From GamesIndustry.biz: First of all, you want to go to GDC. You know you do. And maybe you’re driving toward a milestone, and your studio is in crunch, and you can’t get away, but you know what? Screw that. Happens all the time. You see the people in your studio every day, but you get to see old friends from the industry rarely. You can at least do Wednesday to Friday, and your managers can deal.
“You’ll want to check out the IGF entries. Anything to make yourself believe that the industry isn’t a brain-dead agglomeration of people working on version VI of a franchise, or a clone of something else”
Second, the conference is expensive, no doubt about it. Maybe you got it together to put together a talk proposal, and maybe it was accepted or maybe it wasn’t; or maybe your employer will spring for a full pass. If you get a free pass, of course there will be sessions you want to see. The Experimental Gameplay Workshop, for sure. You’ll want to check out the IGF entries. Anything to make yourself believe that the industry isn’t a brain-dead agglomeration of people working on version VI of a franchise, or a clone of something else, or some VR piece of crap because that’s the new hotness and it’s what the VCs want to see… Certainly you’ll want to avoid anything with “marketing” or “monetization” in the title. And some sessions you can sniff from a mile off; we’ve been on the “story vs. system” debate since the ’80s, and recasting it as “narratology vs ludology” just means the academics have awoken to an ancient argument. The arguments have all been made, no need to hear anyone rehash them. Most sessions are eminently skippable; find the ones that aren’t.
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