundbreaking ideas and inventions can be overshadowed by their creations.
Through 
games like World of Warcraft, StarCraft II and Diablo III, Blizzard Entertainment built a real-world fortune. Now it’s about to see what happens when it gives a game away for free.
At the PAX East convention in Boston, the company unveiled Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, a free-to-play collectable card game set in the well-known Warcraft universe. And in very un-Blizzard-like fashion, you’re not going to have to wait a couple years to try it out. A beta of the game is due out this summer.
Last year
, Telltale Games gifted gamers with The Walking Dead, a deeply emotional episodic adventure game that offered a breath of fresh air for the video game industry, capturing “Game of the Year” honors from a host of publications – including us.
Unfortunately, a much different Walking Dead game shambled into stores this week, and the only air surrounding it is the rot of decay.
Every 
Thursday, I join the mid-day edition of America’s Radio News Network to discuss trends and news in the technology and video game space. This week, we looked at the best ways to watch the NCAA tournament at your office and a new television that has a truly horse-choking price tag.
Chris 
Morris examines six viable replacements for Riccitiello and handicaps the candidates
As the shock begins to wear off over John Riccitiello’s sudden departure from EA, investors, staffers and gamers are starting to look down the road.
JR’s reign at what was once the industry’s preeminent publisher was an uneven affair, with many well-publicized follies, but with plenty of victories as well. More importantly, he was a CEO who wasn’t afraid to gamble – and even if those bets didn’t always work out (like Brutal Legend and Mirror’s Edge), gamers appreciated the risk taken on new IP.
The 
television industry has never been one to warmly embrace change. Just ask the pioneers of the VCR and DVR business.
But as America becomes a country of second (and sometimes third) screens, broadcasters, cable and satellite companies are being forced to rethink how they interact with customers. With so much competition for people’s time and attention, good programming is no longer enough to turn heads.
Chris Morris: Journalist 