GDC: Day 1

Hey,

Since I only purchased an Expo pass I could not attend the majority of the sessions at GDC. They did allow us to attend 1 session each in each discipline and one of them was a session on using Microsoft Project. I have very little experience with Microsoft Project but I wanted to go to the session anyways to at least get a small introduction to it. The session was very informative and well put together. The speaker clearly knew what he was talking about and had come up with proven techniques that helped make using Microsoft Project easier and more efficient. At the session I met an engineer who works at a small development house that makes games for the iPhone. He got his start in the industry right after he graduated college and has been making games ever since. He talked about how he really likes working at a small developer because he gets to fill many different roles since they have such a small staff.

The next session I attended was about running a development house with as little money as possible. The session was proposed/written over 6 months ago and acknowledged that fact that many things have changed since then. They explained how to keep costs low and that growing your company might not always be the safest route to take. They also emphasized seeing the code of a game they might work on before taking a new contract. During this session I only met some students who were exhausted after having driven all night to make it to the conference.

In between the sessions I went to the career pavilion to start getting acclimated and look to see which companies were there. I spent most of the day observing but I did talk to several graduate schools who had booths. I'm still not sure whether graduate school is the right choice for me but I looked anyways. Finding a graduate school that teaches video games and has a production track is very rare and in the end I only found 2 that had them. The companies I did talk to were not taking resumes so I felt that it didn't matter if I talked to them then or the next day when I had my resumes. I was not really good at starting up a conversation when I went up and would basically just ask about the job then move on to the next booth. I need to practice and come up with some questions that I can ask just to get a conversation started.

After being in the career pavilion for a few hours I went over to the expo/booth crawl. This is where all the game engines/new technology/anyone who wants a booth go to show off their products/give presentationts/answer questions. The highlights for me were this giant touch screen that had floating windows on it. You could throw them across the screen or resize them similar to an iPhone. It was just really cool to play with but had no real purpose. The other interesting thing was when I was walking around I saw a game I had played before on addictinggames.com called Castle Defender. I stood and watched the preview on the tv for a few minutes before being asked if I needed anything. I responded that I simply recognized the game and before I knew it I was talking to the developers. I was so in shock that I was talking to the developers that I completely failed to talk about myself and only asked a few questions about the game and moved on. I wish I had talked to the developers more and at the very least asked a few questions about breaking in.

After the expo were the Game Developer Choice awards. My friend was going out for his birthday with his girlfriend so I was alone for the night again. I found a group of what looked like students and sat down and started up a conversation with them. They ended up going to being in a video game program in Minnesota and were interesting to talk to. They had a very different view of college and seemed rather limited because of their very specific majors. They are probably more knowledgeable in the technical areas of game creation but they had no knowledge of anything else. I think you want a mix of both specific knowledge and general knowledge in order to be able to succeed in anything besides an entry level position. It'll be interesting to see the dispersion of video game majors and other majors once I get my first job in the industry.

The award ceremonies were very entertaining and exciting to be at. It was a cool experience to actually be there when they announced the winners rather than sitting at home reading gamasutra the next day. I'm not sure if I would necessarilly go again unless I had something in the running or someone I knew did. It was a good experience though and am happy I went.

Cyaz