#indieaf

In 2017 my wife and I made the effort to get the USA VISA thinking in going on vacation to the USA and also thinking in attending this kind of events like GDC.

This was the first time I would be attending GDC! So I started reading a lot of tips and videos about the conference, because of that I made a lot of business cards, bought candies, registered for parties, prepared a demo for our game Pixel Stars and a couple of weeks before we thought about a cool game concept and rushed on that becoming this into Jumper Jon demo.

I read about the importance of having a goal for GDC, for me, the goal was to enjoy the experience (as a first timer), learn about how everything works and show 2 game demos to press and people: Pixel Stars and Jumper Jon.

Last 4 weeks before GDC we had a lot of work rushing on game demos, because of that I didn’t get enough sleep. I was afraid the effort wouldn’t be worth it because maybe game demos wouldn’t be ready and/or people wouldn’t like them after all.

The stress prior GDC was huge!

On my way

When the day came, Jumper Jon demo was not ready (nothing happened after defeating the boss), stickers did not arrive in time but at least Pixel Stars demo was working pretty well (tested it on iPad that day in the morning).

This was the first time I would be going outside the country on my own, that wasn’t easy either, however, I kept myself thinking about it as an adventure.

I traveled from my city Aguascalientes to Guadalajara on a 3 hours trip on bus, after that I took a flight to San Jose California on a 4 hours trip on air, after that I waited like 1 hour for a bus to take me to San Francisco Airport, took the 1 hour trip to SFO Airport on that bus and finally took a 30 minutes trip on BART to a station near Moscone Center (Powell station).

A good thing about going 4 hours on air was that I was able to finish Jumper Jon demo =D! I added the intro and outro images to demo and with that, it was some kind of finished.

Just arriving near the Moscone Center I bought a 5-bucks hotdog and went to the Hotel when I stayed with a very good friend.

GDC Week

Monday in the morning I went to Moscone West to pick my badge. The feeling when going inside the building and watching all that people with GDC badges was really great.

As other game devs, always talking about this with other people feels pretty good, now, being in the same place with thousands of people who are also fascinated by the game development is really a very comforting experience.

I won’t describe what I experienced at every moment the whole week, but I will give a quick summary and will highlight the best moments on GDC:

Overall my GDC week was spent between few meetings, parties, events, networking and a couple of expo hours.

Meetings

As one of my goals for this GDC was to show Pixel Stars and Jumper Jon to people and press, I scheduled a couple of meetings to show it to good friends, a couple of streamers and press.

This was very important for us because was the result of a lot of work weeks before GDC… The good thing was that Pixel Stars and Jumper Jon had a great reception from the people who played them.

Even if these games are very different from each other, both of them were liked by people =).

Here are a couple of videos from Touch Arcade where I’m showing our games:

http://toucharcade.com/2018/03/23/gdc-2018-jumper-jon-and-pixel-stars/

Parties

Parties on GDC are something very cool because that’s the perfect place for networking, meeting cool and interesting people and also meeting good old friends.

I went to a couple of Unity parties, one of them was the keynote where we knew about the new stuff coming for the engine. There we could meet one of the guys who created Unity: Joachim Ante and that was really great.

A cool party I attended which was really great was The Other Party, that one was great because I was able to pick a free table and show Jumper Jon demo for playtesting.

That was very fun because a lot of people went to our table and went through the demo from the beginning to end (demo lasts like 3 minutes).

I received a lot of feedback, good comments and the most rewarding was that people asked us about when it would be available because they wanted to buy it at that same moment =D.

I was also able to show Jumper Jon demo on another party called BYO INIDE (Bring your own indie) there I was able to pick a table too, set up the demo and people went there to check it.

Pretty much was the same result, a lot of people enjoyed it.

Showing Jumper Jon on the parties was one of the best moments from GDC because I felt all the effort was totally worth it, we spent a lot of time programming, making art and designing the level… Knowing that people really liked it was very comforting.

Events

The best events for me on GDC were the Independent Games Festival Awards and the Game Developers Choice Awards.

I will describe the feeling of being there and watching the Awards with just one word: Inspiring.

Watching all that talented people receiving awards, giving their speech and sharing on stage situations that many of us game devs live is something really inspiring.

Networking

Networking most of the time was made during the parties… Even if on the Moscone center and Yerba buena garden there is a lot of people around, resting or working on their computers, networking is not very good there (at least for me).

I sat down there a couple of times but I made it because I wanted to finish something or send a mail or just to charge my cell phone.

There I tried to speak with people and it worked most of the times but, for other people, they sometimes just didn’t want to talk, maybe because they were tired or something (I didn’t talk to people I found was busy).

So for networking, I would suggest parties.

Expo

Something I really missed on this GDC was the expo.

I was at the expo and could give an overall check but unfortunately I couldn’t enjoy it in detail. I was just walking through it when the GDC ended and I had to go out =(

Taking the following pic was really sad because that was the end of GDC.

Conclusions

Some friends told me that if game development is my passion I had to attend GDC… Now I can confirm that because as this is the largest professional game industry event in the world this is the meeting point for game designers, programmers, artists, producers and artists from the global game development community.

And that is absolutely awesome.

Here I made a small list of tips for everyone who is planning to attend GDC in the future:

Define a goal for your GDC attendance and work for that goal prior GDC (make a demo, a good presentation, schedule meetings)

Bring at least 200 business cards

Join the Fellowship of the GDC Parties facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheFellowshipOfParties/)

Bring a fully charged power bank all the time

If you want to show a game on parties (for free) register to the right parties and attend earlier

If you like swags and stuff go to the expo on Wednesday and take your time to check it

Take a good sit at the Awards and enjoy the show

Share business cards with everyone and take a pen with you and write down on business cards who is who so you can remember the people you met.

Business cards I received:

Last but not least I want to recommend the GDC attendees to take a time and enjoy San Francisco, this place is amazing too:

Well, that’s all, I tried to summarize my GDC experience as a first timer, I definitely want to attend next year and hope this read is helpful for the people who are planning to go and get the best experience.

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