Christopher Pavlovski GDC 2015

Post date: Mar 16, 2015 12:31:59 AM

This was my first year at GDC, I got the expo pass and as such I spent most of my time at the expo floor and the career center walking around and talking to people. I was going to visit Double Fine studios on Friday but that ended up falling through last minute.

DAY 01-

On the first day at GDC, I spent the majority of my time speaking to indie game devs. I met a whole bunch of them and by the end of the day I'm confident I spoke to 100% of the ones that had booths. Also that day I attended the awards ceremony during the night. After the awards I snuck over to the area where all the nominees were and met several of them. I had extended conversations with the creators of Monument Valley and also managed to speak to Tim Schafer and get my photo taken with him. Through all the advice I gathered from the(mostly) successful indie developers I have condensed it down to this:

1-Don't always listen to what everyone tells you. If you pursue free creative expression there will eventually be an audience for it no matter what

2-Don't follow the curve if that's not what you're into, because they never last and you'll just waste time doing things you don't want to do in the first place

3-Be as open as you can to new ways of doing things while remaining true to yourself

I showed my portfolio to many different types of people, and the general consensus was my heavily stylized work was my strongest, even by people who specialized in mostly realistic games. That being said, I did not speak to a single large company, that day or any day. I pointedly avoided doing so because not only is that not the career path I wish to take, but also some people were in lines for hours only to hear very little and I decided it was just all around a massive waste of my time.

DAY 02- 

My second day was a lot more relaxed. During this day I went about everything at a much slower pace and focused on seeing everything there was to see. I went to a lot of booths and played a lot of awesome games. There was an indie game showcase in another building that I went to and I got to play all of the games there as well as talk with many of the creators of the games themselves. I had a lot of fun and learned some interesting things about the development of the games themselves. While I was doing this, I stopped by for a presentation for a game called Grow Home which was made by a small team within Ubisoft. I got to play the game and asked the presenter a lot of questions of the development of the game, the willingness of Ubisoft to let them develop it and many, MANY questions about the artistic choices of the game. I asked so many of these questions because they continue to be an important part of my artistic sensibilities, that is low-poly and low-fidelity textures that are mostly, if not all, solid colors. Hearing the answers to these questions were very useful and helped me to think more positively about my future. Also on this day, I returned to an indie company and discussed the possibility of doing freelance work for them over the summer. Although nothing is certain, at the very least I made good friends with them and I am confident for the future.

DAY 03-

Day three was VERY relaxed and the majority of the time spent at GDC then was just casual browsing, chatting with people and relaxing at the Ringling booth. I went back to talk with a few people I met the days before and managed to hand out a few more business cards before being left with only five. I went to visit Double Fine afterwards but tragically I picked the worst day and through circumstance I was not able to tour. Luckily, my business cards were given to a cool dude who said he would forward them to Tim Schafer. He emailed me afterwards and explained the situation more but in the end I was not able to tour this time around. After that, I mostly just walked around Japantown, ate food and relaxed until the flight back the next morning.