Brie Gibson GDC 2018

Post date: Apr 06, 2018 7:14:19 PM

     Attending GDC was a miraculous opportunity that provided serval insights into the industry for me. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to attend.

One of my first insights gained was that their are significantly less artists in the industry that I had previously imagined. I knew for instance that their would probably be more programmers than artists, but I was surprised by the degree in which this was true. For the first day, I struggled to meet or connect with any artists. Repeatedly I just happened to connect with programmers, game designers, producers, etc. Of Course I valued each and every connection I made, be it with an artist or not, but it made me realize just how small and tight knit the artistic community of the game industry is. Being able to physically see how much rarer my role was at GDC, made me value myself and my fellow artists more. Seeing the high saturation of art on Artstation makes the competition seem fierce, but in reality there’s not a lot of people who can do what we can do, and for that we should be proud.

    One of the second things I quickly came to realize was, that networking/ receiving portfolio reviews is not entirely what I imagined. There are far less companies offering portfolio reviews at GDC than advertised, there are also actually few game studios. Studios seem to send employees as guests of the expo and not to run/ work a booth. Most of the booths were tech companies, from bitcoins to rigging programs, so of course they wouldn’t offer portfolio reviews. I was also surprised to find out most networking doesn’t occur on the expo floor. Most networking occurs when you are doing most literally anything else. Most people on the expo floor are trying to sell a product/ experience/ or get exposure. I wanted to meet interesting people, and while the expo floor is a cool place, it’s not really the place to do that. The place to meet and talk to people are round-table groups, meet-ups, and get togethers. There were various meet ups held throughout the day from ice-cream to at restaurants, most of them organized by developers and not companies.

    My third and final observation is, the game industry isn’t as serious as you may think it’d be. I had an interview for an internship/ summer position. The interviewer quickly had to reschedule and I ended up having an unconventional interview. Basically as he waited in line for a panel he wanted to see, he interviewed me. This resulted in me having a meet-up/ interview with the developer for over an hour. If I had been told this could/ would happen in the game industry I wouldn’t necessarily believe you beforehand. But after experiencing the wacky turn of events I can personally attest, being a part of the game industry is less about professional appearance and more about your own work and your own personality. On several occasions people talked to me because of my unorthodox appearance, leading to more network opportunities. Being yourself makes your more visible and memorable than trying to keep a false narrative of yourself.

    Overall GDC was a memorable experience I won’t forget, and I learned a lot of lessons and gained a lot of experience that I think will be valuable to my career in the future.