My First GDC
March 19th, 2010
I returned home from the Game Developers Conference (GDC) nearly a week ago, but I feel like it has taken me this long to be able to recover from the late nights, the jetlag, the cold I caught, and put things into perspective. I thought I’d share a summary of my experience there, for those who are thinking of maybe going next year.
Executive Summary: SO AWESOME!!!
GDC is held every year in San Francisco. I’ve been in the games industry for over 6 years now, but this was my first time at the conference, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I managed to get an All Access Pass to the conference, so I was there for the summits and tutorials, as well as the main conference.
Let me back up a little and talk about my reasoning for going, as that will help you understand why the conference was so valuable to me. At the beginning of the year I started thinking about what conferences I wanted to attend. 360iDev was a must-attend for me, so I booked that first. However, I was torn between attending WWDC (Apple’s big annual conference) or GDC. I attended WWDC last year and it was great. But this year I felt like what I really needed was general game design inspiration, and less Apple-specific technical inspiration. With that in mind, I chose GDC. My goal for the conference was to focus mainly on game design sessions and take in a few technical and business sessions.
So, I arrived in San Francisco Monday, March 8th, the day before the Summits started. I managed to meet up with a bunch of iPhone devs I know from Toronto, other conferences, or Twitter. We had a few beers and tried to adjust to west coast time. It was a good way to ease myself into the week.
Tuesday and Wednesday were the Summit & Tutorial days at GDC. There were two summits I was interested in: the iPhone Summit, and the Independent Games Summit (IGS). I think I spent about 60% of my time at the IGS and about 40% at the iPhone Summit. I saw some great technical iPhone talks by Noel Llopis from SnappyTouch and Phil Hassey from Galcon. I also saw some great IGS talks that ranged in topic from managing an independent game studio’s creative process, to how to better design indie games. I saw a session by Ron Carmel from 2D Boy, several awesome sessions by the people at thatgamecompany (Flower is one of my favourite games), and a terrific session by Randy Smith from Tiger Style (among so many others!). By the end of the Summits, my head was already spinning with inspiration. The IGS design talks in particular were extremely motivating for me. Getting a chance to meet and hear amazing indie game designers/developers talk about their processes was fantastic. It started me thinking about a lot of things as they relate to my own processes. More on that later…
A tiny segment of the massive GDC Expo
The IGF Awards
Thursday through Saturday were the main conference, expo, and Independent Games Festival Awards. I sat in session after amazing session listening to industry leaders in game design, technical development, and business talk about their processes. I saw Peter Molyneux talk, Sid Meier talk, and even Will Wright talk. I saw a moving and inspirational talk by Brenda Brathwaite on her exploration into board games with serious themes. I saw a head-ache inducing (in a good way!) talk on PixelJunk Shooter’s real-time fluid dynamics system that made me really miss doing PS3 SPU programming. I saw an in-depth and honest look a the successes and problems encountered by Naughty Dog’s attempts to create an active cinematic experience for Uncharted 2. I was blown away by the quality of the content, and I was left reeling by how the talks started forcing me to think about the direction I want to take with my own games.
There were huge crowds in the halls between sessions!
But of course, the sessions are only part of GDC. The other part comes from meetings and parties. I was able to set up a few meetings with iPhone press to show them my new game. That was really great to be able to demo the game in person. I think it was extremely valuable. Then each night there were countless parties happening. Each party was a great chance to meet people in person who I’ve only communicated with on twitter or via email. It was a chance to discuss iPhone development with other people going through the same thing as me. It was a chance to discuss game design in general with other game designers and developers. It was a chance to have fun with people who share in the same daily challenges that I do.
Will Wright giving his presentation!
For me, I got out of GDC exactly what I wanted: design inspiration, new friends, new business connections and a wealth of knowledge. But perhaps most importantly, GDC helped me to put me back on track with where I want to take my games. When I decided to go indie in 2008, it was because I wanted to make the games that I was compelled to make. What I’ve noticed is that I’ve been making more and more design decisions lately based on what I think will sell well. This isn’t how I want to make games. I want to make the games that I have to make, not that I think I should make because I think it might make some money, even though the idea doesn’t excite me. Granted, I would love to be able to make the games that I feel compelled to make and have them also become a financial success. And obviously I can’t ignore the fact that I’m running a business. But GDC helped to remind me of what I want my priorities to be, and that, to me, is the most important part of having gone.
Owen
Spot on! I feel like I almost don’t have to do a write up myself. I agree on every single point, but in particular your last paragraph.
GDC has definitely inspired me to work on the projects I want to work on. It’s a direction I had already been going, but now I feel even stronger about it. It really was an amazing conference!
Indeed. GDC rocks! It was great to finally meet you in person too Owen, despite having to go several thousand miles away from home to do it.
@Noel – I feel like the last paragraph deserves its own blog post.
Maybe I’ll expand on it at some point.
@Mike – Yes, it was great to finally meet you too! We really should try to get some of the SW Ontario indie devs together at some point.
Very great first impression!
I am looking forward myself to go to my first GDC probably next year, if everything goes well (had preliminary discussion with my wife and she was open to discuss about it so its a good start
).
As for the last paragraph in your blog I am definitely interested to hear your view on this topic. As we we also the same big long discussion when we form @Quebarium in early 2007. We wanted to do the game we like/enjoy not necessarily the one that will bring $. Since all of us already have a regular working day job where we do thing that is not always fun, we felt more compel that everything we should do should thing we want to make. But something we do have conflict on that topic, since we would also like one day to be able to do this full time (which means it need to bring enough $ to support us) and we already made some investment in hardware/software, registration, developer program fees, etc… We will need to find the right balance at some point and I sincerely hope you can too and continue to work for what you have a passion for!
Great summary Owen!! This was our first GDC too and we absolutely LOVED it!
Glad you’re back on your feet!! 
[...] for a post-GDC blog entry. Last year was my first time attending the Game Developers Conference and I wrote up a post about how much I enjoyed it. This year was even more exiting for me, and I had intended to come home and write up a post about [...]