GDC 2016 experience- Megan Varde

Post date: Mar 22, 2016 12:54:4 AM

So this was my second year being at GDC with an Expo pass and I feel like I have considerably less business cards left over than last time plus I did a lot more things!

As soon as I got to the Expo on wednesday I went to the career center to get my portfolio reviewed. I met Brian Thompson from Big Fish Games and also got reviews from High Voltage and Imangi Studios. I talked to as many people as possible in the career center, GDC Play, and lines/crowds of people waiting for other stuff. I also watched a demo for a game creation software called  Click Team Fusion which allows you to create content with extremely simple game programming. The demo that was shown was a very crude brick breaking game but Five Nights at Freddy's was made using it so that was interesting. After the expo I went to the Game Developer's Choice Awards and the Ringling alum meetup. 

On thursday I went to the Intel areas and saw some really cool stuff. I got my face scanned with RealSense technology twice- once to get an .obj emailed to me and the other to get a glass cube that was laser etched with my face. I also got to try Tobii, which is a thing that tracks where your eyes are looking on a screen. So I played The Division with it and I could aim the gun roughly where my eyes were looking and navigate a map menu just by looking around. Back at the Ringling booth I talked to Ashley Liu from Mindwalk Studios who is looking for people to come to their studio in China to make stuff for AAA companies. I also talked to a guy who is located in Tampa and trying to pitch their game at GDC to get funding. He was trying to make connections with 3D artists to potentially hire if their game got funded but he kept telling me there was only a 15% chance of it being funded so that was a bummer. The best thing about thursday was hanging out with the people from Imangi studios with Tudy and Jose because they seemed really interested in our art and wanted us to meet all of them. Plus they were fun to be around. 

The rest of friday was dedicated to seeing every single booth that I could have missed, including the student games that were nominated in the awards show which were all very interesting and appealing to me. Throughout the day I ran into people that I had already met so I would say hi and talk to them some more, this included going back to the Imangi booth and getting a sweet shirt. I also stopped at the Substance booth to watch a little bit about the texturing process in Uncharted 4. 

The next day I was able to visit Glu Mobile via Dj Welch who is a concept artist there. Unfortunately there wasn't too much to see because it was saturday but I got to look around the studio and get free snacks. Dj gave some insight on working for a mobile studio such as possibly getting offered more money because you have more individual value versus being easily replaceable in a larger studio. However, working for a more well known place is extra good for your resume. 

~Fin~