The 40 Most Impressive Displays of Facial Hair at GDC 2013

You know what there is a lot of at GDC? Beards. We’re not talking five o’clock shadows, we’re talking elaborate facial topiaries that would be the envy of Viking warriors. Unwinnable is no stranger to facial hair – there are at least half a dozen mighty beards currently on staff – so we sent our intrepid photographer Daniel Imperiale into the wilds of the GDC 2013 show floor to track down the most exquisite examples of beard-growing that he could find (not to mention a couple handsome mustaches).

What he found brings to mind Stoic philosopher Epictetus. As illustrated in the following hypothetical conversation between himself and an unnamed authority figure in his Discourses, he took beards pretty seriously:

“Come now, Epictetus, shave your beard.”

“If I am a philosopher,” I answer, “I will not shave it off.”

“Then I will have you beheaded.”

“If it will do you any good, behead me.”

That’s commitment! Now, without further ado and in no particular order, bring on the beards!

Jason Bennett – Artist/Illustrator, Spiky Tiger

Phillippe Bergeron – Level Design Director, Ubisoft

James Longstreet – Senior Software Engineer, Iron Galaxy

Tony Albrecht – Director, OverByte

Shawn Alexander Allen – Founder, NuChallenger

Mike Bell – Co-Founder, Intelligent Artifacts

David Hormel – Sound Artist, Cheesy Bread Studios

Joe Monastiero – President, Ludei

Jussi Autio – Lecturer, Oulu Game Lab, Oulu University of Applied Sciences

Brian Pelletier – Creative Director, Games+Learning+Society

Sean Hughes – Game Designer, Ozone Games

Benji Interactive (Erik) – Benji Game Development

Michael Brough – Creator, Smestorp

Jay Friedman – Developer, Gree

Matthew “Cogwheel” Orlando – Programmer, TinyCo

Nick Suttner – Account Support Manager/Developer Relations, Sony

Brian Taylor – Amateur Detective, Consulting Cartographer, Freelance Librarian

Jeffery Verba – Designer, Independent

Josh Stefanski – Lead UI Engineer, EA Maxis

Peter Burns – Designer, Current Circus

Sam Machkovech – Writer, Unwinnable

Marc Luck – Desk Viking, QCF Design

Michael Jaffe – Console/MMO Resourcer, VonChurch

Lincoln Anderson – Gametester, Mousechief Inc.

Chris Iserman – Recent Grad in Game Design

Colin Northway – Lead Designer, Northway Games

Cory Rodgers – Animator, Dreamworks

Owen Harris – Game Designer, bitSmithGames

George Fagundes – Co-owner/Podcast Producer, Press Pause Radio

Michael Z – Amplify

Ilya Zarembksy – Student, NYU Game Center

Keith Nemitz – Game Designer, 7 Grand Steps

David Tyler – Systems Engineer, Cloudant

Brian Furgurson – 3-D Artist, Independent

Tosh Matsuda – Alien Game Artist, Knack.it Corp.

Pete Moss – Sim Developer, Unity

Michael Allar – Founder/Programmer, ForeCourse

Brian “Psycochild” Green – MMO Wizard, Storybricks.com

Derek Ledoux – Co-Founder, Dirty Rectangles

Gus Mastrapa – Writer, Unwinnable (At GDC in spirit)