Nick Dahill does GDC 18

Post date: Mar 29, 2018 9:15:33 PM

Don’t run up to anyone with your portfolio out.

You look like your trying to assassinate the president or something when you pull the portfolio out before you’ve even introduced yourself, and people around will think “Jeez this kid is whack”. I learned that when you run up to someone with your portfolio out, you are making a conscious choice to treat that person as if they are a job/feedback kiosk as opposed to another human being. This I find to be very rude, and as Harry Gray put it “Sucks the air out of the room”. In my experience at GDC I did not show anyone my portfolio/website, I only really showed people 2-3 things If I showed them anything at all. I felt that my approach of trying to befriend the person I was talking to, asking them about themselves, then possibly showing them a piece based off their needs was a much more organic and smooth experience. Sure, I didn’t get my portfolio in 200 different peoples faces, but I felt like I was able to understand the people I talked to and what they needed so I could then present myself as a person who could help them or couldn’t at that time. Along with this subject comes the idea of presentation in the sense that, if you just show your portfolio you’re saying “This is what I got, use me like a tool, because that is all I am” but when I talked to someone, whether it be a jobless indie dev or a CEO, I wanted to show them that I was a person above all else, as opposed to just a tool. I wanted to show the people I talked to that I can do more than just 3D model or texture, I wanted to give them the impression that I am a person who knows what the fuck is going on, and that in the future I will be a straight baller. This is a controversial strat when thinking about job placement, but I think that putting yourself in a place of “Oh hey CEO man, you’re my equal, maybe one day we can work together” instead of “OH PLEASE HIRE ME I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOUR COMPANY DOES, BUT I AM SO DESPERATE I’LL DO LITERALLY ANYTHING” makes the person think “Damn, I wonder what that kid’s gonna do? I should keep an eye on him” instead of “add this freak to the list of 800,000 people I don’t care about”.

Present yourself.

The way you present yourself is a huge opportunity to try and stand out amongst the crowd at GDC. Your body is a blank canvas to show off what your all about. Are you a corporate goon? Wear the apparel your company gives you, so everyone knows that you’re part of a bigger entity and individuality isn’t a priority for you. Same goes for repping softwares and the like. I found that wearing something that means something to you, while also being a conversation starter was a real win/win. When meeting the people behind the company “Printful” I spoke to the head of the design team Ed and we talked about embroidery being incorporated into clothing. The next day, I wore my embroidered denim jacket, and guess what, my boy Ed wore his embroidered suit jacket. It was sick, we are now bonded for life. I thought it was a pretty bad look for double fine outfitting all their employees in embroidered jackets, because when I asked one of the dudes about the jackets he seemed like he had no idea what embroidery even was “Dude, your jacket is embroidered ya frickin’ goomba get with it GEEZ”. That makes the people lose respect for the indieness of Double Fine. Tsk Tsk.

Booths are everything.

Booths are another way of presenting one’s self, but it is on a company level as opposed to an individual level. The people who design these booths basically have the entire companies rep on the line. Obviously the company brings its own rep to the party, but the booth design dictates how people will interact with the company at that event. Let’s look at these booths.

Unreal: I have mixed feelings about Epic and Unreal, but I gained alot of respect for those goons through the way they designed their booth. They definitely know what they are doing. THey know that their audience is 40 year old children so they appealed directly to those sensibilities. Couches with games, free food, free beer, and a gotdamn mechanical bull. DAMN. I’m sure soo many people left that event with a good impression from Epic, without knowing what in the world they are up to as a company technically.

Amazon: Oh wow I really like Amazo- “Woah what the fug is this booth?” Okay so we got giant steel girders funneling the crowd into the booth that offers very few exits. Then once you get into the booth some people run up to you with an ipad and ask you to fill out a survey. That’s basically a lose/lose. Whoever designed the booth lost Amazon street cred and because the design of the booth was the way it was, Amazon’s product “Lumberyard” probably didn’t get a good name for itself, especially next to Unreals megabooth.

Ringling: The Ringling was fersure the best booth that a school had at the show and I definitely commend the people behind it’s design, but I know that if Ringling wants to come out as being THE school for video games they need to go harder. It’s fine to do what is expected and I feel like the Ringling booth does exactly what is expected to a respectable level, but the design of the booth lacks passion. It needs that injection of passion to boost it to the next level and show people that Ringling cares about design and how it presents itself. Maybe some cool lights that make you want to come into the space and explore more about ringling instead of a billboard that tells people “Just walk by, you don’t need to stop here”. Again, I don’t wanna gripe on the hometown heroes, but when I’m in charge our booth will be sexy.

There were lots of interesting booths for good or for worse, and I think their design influenced how the entire conference flowed. I learned at this event that this is an area of design I would like to learn more about

Talking to underlings can be risky.

It’s whacky but super clear how Passion dissipates as you move down the ladder at a booth. This wasn’t a huge part of my GDC experience, but applied more to life I suppose. The instance that sparked this idea was at the booth for a game called “Belly Beasts”. It was a really cool AR game that encouraged children to eat healthy food by rewarding them with little monsters at the end of their meals. Me being a huge fan of any kind of game involving monsters I was very interested. I had the pleasure of talking to the CEO of the company and he really seemed genuinely passionate about the project. His smile and demeanor gave me the impression that he has been very hands on with the project and that it has come a long way and will hopefully be very successful. I was so blown away by the interaction I took my boss and bud Eddy Ortega over to their booth thinking that his experience in the AR field would make him particularly interested in the project. Unfortunately, when we got to the booth the CEO had left and we only had some of this man’s underlings to get the rundown from. So where I got a full one on one breakdown of the game and demo from the CEO, this other dude said something along the lines of “This is an AR game where we reward kids for eating healthy” and that was essentially it. I know it’s hard to grasp this in text form, but the difference in energy between this underling and the CEO was huge for me. This new dude mumbled his way through some questions about the AR development with Eddy and gave us his card and sent us away. I took note to be very careful as to who I would let represent my brand in the future as people who do not care as much as you do will do alot of damage to your rep if you allow them to. This can also help a youngin who is unsure of what a company is like, I learned that if you really want to know what it’s all about, you talk to the guy in charge, not his underlings. This is obviously not the case all the time, but I noticed this at a few booths.

Ya gotta give em somethin’

My time at GDC really highlighted the importance of leaving behind something for others to remember you by. The obvious answer is a business card. Despite having great conversations with people, I still struggled to remember their names and information after the interaction. Meeting someone and having a great conversation is great, and I engaged in many conversations on the last night of GDC where I did not hand out business cards. These convos are great for upping your rep, but without a card it will be pretty tough/annoying for the people you met to contact you. My philosophy is to make contacting you require as little effort as possible and a business card is a simple way to reduce the effort needed to contact you. From there you’re trying to stand out from the 500 other business cards that person received that day, by adding something to it. My strat was make my business card a sticker so it felt different than the other cards and also had that extra layer of interactivity than the other cards. I’m sure as your leave behind becomes more interesting you will find more people actually remembering/following up with you where a basic ass business card is gonna get thrown in the trash. A good example of this was Perforce’s business cards that were also bottle openers. Their card felt different from the rest and had some extra usage than just delivering information. Very clean.