GDC REPORT 2019- Brie Gibson

Post date: Apr 06, 2019 2:21:1 AM

GDC REPORT 2019- BRIE GIBSON

Less spaces for Blockchain, more diverse voices

This year compared to last year I noticed there were a lot more spaces for diverse, minority, and women devs. The year before I distinctly complained about the sheer number of tech companies compared to studios on the expo floor, this year I found it to be less of a problem. There were also more talks I was interested in this year than the year before from a lot more diverse voices. 

There were a number of diversity mixers from women in game dev, to lgbtqia, to even more. These diversity mixers allow spaces for voices to be heard and for these devs to be more visible to recruiters where they may have otherwise gotten overshadowed. This allowed for easier connections with people as well. It was so much easier to talk to someone when I knew I could relate to them more since despite GDC being a game developer convention not everyone’s a game developer. I ran into journalists, head of school departments, a pilot, and more, so finding a common ground is a bit of relief socially. 

There were a lot more diverse talks this year. My favorite in particular was a talk about fashion in games. The talk was eloquently put and made several great points, but it was a talk I can’t say I’ve heard before coming from GDC. GDC normally doesn’t have a lot of traditionally feminine voices being heard, so I’m thrilled Victoria Tran nailed this talk. 

Due to all of these things I’ve seen, it really makes GDC feel more like a space I belong in than the previous years. It also makes me want to get more involved, join more organizations and mixers. Perhaps even write a talk one day. I want to be more of a part of that game dev community and help grow it.

Making meaningful connections and talking to Recruiters when trying to get a job

There’s a lot of networking advice out there, but a lot of it is general advice that isn’t applicable to everyone. This is advice for if you’re like me, shy, anxious, and new to the world of professional game development. My first GDC I admittedly didn’t network well at all, I read a lot of advice but I didn’t find a lot of it helpful for my particular situation, coming back this year I was able to make a lot of improvements to my networking skills, this is how. 

The part that I struggled with in particular was starting conversations in general. I found that small compliments are a good, neutral way to start talking to someone. Another way is if you can see someone’s name tag, ask them about what company they work for, if they enjoy it, what it’s like to live there?

Talking to other industry professionals is one thing, getting a recruiter to say yes to you is a completely different thing. To start the conversation with a recruiter I tended to lead with, “What does [Insert Company] look for in it’s [Insert role name]?” or “What I found from my experience at GDC was that because you are a student, they often automatically do not want to talk to you. A technique for getting around this is to get the recruiter to look at your art. It doesn’t matter when in the conversation, but once they know you have the skills, they are more likely to take you seriously and talk about real opportunities with you. Skill level reflects a certain level of experience, than actually having the experience doesn’t matter. But you have to get the recruiter to look at your art first. If you aren’t bold enough to show them your portfolio right away, a good segway is keeping your current best piece of work on your business cards, hand them your card with the art facing them and they’ll be forced to look at it. It’s a smooth segway that can open up opportunities easy. Multiple times I had recruiters take me more seriously and urge me to email them after GDC to communicate more later by using this technique. With recruiters it's less about what you say and what you show instead.

Make too many business cards, it’s far better to have too many than too little. There’s a lot of places to leave them be it drop boxes, other people, job boards, etc. Leaving them and having plenty will only be an advantage. Even if you have to run down to office depot, print some cards. A lot of people didn’t have cards, and as a post-observation they seemed to get fewer opportunities from it. 

MORE ART

I’ve always advocated that gdc needs to have more artist spaces. A lot of spaces are taken up by tech, which is fine but there needs to be more art spaces. Now it’s slowly happening. GDC has started advocating for more artistic oriented spaces, now it’s currently a lot of 2D artist spaces, but this opens the door for more 3D art spaces (that aren’t locked behind a price range).

More art spaces help artists network more, a casuals place where people can interact easier. If there was a space just to showcase art at GDC it would be the ideal for me, just a space to look at and interact with different types of art and artists. GDC focuses a lot on the whole and demoing games, but what about demos of art programs and specs? I think this could be easily integrated with a couple of additions to GDC and the spaces could easily be sponsored by brands and programs.