The Game Developer Conference might be all about the "new and the maybe," but, this year, there's was least one instance where it was about the "new after being only mostly dead."

Remember N-Gage? After the relatively quick rise and fall of the N-Gage and its follow-up device the QD, Nokia went a tad dark on the gaming front, but are finally coming back in force.

Dr. Mark Ollila, Head of Nokia Games Publishing, nut-shelled what Nokia has been up to: No longer a per-se device, "N-Gage" is now a mobile game publishing/development solution, a software platform spanning many devices (most notably the ever-coveted N-series of Nokia phones) that allows gamers to easily discover new games, try them before purchasing, build a community of friends, engage in multiplayer, and even rack up N-Gage points (analogous to a console gamer's Achievement Points).

Games can be acquired via the internet, direct access via mobile phone, or through wireless LAN. Nine publishers -- including heavyweights like Electronic Arts, THQ and Gameloft -- have announced support for N-Gage as of today, and Nokia Games Publishing itself has announced 11 titles.

Meanwhile, Scott Foe, producer of one of the first massively-multiplayer mobile games, Pocket Kingdom, is the driving force behind the ambitious Project White Rock: "It's cross-platform, it's multi-platform, it's N-Gage, it's PC, it's the amazing RedLynx [creators of the lauded High Seize, a sort of piratical Advance Wars for the original N-Gage QD]; the kimono is opening a little bit today. We do it all for the love of gaming."

If you doubt the gamer's cred or sincerity, here's a little self-check, perhaps a humbling one: Test your own for-the-love-of-gaming quotient at www.fortheloveofgaming.com. Don't blame me if you can't get the music out of your head.


Elsewhere, when some anonymous talking head calls the current era a "golden age of gaming," it's easy to dismiss. When it comes from the mouth of Sid Meier, it might be cause to take heart, and when he talks about the game he's "always wanted to make," you've got an eye- and ear-opener on your hands.

While his hour-long Serious Games session was mostly an overview of his game-design career and glimpse at the kinds of games he likes to play when not making new ones -- he enjoyed Mercenaries, and "some of the car games" like Gran Tourismo, it turns out -- a sizeable chunk of the audience was really waiting for any scrap of info on the forthcoming Civilization Revolution (the premiere of the Civilization franchise on the PS3 and XBox 360 consoles). "We started with sort of a blank slate with this one," Meier finally said. "I was asking myself, 'what are all the things I wish I had done with Civilization, the things I couldn't get right, or didn't know how to do?' It's kind of a designer's dream to repair the past, to go back in time with the intelligence of your age and the energy of your youth, and put those things together."

The new iteration of "Civ" will feature downloadable content and Achievements, 16 civilizations with their corresponding leaders ("We really want to put players in the 'King spot.' You're making the big decisions, everyone is hanging on your every word."), robustly-featured online play (ranked games, leaderboards, voice and vision chat) and a streamlining of the mechanics overall -- in other words, drawing a new line between management and micro-management. Map areas are larger, he says, and promises an exciting "rush to the finish" as the different civilizations each clamber toward their various divergent victory conditions (technological, economic, domination, etc.)

Meier paints a picture of a game-world wherein each player/nation is constantly looking over his shoulder, anxious of and alert to what the other guys are up to. Wait, aren't we already playing this game?