Ryan Baker GDC 2016

Post date: Mar 29, 2016 1:18:34 AM

    This was my second time attending the Game Design conference. Compared to last year I felt much more prepared to network and get my work reviewed. As opposed to last year I felt much more confident with my work, and knowing what to expect I was much more comfortable talking to new people. This is a brief summary of my observations and experience from attending and working at the conference.

This year I was able to show off my Game at the Ringling booth with Andy. It was an amazing experience to have people play it and hear their feedback. It’s a completely different experience to be engaging people on the show floor and actively having them review my work through the demo. Having people walk up to me and start the conversation wanting to know more, was a reversal of last year. I pushed myself to be actively drawing people to the booth to talk and share my thesis with. Over all I think it spoke volumes to people that I was sharing my work at the expo as a student. I would highly recommend students interested in showing off their game do the same thing next year! I met several lead artists at a wide variety of studios, and a ton of people looking for talent/freelance for their smaller startups and indie studios. Even if it’s not VR, more Ringling students with polished gameplay need to demo at the booth!

Last year I spent most of my time on the career floor, trying to get portfolio reviews and make contacts. This year I took a different approach which I felt was less stressful and more productive. It’s too easy to be stressed about finding a job or making contacts. So relaxing while still being proactive in networking was my goal. I spent most of wednesday playing game demos and making friends with the dev’s. It was a blast and I made more meaningful contacts. Demo’s are a good ice breaker to lead more naturally into the self pitch.

Thursday I chose to hit the career floor with a plan. I warmed up my personal pitch with some of the smaller studios. This allowed me to be more relaxed and ready to speak with preferred companies later. I feel like the career floor was even smaller than it was last year. That being said I had excellent portfolio review feedback from a lot of studios. Most importantly I spoke with people about how I could refine my portfolio. The majority concluded that they like the work, and want to see a real focus. I have large environments that are pretty good. So I could improve and sell my ability as an environment artist by focusing on smaller sets with denser/more refined set dressing. Everyone wants to see my ability to tell story emphasized. From my experience with reviews this year and last year larger studios I talked to want to see someone who can specialize and really knock that specialty out of the park.

At High Voltage I spoke with Matt Beard. We spoke about my VR demo and he had some great insight about development on their new VR title Damaged core. He asked me about our development pipeline and how we were handling our frame rate/efficiency. One of the things he stressed was their requirement for high frame rate at 120 fps for VR. That was their goal to ensure no one gets motion sick. He then explained some of the cool ways they were optimizing, one of the biggest being they cut normal maps entirely. The visual fidelity of VR right now means they aren't extremely noticeable. So it frees up texture calls/space and they can trade off for more detailed spec maps.

This year I made a stronger effort to go to events outside the convention center. While a lot of the parties and events were invite only, other students and I had great success “crashing” parties with other ringling students. So my observation would be don’t let anything like not having an invite stop you from at least trying to go somewhere to network. (Several students were successful name dropping or flashing business cards they had gotten to get into exclusive parties) Also keeping up with Alumni is incredibly helpful with networking. I have some great Alumni friends, catching up with them/tagging along with them to gatherings I wouldn’t of otherwise known about helped me meet some awesome people!

After the convention was over stayed an extra day, using saturday to explore the city and relax. I took the opportunity to explore the woods and lake in golden gate park with some other Ringling students. I regret not doing so last year. Sight seeing and enjoying the amazing food in San Francisco was the perfect end to an amazing week. I only regret not going to Chinatown for every possible meal every single day.