So… GDC 2010.
Every year, I find it so hard to write about GDC. It seems ironic, because I can think of few things that I could ever write more about. But I run into two problems each year: first, so many people already write about GDC, it can feel difficult to meet my desire to write something unique. Second, GDC is a place where a lot of ideas are thrown around, and I usually feel that for me they are the kinds of ideas that sit in the back of the mind and take a while to process. As such, it’s hard for me to know what I want to say about what I experienced at GDC.
But this year I realized that what I think about most after every GDC are the people I met and reunited with each year. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: GDC is all about the people. Of course, all the ideas transferred at the sessions are delivered by people, but I’m thinking even more about what happens outside of the sessions.
When I think back to any given GDC, my memories are predominantly of the time spent between sessions: meeting new people, exchanging ideas informally, and developing our own kind of culture. GDC is a place where, as a new friend of mine said, (I have to paraphrase here) “Everyone is judged simply for who they are as an intellectual/artist/craftsperson and what they have to contribute to a conversation.” In many ways, that says it all.
At GDC, people just want to learn about what their peers are doing, to understand the nature of their work better, and to know what’s happening in the greater realm of game development beyond what they’ve seen from their own work in the past year or two. It’s a place where we can all challenge each other to think smarter, broader, and deeper about what we do.
And it’s also a time to form strong bonds with others. We bond quickly because we’re in a very particular kind of environment: it’s simultaneously a place where we’re surrounded by people with supportive viewpoints (they also love making games) and also a place where it becomes starkly clear just how special — or even alien — our pursuit is. After all: just outside the bounds of the conference and the many venues it overtakes, the world is still full of the normal mix of people. It’s a place where it isn’t normal to run into a stranger and have a two-hour conversation that forever changes your viewpoint on a major project or your entire profession.
But that all enhances the sense that GDC forms a magic bubble where even for the shy and/or introverted it’s okay to talk to strangers. It’s a place where others are interested in what we have to say and want to have a real conversation about it. For me, that’s a very important thing about GDC: it provides a golden opportunity to learn how to reach out to more people and broaden your perspective at the same time. I’m a somewhat shy extrovert, which means I love talking with people — and seek to do so regularly — but I often find it hard to initiate that interaction.
So for me, each year GDC is a great exercise for that skill of sucking up my long outdated emotional habit of feeling like no one will want to hear what I have to say or will understand me if they do. As Darius has often said, GDC can be a real confidence-booster, but that’s only true if you challenge yourself and persevere when things don’t go quite the way you hope they will. I’ve learned a lot about that in my four years of going to GDC, and I love that each year the conference provides both a great chance to grow that skill and a good measure of how far along my development has come.
For another perspective on GDC, I highly recommend this great series of posts that Matt Burns (aka Matthew Wasteland) wrote about GDC. He wrote them during the conference this year, which was his first GDC, so they provide a very raw and fresh perspective on the conference.