Category: Postmortems

A summary of the notes I took while I was at GDC attending various seminars and round tables. Not very organized, but do enjoy.

For the full version, go to my post on the Ringling Game Design Club blog.

So, I went to the Game Developers Conference last week, and I had the time of my life. Yes, I did a little bit of fanboying, but I spent most of my time in sessions and seminars. I could never put a price on such a high concentration of knowledge over such a short period of time.

Some quick notes for next year:

• Wear. Walking. Shoes.
• Get swag early, most of the apparel sells out by Thursday, and the Stuff sells out even faster.
• Get to the Convention Center early, I missed some opportunities to network because I was walking into Moscone a half hour before the first session started.
• Wear. Walking. Shoes.
• Bring a power strip to the hotel. Normally, I bring one if I’m going to a new place and I know I’ll be making heavy use of electronics. I thought to myself “this seems like a relatively modern hotel, it should have enough power outlets for four people.” No, it did not.
• You can’t switch out of networking mode until you walk in your home door. I was on the shuttle to the airport, and met someone who went to the conference, including three people on my flight out of San Francisco.
• Thursday is Kilt Day at GDC. I will celebrate next year.

I had some great food while I was there, of course. Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, and Italian. Such a refreshing change from the wide variety of stuff I cook for myself.

I’ll have a more full report by Monday.

-Ozz