The Legend of Eric's Trip to GDC

Post date: Mar 17, 2017 1:8:16 AM

For my first day at GDC (Wednesday), I made it a goal to just get a feel for the event, the environment, and what I would expect for the coming days. I made it a point to explore much of the ground floor, as well as the different halls that they were holding the expo in. It was pretty overwhelming at first - I felt like a dog watching cars go by. I wanted to chase every one! I did meet quite a few people this day, and although I only made a few solid connections, I really got a feel for where the industry was headed as a whole. Talking to different developers from all corners of the world was an eye opening experience, and seeing the tech that was being showed off opened the door to a lot of new possibilities. In addition to this, I got a few opportunities to play some VR games and have one on ones with the developers of said games. One of them was Owlchemy games newest title, a VR game set in the world of Rick and Morty. I got to talk with one of the lead developers on what that was like, as well as some of the challenges associated with being on the forefront of VR, and the joys of working with Adult Swim and Justin Roiland. Later that night, I attended the Ringling mixer, which turned out to be a great experience. I got to meet and pick the brains of a handful of Alumni that currently work in the industry, giving me some really solid insight on what to expect as a Ringling grad and how to approach working in the industry out of college.

Perhaps the most interesting connection of that night was a chance meeting between two individuals - veterans of the industry who had taken it upon themselves to start their own company. My thesis partners and I engaged in quite the long discussion with the two - They told us about the various games they worked on (it was a pretty long list - among them were titles such as Wii Fit and Call of Duty: World at War), and we told them about the thesis we are currently working on, Windrazor. They jumped on the idea, as they just so happened to share a lot of the same interests and passions that we are currently powering our project with. One of them, who happened to be a sound designer, gave us some really great tips on how to get good sound in our game, among many, many other things. They told us to stay in touch, and that they were keen on seeing where our project went.

The second day of GDC (Thursday) was interesting as well. I tried to focus on networking a bit more, and I started to improve on that. I made it a point to visit various booths that I was interested in and strike up conversations with developers. It was a lot of fun! Because of the absence of a job floor, it was particularly difficult to give out business cards in a "Hi, my name is _______. I'd love to work at your company. Check out my stuff sometime!" sort of way. However, through discussion, I was able to give out quite a few, and made some nice connections with developers from various companies. In addition to this, I attended a few demos in which the developers and artists of Epic Games showed off new features in Unreal Engine 4 that we can expect to see in the coming months that would be very relevant to our thesis.

I also spent a lot of time going around and chatting it up with engineers at various companies. For example, the guys at Nvidia had a lot of cool, cutting edge stuff that could serve us well in the future! Since then, I've applied for a developer license to use some of their tools, and subsequently accepted. I'm looking forward to tinkering with them in the near future. In addition to this, I got to meet up with an engineer from Simul, a UK based company which develops a procedural sky simulation plugin for Unreal and Unity known as TrueSKY. After talking with him and watching him demo the software, I inquired about the possibility of acquiring a student license to use their software. He told me to email him after GDC, and as a result, we've obtained keys to use the software in our thesis. Cool stuff! In addition to this, we attended a mixer that night and ended up meeting with some Indie devs who gave us a really interesting and unique view into that whole realm of the industry.

The third day (Friday), even though it was the shortest, was pretty wild. It started off relatively normal, and I attended a Houdini talk by a Battlefield 1 developer in which he demoed some of the ways that they used Houdini to create beautiful effects such as blood and clouds. After the presentation, I approached him and asked him some more questions. Specifically, I inquired about the destruction of planes in Battlefield 1, how convincing it was, and if they used Houdini for it. He informed me that they didn't, but then proceeded to tell me exactly how they did the destruction. It was actually pretty clever, and we will definitely be looking into incorporating some of the things I learned into our thesis. After this, I got multiple portfolio reviews from industry professionals from various studios, and got extremely valuable advice on how to make my portfolio more solid and appealing to recruiters. Surprisingly, I gave out more business cards this day than I had given out any previous day!

After GDC died down, I bought a ticket to a Japanese developer dinner. A few fellow students including my thesis partners and I attended, and we really didn't know what to expect. When we got there, we were some of the only ones that spoke English, and the experience was pretty wild to say the least. We met a lot of high profile Japanese developers. It was honestly like entering into another world. We got to talk to some developers from companies like SEGA of Japan, Konami, and From Software, as well as an environment artist from the latter who did the entire opening sequence of the first Dark Souls. It was crazy, and trying to talk to them was an adventure on its own! I literally exhausted the supply of business cards I brought to the event, which was something I was not expecting. If I learned one thing, its that Japanese developers love to drink!

After GDC, we explored the city of San Francisco a bit. Notably, the following Sunday, we went on a tour of the USS Pampanito, a submarine which was in service against the IJN during World War II. We gathered a ton of relevant reference for our thesis, and it is currently adding a lot to our design choices in DFA.

Whew! That certainly came out longer than I expected it to. There really is so much that happened, and to be honest, there's no way I could cover it all in only a few short paragraphs. But, if I were to sum it up my experiences and give one final thought, I would say this; GDC was a one of a kind, indispensable experience to a young, up and coming developer in the industry of games. I got to see so much firsthand, and learned an absurd amount over the days I was there. That being said, it is definitely an event that you get out what you put in. If you go there expecting to get a job or just to have fun, you're probably doing it wrong. By setting goals for myself each day, I was able to get the most out of the event as a whole, and would recommend others to do the same.