GDC 2014 - Devan Browne

Post date: Mar 27, 2014 3:38:25 AM

This was my first year attending GDC, and since I didn't have access to any of the talks, my time there was divided between wandering the expo floor, and sitting in lines at the career center. These are my insights from that experience, such as they are.

1. The Expo Floor isn't for us.

I had a lot of fun on the expo floor, and saw a lot of really cool things, but looking around at all of the huge displays, jostling for attention, it's hard for one to avoid the sense that none of it is really for one's own sake. After all, all these major technology companies, from Quixel to Mixamo to Allegorithmic, aren't interested in selling a single product to a student; they're vying for the attention of the development companies: people who will purchase the big package deal license for their studio or team. Of course this isn't always the case. Epic and Oculus VR were clearly just trying to drum up as much publicity as they could, and were therefore eager to show off their stuff to anybody and everybody (which makes sense, given that UE4 has a super-accessible license deal, and the Oculus isn't released yet). Nevertheless, the glamour of the expo floor wore off faster than I had anticipated.

2. Unity is everywhere.

Perhaps this was merely a byproduct of the notable lack of a number of big name companies from the show floor. I'm told that there were generally fewer major studios present this year than there had been in previous years. Whether this is the start of some sort of long-term trend remains to be seen. Regardless, the ubiquity of the Unity engine is becoming harder to ignore.

3.

Without condemning any of the dogma of the Ringling Game major, I must say I was surprised at the variety of the types of companies around the career center, and the kind of work they were looking for. The notion that an artist who can create "visually sophisticated" work can easily apply that skill set to working for mobile games, or games under a heavier technological constraint, does not appear to be one shared by the rest of the world. And from what I saw on the floor, a person could to very well for themselves focusing their portfolio on lower fidelity work (and I even happened to see a few such portfolios). All this is not to say that I no longer have any interest in working for next-gen systems, just that I think it's important to be aware of the ways in which the views of the school do not necessarily reflect the realities of the industry.