GDC Experience

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Category: Games

Published on Saturday, 10 March 2012 02:45

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As the last day of GDC 2012 comes to an end, I reflect on my experiences.  This was my first GDC (of many, I expect), and I'm happy with how it went.  I met a lot of cool people, both in the expo and career pavilion and at the parties in the evenings.  In addition, I got a taste of the industry as a whole.  As a new graduate, the experience and the contacts will be invaluable.

As I held only the lowly expo pass, Monday and Tuesday were pretty uneventful for me.  I spent these days completing the week's homework assignments (I need to finish that school thing) and spending time with my friends.

Wednesday the career pavilion, trying to get a feel for who was looking for new grad  or entry level developers.  In addition, I was looking for companies that I want to shoot for a few years down the road.  One such is Insomniac Games, which created the Ratchet and Clank games, my favorite series of all time.  They are looking for developers with a game and a few years under their belt, but I got the impression that they are a reasonable 3 - 5 year goal.

Thursday I spent speaking to and giving resumes and business cards out.  Some companies really liked my Unity experience, others Android, others my interest in being a tools programmer.  I feel good about most of the talks I had, and even got some nice feedback on my resume and website.  All in all, a good day for me.

Friday many of the sessions opened up to expo pass holders, and was more focused on new grads and entry level  folks.  The first talk was by Nathan Martz, project lead at Double Fine, titled Perfecting Pitchable Prototypes. It discussed the process and value of prototypes at Double Fine. They called the two week game jam called "Amnesia Fortnight"; essentially an end to end playable (yet throw-away) prototype development process. The second talk I attended was on breaking into the game development industry and included a pretty solid panel, including Travis George from Riot, Kim Swift from Value (Portal) and Airtight. I learned quite a lot here, and much of it was encouraging for me as an aspiring developer. To sum it up, I need to code daily (it should replace time I'd use for gaming previously). And, perhaps more importantly, I need to make another game. I have an idea I've been sitting on for a while, so I'm going to choose a development environment soon - currently favoring XNA - and go from there. I hope to write about the process as I go. I'd love to talk an artist into doing some work on this, so if you're looking for a portfolio piece feel free to let me know.