Monday, April 1, 2013

GDC! (and possibly Bed Bugs!)

GDC has come and passed, and it was a pretty great experience. I'm not sure I did GDC the way it's supposed to be done, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

I purchased the Expo Pass, which was great for my budget but there were plenty of talks that I wish I could have attended. I'll keep my eye open on the GDC Vault this year (so I can stream some of those talks), but next year I plan on buying a better pass. Hopefully some of that saved money from this year carries over to next year (or I become independently wealthy, whichever). 

I was told before going that GDC was all about the parties, and schmoozing people so I can make contacts and get a job. Honestly that sounded incredibly terrible. So, at the mecca of game development I need to glad-hand a bunch of middle-manager nobodies at these parties that everyone goes to (when they can't get into the other, better parties) so I can get a job? No thanks. I would love to meet a bunch of great people working at great companies, where I can discuss the merits of their game design or game creation process and show off a little of my work. I just don't feel that these second-rate parties (see YetiZen incident, Gamer's Ball, etc.) are worth the effort. I'm not spending all of this money to party; I'm spending it to learn and meet people. I would rather talk to a group of great people at the conference, or lunch or whatever, and be well-rested than go out all night chasing this ghost of an idea that important people in the industry or going to the "Gamer's Ball". Turns out I was pretty vindicated in my assumptions. I only heard of one person making a contact at a party, and it was a University of Utah alum who happened to work for the company throwing the party. Everyone else who went hung out at parties for half the night hoping for someone important to come in so they could swarm them like vultures. Perhaps this is my independent, rebellious nature coming out, but I'm so happy I didn't waste my time at these events.

As a side note, how sexist was that YetiZen party? Good for Brenda Brathwaite and the others who left the IGDA after that. I can't believe that the IGDA thought it was okay to tell all the women at GDC that they're services were needed elsewhere, specifically the variety where they hang out in fur-bikinis and entertain men. As a man, I'm pretty upset they thought that such a cheap tactic would entice me to attend. It did the exact opposite for me. I may be even more upset that it worked so well on others. I heard the party was packed.

So what did I do with my time? I spoke to a ton of industry HR recruiters, who were all super cool. I spent a great deal of time traversing the career pavilion and talking to people. Specifically, ArenaNet, WB Games, Irrational, and Ubisoft stick out in my memory. Irrational was great and willing to take the time to look at my resume, even though they weren't necessarily hiring. I got a ton of good feedback on my resume from them, and while working for Irrational would be insane right out of school, I'm not fooling myself about it. WB Games was looking for possible interns and entry level applicants, and the HR woman there was extra nice, and took my resume.

ArenaNet was crazy. While I was waiting in line, I got to speak to Mike O'Brien, the president and co-founder of ArenaNet. So that was intense. I was really excited to tell him about my research into the concept of positive interdependence in cooperative learning and how I think that can be applied to game mechanics (and also how Guild Wars 2 does such a good job with a lot of the stuff already). I then asked if they had looked into academia for game mechanic ideas or was it just a reaction to the way MMO's and cooperative games tend to give players an antagonistic attitude towards their teammates. He mentioned it was mostly borne out of the latter, and they were just unhappy with the current methods of cooperative gameplay. I then got to talk to the Recruiting Lead, Thomas Abrams, and he was more than cool. He gave me some great tips on my resume, and told me to email him my resume, specifically, Monday or Tuesday. I'm not holding my breath, but working for ArenaNet would be an amazing opportunity.

Ubisoft was great as well. I met the awesome HR person Michelle Larson, who is a contact of a friend of mine who runs RPGFan.com. She was tremendously helpful with my resume and all together just a cool, friendly person with tons of smart advice.

I also spent a bunch of time talking with people from other schools. They were all really cool and doing really interesting things. A few of them took the time to check out the gameplay videos for Vinyl, and many were really impressed with the concept. One student from Columbia, an audio designer, was very interested in collaborating with us during the development of Vinyl.

The IGF pavilion took a lot of my time as well. That was crazy. Walking around and talking with people from blogs I've read or twitters I follow was intense. The first person I got to talk to was from the Fullbright Company, one Kate Craig. She was super awesome and friendly. We spoke about her experience with their current project, Gone Home, "The Steve Gaynor", and she even mentioned an interest in going to play our games at the U of Utah booth (which was right next to the IGF booth). I also got to thank Terry Cavanagh for making the amazing Super Hexagon. It was more than a little intense playing Super Hexagon in front of its creator. Halfway through my play I realized just that fact, and started to freak out just a little haha. But Terry was incredibly nice and polite as I stammered out a sentence that was roughly "thanks for making an awesome game with touch screen controls". I spotted a few other cool people in the crowd at IGF, like Anna Anthropy, Kellee Santiago, and Anita Sarkeesian, but I didn't get the chance to go thank them for their work. So, by the off-chance any of them actually read this, thanks! But seriously, congrats to Journey for winning like a million GDC awards. Well-deserved. That game is incredible. And Feminist Frequency is the only Kickstarter I've actually donated to.

I didn't do the swag thing. Sure, I picked up a few things because the GDC expo floor is like a swag minefield, but I didn't go out of my way to grab anything. I've been a little anti-materialism lately (or at least anti-crap-I-don't-need-nor-have-room-for), so that was probably the inspiration for not picking up stuff. Fake lightsabers and balls that rotate inwards as you throw them are cool and all, but I just don't need it.

I also spent some time eating in some awesome places. Thanks to iJason (Jason Thummel of Team Vinyl) for recommending the awesome Chinese place, and JJ of Team Vinyl for recommending the awesome Thai place. Pictures below!



Overall my experience was great. The hostel was kind of crappy (and perhaps the initiator of the bed bug outbreak alluded to in my title), but I didn't spend much time there. San Francisco was beautiful and fun to walk around in (even to the karaoke bar in the Tenderloin where a homeless man warned us to not go before he asked us for money). And the conference was a blast. I had a great time just checking out all of the cool things going on in the industry and talking to some great people. Hopefully next year is even better.

For this week: trying to get some work done on Vinyl with half of our engineers gone. Also other classwork, like modeling a weapon and finishing that research paper up. I will be busy. I think I'll be able to fit in that episode of Game of Thrones though. That show is awesome. In tribute:

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