Thomas' GDC Thoughts

Post date: Mar 16, 2015 4:43:47 AM

            This year was my first time going to GDC. In the weeks approaching the conference I was very nervous about what to expect. I wasn’t crazy confident in my portfolio and because I wanted to change my focus from environment art to UI design it made it hard for me to get a constructive portfolio review. My main goal of the conference quickly turned into finding out what goes into a good UI design portfolio. Along with getting feed back on a portfolio I wanted to go the as many talks as I could with the expo pass that I had so I could learn as much as I could. After the week finished and I sat down to write down my thoughts I came away feeling very optimistic and pessimistic about the future of games.

            The first thing I went to do at GDC was head to the career center to hopefully make connections and get my portfolio looked at. Before Going to GDC I was told this was my best bet of meeting people and hopefully get opportunities for an internship. But unfortunately the career center was a bust. There was a very small amount of companies at the career center; only a small amount of them gave portfolio reviews and none of the ones I talked to where give out jobs or internships. Most of the companies only wanted a business card so they could look at people later. When I got a person to look at my portfolio they didn’t give me any constructive criticism and when I would ask about UI design all I received where shrugs or blank stares.

            I had much better luck on the expo floor. Being able to walk up to developers and talk one on one was a fun and worthwhile experience. I was able to talk to the artists from Lionhead about their process on their new fable game “Fable Legends” along with the creators of “Gigantic” and how they came to settle on the art style of their game. I was even able to talk to small teams who I admired very much such as ACE team the makes of “Rock of Ages” and The Molasses Flood the makers of the upcoming game “The Flame in the Flood”. The Molasses Flood team was the most helpful by far. I was able to talk to their CEO, Forrest Dowling, and one of their artists, Chad LaClair. Both of them worked on Bioshock Infinite and have had a lot of experience in the industry. I was able to get them to look at my portfolio, get great feed back on it and even get loads of information on a UI portfolio. The greatest help came from when I got to sit down with Steve Scott, lead FX artist at Bungie. I learned that he started as a UI artist so when I got the chance to sit down with him I quickly jumped on that chance. Steve was very helpful and made me feel a lot more confidant in my work.

            I didn’t come to GDC to just get advice on my portfolio, I also came to got to the talks to see what the future of games was headed. After going to a few panels I was left feeling disappointed worried. With the expo pass I was only able to get into a small amount of the panels and talks so I quickly set out to go to as many of them as I could. Taking one look at the schedules I soon learned a majority of the talks I could get into where mainly about social issues. More diversity in games, video game violence awareness, and other such issues seemed to be the main focus of this years GDC. This became even more apparent when panels that had nothing to do with these social issues started talking about them. I went with Britney to a talk about how to become a producer but instead of talking about that they talked about getting more woman and diversity in the industry. The speaker ended the talk by saying “look around, do you really want this to representative of your workplace?” so Britney and I looked around to see that around 40% of the people there where woman. I found a few more talks that greatly interested me including a talk about how games can raise awareness of violent relationships, one about how reviews affect game sales and a few portfolio talks.

When all was said and done I feel that the games industry is in an awkward period. The panels really showed me that the industry is going through some growing pains. For years games where thought of as a boys hobby so the games that where made where targeted at males. So when the people who grew up playing those games became old enough to make games they where mainly male. But now more and more woman are playing games and now want to make games. But while there is diversity coming it’s not coming quick enough for some people. So while people are fighting to have more and more diversity in the industry employers are looking to hire talent in a very competitive market.

When I got the chance to walk around the Expo floor I was able to get up close and personal with the new tech and games they where showing off. It really seemed like the new technology was focused on being easier to use and more excisable for new developers. Unreal seemed to be the biggest promoter of this going so far as to give tutorials right on the expo floor. Unity really wanted to show how there engine could be picked up by anyone, mixamo showed off how quick it was to rig and animate a character, and there was even a few companies showing off how easy motion capture has gotten.

Overall I had a great time at GDC and look forward to going again. Here are my final observations on this year.

1. The industry is become more excisable for developers to pick up the tools and start making their games.

2. The industry is fighting for positive outlets for games. Games are no longer about just racking up kills, there an outlet to raise awareness about specific issues.

3. People want more minorities in the industry but the industry values talent over diversity.

4. Free to play games and mobile games are the growing more and more and seem to be the new majority.