Sams GDC post

Post date: Mar 26, 2018 4:4:36 PM

This was my first year attending GDC, went in with zero ideas what should I do and where should I go.

1: GDC convention center is enormous, I got confused right at the beginning, I had probably the most unorganized first day. We went straight to those panels which were offering free items. The Unreal Engine did an excellent job of trapping people like me to their zones with free foods and drinks. We spent most of the day relaxing on their bean bags. Speak of Unreal Engine plane, for some reason they are dominating 50% of the space in the Southhall which where most of the studio booths were locating. Substance Both is another one we went visits, they had a much smaller booth compare to last year. We had the chance to try out the newest version of Substance Designer and painter which were super cool, can't wait for school to update them.

The second day I spent most of my time on the independent developer section, the quality of their products was amazed me. I see the personality of their developers reflected in the final product. Interesting to see how the industry structure will change in the future.

Party and Connection

I think parties and Connections are two things that were overhyped for many people, especially for students. Or if your expectation was on the different things, I can see the disappointments. There were different types of connections at the GDC, business-ship was the most common one, but as art students, I think most of the time we were trying to get recognition. We make people remember us but the most important to recognize us as the people we want to be. for me was a good environment artist. Somewhere along the line at the school people were start to think that portfolio is no longer the key to get the job, the connection is. That was a huge miss leading. Connections are valuable, but most of it is to make artist visible to the industry. People won't spend the time to solve your problems such as not knowing what to do or not having a strong portfolio.

Parties are the same; you could spend a lot of time to get close to the developers at the parties, but you might only also get recognized as a social butterfly which probably not most of wanted.