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GDC03 Student Scholarship Reports

Each scholarship recipient was asked to compile a report of their adventure to GDC. Here are the submitted reports, which describes their favorites sessions and advice to others heading to GDC for the first time. Enjoy!

 

Student Report Index

 

Student Reports

Chad Bartlett - DigiPen Institute of Technology

I am a 3D computer animation student at the DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Washington. I had a great time at this year's Game Developers Conference and found it extremely worthwhile in relation to my career goals within the industry. Three main areas I found helpful at the GDC were the possibilities for networking, the actual sessions themselves, and the feeling of community that I experienced. I met a lot of high caliber people, and I was impressed by how many companies were actually hiring at the conference. The sessions were awesome-the real meat of the conference. I learned a lot from them and was exposed to all different aspects of the industry. In terms of community, I found that even at higher creative and administrative levels, people in the game industry are passionate about what they do. I had worried it was only younger people and those new to the industry that felt this way. Not so! Ours is a small, tight-knit group that has a lot of fun, despite all the hard work. It is an industry that, more than ever, I can see myself working in.

I think my favorite conference session was David Freeman's 34 Ways to Create Emotions in Games. I was impressed at how simply Mr. Freeman has been able to boil down such a complex topic. His hard work in the area shows. I feel he has a very firm grasp of how to infuse emotion into all kinds of media, not just games. He is collecting this material into a book over four hundred pages in length, and I look forward to reading it. Obviously, we were only able to brush the surface of his research during the two-hour session, but it was great stuff! I found it very helpful and interesting!

Another session that I enjoyed was Luis Barriga's Bossy Behavior: Patterns and Techniques in Boss Design. Mr. Barriga has made a small science of this topic. In an industry as young as the games industry, it is refreshing to see individuals providing vocabulary and laying ground rules to various aspects of what we do. His material was well presented, although he tried to cover so much that it felt overly hurried at times. I enjoyed what he has established and found myself mulling over how to apply these concepts to various game ideas, especially ones that are 3D as opposed to his 2D examples. Overall, I enjoyed this session very much.

One last example of a session I found extremely beneficial would be the Story Summit with Hal Barwood, Bob Bates, Patricia Pizer, Mike Pondsmith, and Lee Sheldon. The goal of this session was to discuss the current state of storytelling in games and to give suggestions on improving this aspect of game development. The speakers had various backgrounds, which added to the broad applicability of what they had to share. That wonderful interactive element so unique to games makes for some very difficult storytelling conventions. Their advice was helpful and fun to listen to. This is a session I highly recommend.

I am extremely grateful to the IGDA for awarding me the scholarship that afforded me the opportunity to go to the conference. I learned a lot, met a lot of wonderful people, and feel great about the industry I am working so hard to enter. As an animator, I found that a good portion of the conference dealt specifically with visual arts in games. If you need any more evidence to interpret how I felt about the 2003 Game Developers Conference, let me just say that I am already planning to attend the Game Developers Conference in 2004!

Alexia Bowers - Penn State University

GDC was an excellent opportunity to be immersed in the game industry, to get a feel for the culture, and to focus my studies toward the industry. This was also important for me since, in addition to school, I work for a company that is working on its first title. Overall, my impression is that the game industry is "growing up" as an industry and there are many people looking to create standards and practices in the field to create more coherence through documented methods and common language. While it is important to keep the spirit and youthfulness of games alive, this is the time where the foundation of the game industry as an industry is being built, and it was exciting to be a part of it this year.

The Three Best Sessions:

Goodbye to Postmortems, Hello to Critical Stage Analysis by Wolfgang Hamann

Mr. Hamann discusses the use of his method, Critical Stage Analysis (CSA), instead of post mortems for analysis of project successes and failings. A CSA is an analysis of what went right, what went wrong, and solutions to those things that went wrong after each major milestone, rather than after each project. This CSA method provides the opportunity to analyze your process during a project, provide possible solutions, and increase team communications on the project. It also fits nicely with agile approaches whereby iteration and constant reevaluations are key. For more information about the CSA, contact Mr. Hamann at whamann@radical.ca.

AI in Computer Games Roundtable by Eric Dybsand, Neil Kirby, Steve Woodcock

This roundtable focused on AI in Computer Games for beginners and gave a great overview of AI including techniques like neural networks, genetic algorithms, and influence maps and how they have been applied in games. It was a good forum for asking beginner questions and learning about relevant resources in the industry.

Building AI Sensory Systems by Tom Leonard

Mr. Leonard gives a great example of how AI sensory systems can be implemented using his work on "Thief" as an example. This session was good for learning terminology and techniques used in sensory systems applied to a specific game, and was a very interesting session to attend.

I would recommend choosing sessions ahead of time and choosing from a variety of formats; roundtable, lecture, etc. I would also recommend going through the expo and going to at least one event (e.g. Game Developers Choice Awards, Programmer's Challenge, etc.) to get a feel for industry culture, especially if you are new to the industry. Finally, it is helpful to bring business cards to exchange with people for follow-ups and such, even if they are personal cards. Above all, relax and have a good time, there will be many interesting things to see and learn at GDC.

Amin Edabi - EPFL, Switzerland

Attending the GDC was an amazing experience. This was a unique opportunity to meet people of many different backgrounds and stature, from world-renowned game designers and developers to rookies like myself who are seeking to build a career in this industry. In my eyes, two words reflect the most important values offered by the GDC: passion and sharing. Passion, because it was clear that everybody in this industry just loves his or her job. Many have joined the videogames industry from another background, and no one is looking back. Sharing, because people of all levels of expertise would communicate without any sense of hierarchy. They were there to share their experience, their ideas, their vision with whoever was willing to listen, whether a student or a senior executive producer. This sense of passion and sharing is what distinguishes the GDC from other expos and what makes it most valuable for students because they will be in contact with an amazing amount of knowledge that can be found nowhere else.

THREE CONFERENCE SESSIONS THAT I ENJOYED THE MOST

Creating a Cinematic Game Experience by Rick Giolito, EA LA.

Rick Giolito is involved in the development of the Medal of Honor franchise at EA LA. This is the part of EA that bought DreamWorks Interactive (a joint venture between Dreamworks and Microsoft) in 2000. It is therefore barely a surprise that this team focuses on the cinematic experience in its games, which was demonstrated brilliantly in the D-Day scene of MOH: Frontline and MOHAA.

This lecture was useful for anybody who still doubts that some recent videogames greatly resemble actual cinematic productions and everything they involve: considerable budget, a thorough, iterative design process, and cinematic conventions such as setups, payoffs, choice of an iconic moment, shared human experience, and more.
Two topics were of particular interest to me. First, Rick mentioned how EA owes part of its success to focus, focus and focus. The EA LA Studios, for example, can summarize the bottom line of their games with 4 letters: DICE, for Deep Interactive Cinematic Experience. Their motto is simple: get to the essence of what you're trying to make. "Get the X on the wall", and whatever that X is, never lose sight of it. By this, Giolito means that his studio always defines in a few words the very core of their goal and then sticks to it throughout the whole project. In the case of MOH, the X was "Dramatically immersing the player in an emotionally authentic WWII experience".
The second most interesting topic discussed is the need for testing and tuning from day 1, and the means to achieve this. One of those means is the vertical slice, which means for the studio to get everything working in one scene of the game (sound, graphics, etc). This helps them realize whether they are getting the look and feel that they were expecting on paper, and doing it early gives them the opportunity to spot and correct their mistakes within a reasonable timeframe and cost.

Real-Time 3D Scene Post-processing by Jason Mitchell (ATI Sponsored Session)

Jason Mitchell presented a series of most impressive post-processing effects achieved in real-time with the latest ATI technology. The talk was divided into photorealistic and non photorealistic approaches, and different effects for each were shown.

What I liked about this talk was that it was an actual insight into the games of tomorrow, from a technological point of view. The High Dynamic Range demo was presenting Paul Debevec's research on natural lighting presented in Siggraph in 1999, except that it was all in real-time. The amazing part to me is that technology has made such huge leaps forward that in four years, we went from a cutting-edge academic research finding to a real-time demo accessible to any end-user who can afford a $400 graphics card. One can only begin to imagine where technology will bring us 4 years from now…

Sequels and Adaptations: Design Innovation in a Risk-Averse World by Warren Spector

Warren Spector is one of the most famous and respected game designers. In this talk he discussed a somewhat recurrent topic this year at the GDC: why are there so many sequels and licenses (movies, comics…) in the game business today. Warren was presenting the pros and cons of a totally new IP game vs a sequel or a license.
The bottom line of his talk helped me understand why sequels and licenses are so frequent, why they are necessary and how they do not necessarily impede innovation and creativity. Particularly, the following points presented by Warren were of interest to me:

ADVICE FOR FUTURE STUDENT ATTENDEES TO THE GDC

Kathy Fung - University of Toronto

I found the GDC to be a wonderful learning experience. It's like a full-day of attending class at university except that every lecture you go to is incredibly interesting! The session materials are practical and to-the-point and accompanied by demos of how they can be used in game development. In some sessions, it is much like attending school because some of the speakers are university professors, but at the same time you know this is the GDC because you're sitting next to professional developers who had worked on one of your favorite games!

Favorite Sessions:

Advanced Illumination Techniques
I find this session to be very interesting because it introduced the latest illumination techniques that will greatly improve the next generation of game graphics. Nathaniel Hoffman did an overview of the various lighting models and lighting rendering equations used in real time. Then it introduced the concepts of Spherical Harmonic Lighting and Polynomial Texture Maps accompanied by very impressive looking demos that showed BRDF and inter-object reflections being done in real time.

Real Time Fluid Dynamics
Jos Stam presented techniques for fast fluid solvers to simulate water, smoke, fog and fire in real time. The smoke in the demo was particularly realistic. I thought this session presented the most impressive graphics demo I have seen so far. Jos also gave the C code implementation of this technique in his notes, I would highly recommend graphics buffs to read the proceedings for this session and try it out.

Advanced User-Interface Roundtable
I was interested in this roundtable because my specialist(major) is in Human Computer Interaction. Listening to the discussion I learned a lot about the problems and issues facing interface designers for games specifically - such as catering to novice and expert users (expose features gradually or all-at-once?), dealing with the problem of cluttered menus and buttons, making item selection faster in FPSs and making the best use of the console controllers layout.

Advice to future Scholarship and student attendees to the GDC:

I would like to thank the IGDA for this opportunity, I had a great time there and made lots of valuable contacts. It definitely helped me gain a better understanding of the industry. I hope to be there again in 2004!

Panayoti Haritatos - University of California San Diego

After three days of commotion, my conclusion is that the GDC is the essence of creativity, thought and cutting-edge development technology. Each day I was overwhelmed by the sheer wealth of information that was available, and besieged by the constant trade-offs and decisions I had to make as to what sessions I would have to miss.

How to Run a Successful Studio was an incredible panel, allowing me to contrast and compare the major types of studios that currently exist in the industry. I was fascinated to learn that id Software employs only 17 full time developers, and yet remain competitive with EA's studios that have been known to employ up to 120 full time developers for a project at any one time. This panel gave me hope that one day I could successfully run a small development studio, even while mammoths such as EA seem to be taking over the development world.

The Game Design Methods round table exposed me to a world of game design I had never considered before. The application of quasi-scientific methods to what appears to be a world of strict creativity resulted in some priceless insights. Intelligent, experienced designers at the round table shared many of their techniques, and I was able to at least crystallize some aspects of game design philosophy out of the experiences they shared.

Lessons learned from Dungeon Siege and Other Random Stuff by Chris Taylor was just what I needed early the morning of my second day at the GDC. Although his humor might be considered somewhat crass, it was like strong black coffee, waking me up and getting me energized for the rest of the day. Chris Taylor is a colorful and entertaining speaker and his session should not be missed.

Advice for next year's attendees:

Ted Hung - Carnegie Mellon University

The Game Developers Conference 2003 was a very rewarding and enlightening experience. I can honestly say that I have never met a more intelligent, passionate, and motivated group of individuals. The sense of community and belonging that the Game Developers Conference fostered was overwhelming. From the moment I stepped inside the San Jose Convention Center, it was immediately apparent that this is a conference where the developers are king. By providing a forum for discussions about the state of the industry, emerging technologies, and technological challenges, the conference was clearly devoted towards improving games development as a whole. As a result, I was impressed with the willingness of people to discuss their successes and failures and give constructive suggestions to the community. Three conference sessions that really stood out in my mind were Dynamics for Designers, the Experimental Gameplay Workshop, and Great Game Graphics… Who Cares?

Will Wright's talk, Dynamics for Designers, surprised me with its scope, and it made me realize that games can learn a lot from all aspects of life. In talking about the importance of emergent behavior in games, Will Wright drew examples from biology, psychology, manufacturing, mathematics, physics, and many other areas. Dynamics for Designers emphasized the value of keeping in mind the many corollaries inherent in any game. All games have the ability to be much more than the sum of their parts. Will Wright pointed out that emergent gameplay can be explicitly designed into a game. It is clear that he has utilized this technique throughout the SimCity series and The Sims. On the other hand, Wright highlighted the fact that emergent gameplay will occur whether or not it is explicitly designed for. For example, in Battlefield 1942, Will Wright explained how a certain area could be played like Tony Hawk Pro Skater because it acted like a half-pipe. From Dynamics for Designers, I learned that it is important to design games that are flexible enough to encompass many different goals and behaviors.

In addition to Will Wright's talk, the Experimental Gameplay Workshop was a session that I was particularly interested in. Having personally programmed small games in order to try out new types of gameplay, I understood the challenges that each of the speakers faced in creating their experimental games. Thus, I was very supportive of what the speakers were attempting to do. From games using shadows cast from a projector to games involving hacking into the Warcraft III engine, I was impressed with the diversity of gameplay that was presented. More than anything, this session taught me that the industry as a whole has a long way to go towards encouraging truly innovative and experimental gameplay. Despite the limitless possibilities, I discovered that there is not a lot of funding for these types of games. The games industry thrives on innovation, and it is my sincere hope that more experimental gameplay is encouraged in the future.

Jason Rubin's talk further emphasized the need for innovation in the industry. Rubin pointed out in his talk, Great Game Graphics… Who Cares?, that Naughty Dog has always thrived on improvements in graphics. Using examples from Jak & Daxter, he showed that graphics have steadily increased from Nintendo, N64, Playstation, Playstation 2, and XBox. In the past, these advances in graphics have been followed by concurrent changes in the gaming experience. Today, graphics have come to the point where it doesn't matter anymore. No one will care if you can see each individual hair on a character or if you can see a reflection in the helmet of a football player. The key point Rubin made was that the game is still essentially the same game, despite the added visual enhancements. Thus, graphics alone cannot sell games in the future. Consequently, Rubin stated that Naughty Dog must completely rethink their strategy, and the way they make games will change dramatically in the future. If graphics will not drive sales in the future, then what will? Rubin revealed two possibilities: innovation and attachment. By innovation, Rubin meant new types of games that do not rely on graphics alone. By attachment, Rubin meant games based on existing intellectual property. I definitely see the trend towards attachment in games today, but I do not see a strong push towards innovation. In the end, Rubin's talk was very insightful, and I learned that, in order to survive in the games industry, companies must constantly evaluate and evolve based on the state of the industry. For this reason, I am personally very excited about what new types of games will appear in the future.

Overall, the Game Developers Conference has been one of the most educational and inspiring conferences that I have ever attended. I definitely plan to go to future conferences, and I will encourage others to attend it as well. For future scholarship recipients, I would suggest to plan out the day ahead of time, but definitely be flexible towards changes during the day. Also, stay for the question and answer sessions afterwards and talk to the speakers in person if possible. The Game Developers Conference can give you important insight into the process, technology, and innovation inherent in creating games. Furthermore, it can help you find out your place in the game development community. Having dreamed of creating games since I first learned to program, I am now certain that games development is where I want to be. With this knowledge, I plan to finish the Master of Entertainment Technology at Carnegie Mellon University and pursue my career in the games industry. I am enthusiastic and thrilled to be a part of such a passionate and motivated group of people.

Adam Mechtley - Art Institute of Phoenix

If one has any trepidations regarding entry into the game development industry, attending the Game Developers Conference (GDC) is a must; I will in the next few paragraphs attempt to impart why this is so. Personally, my attending the conference provided a proverbial fuel for my already present fire that is probably now beyond any conceivable extinguishing. As a result of my attendance, I cannot wait to become more involved with the community both as a professional and as an IGDA member.

Adam Mechtley with Ernest Adams on the right, with top hat.

One of the greatest things I learned at the conference is just how close the industry actually is. Had I little or no interest in becoming involved with game development, I would probably still be inclined to do so, if for no other reason than that the community is comprised of some of the greatest and most friendly people in contemporary business. Everyone with whom I had the pleasure of speaking was willing to answer questions, offer advice, provide assistance in achieving contact information, and listen to a student's perspective. I feel that this sort of general helpfulness is probably the most defining characteristic of the game development industry. Knowing this, deciding upon what conference sessions to attend is very difficult for an attendee hoping to absorb information. My personal recommendation for students attending in the future is to try to make it to a good number of roundtable and panel discussions, as they provide an excellent means for assimilating a variety of opinions on various issues. I found some sessions in particular to be helpful for a variety of reasons.

One of the roundtables I attended was a discussion regarding Game Design Methods. The session generally focused on the perceived uses for, as well as advantages and disadvantages of formal design tools. The input therein provided an excellent supplement to my coursework at school, as we typically analyze and discuss a good deal of such methods in class. One of the most important pieces of information I gleaned from this session was that one should not limit himself to using formal design tools either strictly analytically or strictly generatively, should he use them. They provide benefits to a designer when used either way, and are most useful when they beget new tools, rather than constrain the design process. Additionally, I felt a reasonable amount of fellowship in knowing that professional designers face some of the problems I as a student face in defining what makes a design functional, and how problems in a dysfunctional design can be solved.

Another session I enjoyed was a panel, On All Levels. Again, this session provided excellent information that will assist me a great deal in my design work at school. Different designers discussed a variety of issues they face when laying out level designs, and attempted to agree upon some methodologies for achieving good designs that were genre neutral, while also providing some specific examples of techniques employed in their particular projects. The layout of the panel facilitated organized presentation of the different designers' viewpoints, so the flow was easy to track, and the opinions easy to integrate. Although I learned a good deal of various aspects of level design from the session, I particularly enjoyed learning some techniques to facilitate emergent gameplay.

Despite how informative were sessions in which a variety of individuals voiced their opinions, there are some outstanding lecturers as well. If one sees that a particularly interesting person is discussing a certain intriguing topic, one should not miss the chance to attend. The final session I attended was a lecture, Exploring the Fringes: Interactive Entertainment for the 21st Century. This session focused primarily on understanding emerging genres that do not traditionally fall within the mystical realm of commercial viability. Some areas explored were the uses of interactive entertainment as art, political commentary, job simulation, and so forth. This session resonated with me in particular due to my long-held personal belief that interactive entertainment as a means of intentional satire, art, and other such intents has the potential to be viable in the marketplace. As well, I learned about some particularly interesting titles and movements that were achieving a reasonable amount of success despite their deviation from the safety of commercial games.

In all, the most important thing for one to realize prior to attending the GDC is that it is neither about gallivanting around at show booths to get free trinkets nor about making connections to try to get a job before going home; the proverbial meat and potatoes of the conference is its use as a vector of information gathering. Attending sessions and talking to and meeting people should be priorities for students who attend in the future; I can guarantee from experience with 99.9% certainty that the learning and dialoguing are the most fun things to do at the GDC, and, upon leaving, instill the greatest sense of actually having achieved something. However, realize that this does not mean that there is no time to relax and have some fun.

Insofar as leisure activities are concerned, I recommend attending the Programmer's Challenge, as it is an amusing opportunity to see individuals in the industry laugh at themselves and have a good time with some fantastic trivia. However, the most important activity I can recommend one attend in his free time is the Game Developers Choice Awards. This event serves as a perfect reminder of what the industry is all about: making and doing great things and having other people enjoy and recognize them. The amount of closeness felt at this ceremony is all but beyond compare as people in the community recognize lifetime achievements as well as outstanding work over the last year.

In closing, I would like to extend my gratitude to the IGDA board of directors, the organization as a whole, Ernest Adams in particular, and the entire game development community for making this industry the absolute greatest. This opportunity is easily one of the most valuable experiences I have ever had.

Mark Noseworthy - University of Manitoba, Canada

I had a fantastic time at this year's GDC. Not only did it meet my high expectations, it surpassed them on many different fronts. There were so many things that I enjoyed at the GDC that I could fill up an entire book detailing my experience. Before leaving home to attend the GDC, I couldn't possibly have anticipated returning home with so many good memories. I kept thinking to myself throughout the conference, "I love this. This is exactly where I want to be. I know now for a fact that my career lies in this industry." Being at GDC, listening to the guest speakers, participating in the roundtable discussions, interacting with publishers and developers, and sharing experiences with the other students solidified for me what I always believed — I want to work in the gaming industry. There's no doubt about it now. I am already looking forward to next year's GDC, but hopefully, I won't be attending as student.

Top three Conference Sessions:

Warren Spector
Sequels and Adaptations: Design Innovation in a Risk-Averse World

I was blown away by Warren Spector's lecture. I went into the lecture expecting something completely different then what I heard, and as a result, I was delighted. There has been a lot of discussion in the gaming industry and media regarding the effects sequels and licenses are having on the industry. Opponents of the devices claim that these products lack innovation and are killing the industry that we love. I expected that Spector would jump on that band wagon and attempt to encourage the crowd to rid themselves of the sequel/license mindset. We should all be making new innovative products based on original IP, right? Original IP is inherently better isn't it? Much to my surprise, this was the complete opposite of what Spector claimed. He claimed that we could still make innovative products based on unoriginal IP as long as the developer embraced the project and made a concerted effort to infuse new ideas in the sequels/licenses. At first, many of us in the crowd certainly balked at this idea. If it was so easy to do, then why are most of the sequels/licenses on the market only marginal products? Why wasn't Spiderman 4: The Wrath of Doctor Octopus the game of the year? Spector then made an important analogy to the book and film industries. Did anyone complain when The Empire Strikes Back was released, or the latest Harry Potter novel? How about those lame Lord of the Rings movies? Of course not, and that is because those products bring with them new ideas and concepts that compliment and preserve the original IP. Spector's argument really was this simple: Why can't we do this with games? Let's hope that Spector's own Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3 show us how it should be done in the games industry.

The Game Developers Choice Awards
Organized by various members of the IGDA and the Gama Network

Although this was not one of the official sessions, it profoundly impacted my experience at GDC. I learned that innovation and growth in this industry will rely heavily on developers pushing other developers to strive to achieve new levels of interactivity in their games. Events such as the Choice Awards are a perfect venue for such a task since the awards are chosen by the developers themselves. It is here that they can reward other developers for taking chances with gameplay design, graphic technologies and new interesting use of sound and music in games. While attending this event, I realized the influence the Choice Awards have in paving the way for innovation and success in our industry.

Goodbye to Postmortems: Hello to Critical Stage Analysis (CSA) by Wolfgang Hamann

The main thing that I learned from this session, aside from how Radical Entertainment uses CSA to highlight problem areas and solutions during actual development, is that this industry is completely different from the film and music industries in one particular area - the sharing of knowledge between companies. Radical Entertainment's Hamann has devised an excellent way to produce better games on time and within budget, while fostering employment empowerment in decision making. The CSA is a key strength that Radical has in its strategic portfolio in this market. In most other industries, Radical Entertainment would sustain their competitive advantage in production by keeping this special project management technique secret. However, in the games industry and more specifically, at the GDC, Radical has chosen to share their distinctive competency with other companies in the hope that it will push the industry forward. This session taught me that the gaming industry is a business that thrives on inter-company cooperation and knowledge sharing. I learned the focus behind the Game Developers Conference is to bring together the brightest minds in the industry to share and cultivate knowledge and experience that will continue to make this the most exciting business around.

If I were to do it all over again, I would have attended less sessions. There are so many interesting sessions that it is impossible to attend them all. Nevertheless, I attended sessions all day long because I didn't want to miss a thing. I discovered that some of the best contacts you will make won't even be during the sessions themselves. You may just end up sitting beside the Lead Designer on your favourite game during one session, and you might feel pressed to leave after the session so that you can attend you next lecture which is 10 minutes away and starts almost immediately. My advice: stay and talk to the Designer after the first session, forget about the next lecture. Make contact with the designer now. There's no guarantee that you'll run into him/her again, and you can always get the proceedings of the missed lecture on CD-Rom. For a student, GDC is about meeting people and talking to industry professionals. Don't get too hung up on planning your perfect schedule. You never know who you might just bump into when you sit down to eat lunch…

Matthew Ota - University of Queensland, Australia

I was very curious when I read Chris Crawford's Dragon Speech from 1993. He said that he was leaving the game industry to pioneer something new and different, something that he claimed was beyond computer games. I was even more curious when I read his statements from 1996 about how the game industry and the GDC had lost its community spirit. Being the founder of the GDC his views seemed to hold a great deal of weight, but I wanted to see first-hand what both the GDC and its community were like and make up my own mind on the issue.

What I liked about the GDC 2003:

I liked speakers that gave an entertaining presentation, rather than a boring-but-informative one. Speakers such as Warren Spector, Chris Taylor, Jaime Greismer, and Marty O'Donnell managed to keep my interest regardless of what they were talking about.

I also liked how a lot of the lectures were released on the GDC site and Gamasutra for free viewing shortly after the conference. The Written Proceedings CD that came with the Classic Pass was also useful. It was good to be able to check out many of the lectures and roundtables I couldn't go to.

Three conference sessions that I enjoyed in particular were Methods for Playtesting Games, Halo: Development Evolved, and Warren Spector's Keynote.

In Methods for Playtesting Games I learned techniques for conducting playtesting -- what to do and what to avoid doing -- and some of the theory and psychology behind setting up good tests and getting meaningful feedback. The speakers showed some videos taken from the playtesting of Halo, which were useful as well as entertaining examples.

Halo: Development Evolved was pretty funny, particularly the half-masked lecture slides. The speakers gave some good advice regarding their experiences with Halo and their company's development process: how their workplace is set up, their workflow, their in-house tools, and other things. It was good because it took the point-of-view of a real company and a real project that was a success, rather than some theoretical process.

Warren Spector's Keynote tackled innovation in games and countered the commonly heard argument that sequels and licenses are producing a stagnant and uncreative industry. He believes that being a sequel or licensed property has little to do with whether it is innovative or whether it is good -- its quality comes down to its creators. He cited examples such as the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings trilogies, and some comic books. From it I learned that I'm not the only one who thinks that way.

What I didn't like about the GDC 2003:

I didn't like how there were about twenty-five sessions per hour (lectures, roundtables, panels, etc.) because I could only go to one. In most slots there were about five events I really wanted to go to. Many people I spoke to agreed with me on this. I think they should have been spread out over a few more days, or perhaps a copy of the Audio Proceedings could have been given out with some of the more expensive conference passes.

Throughout the conference I noticed that quite a few speakers knew their material well, but weren't good speakers or weren't well organized. For example, some stuttered a lot, some said "umm" and "ah" way too much, some paused for long silences while thinking, and some ran into overtime. In addition, I think a lot of the presentations suffered from a lack of technical preparation and testing. For example, many people had problems with audio or their PowerPoint slides, which delayed the lecture for several minutes.

Advice to Future Scholarship Recipients:

Firstly, a lot of the lecture material at the GDC can be learned from books or the Internet. Some of the lectures come directly from articles that you can read in Game Developer Magazine or download free from Gamasutra.com. If you check out those resources first it might help you narrow down what sessions you want to attend based on what you already know.

Secondly, if you're shy then make an extra effort to say "Hi" and introduce yourself to people. One of the great things about the GDC is the chance it gives you to meet other people in the industry. I have been told by many people from all different fields of work that "It's not what you know, it's who you know." As an example, a few years back many of my friends applied for a vacation job in engineering, all having very high GPAs -- they were all turned down. The guy who scored the job had a low GPA, but his dad was the boss of the company.

The GDC is an important step if you're serious about your career because it gives you the opportunity to broaden you horizons and build up a network of contacts.

Endnote:

There are a lot of things people say about what could be done better in the games industry; for example, the artistic quality of games, workers' rights, Software Quality Assurance, and so forth. However, I think that if you want things to change then you have to put the effort in, I don't think much can be achieved by turning your back on it. I can't really comment on Chris Crawford's opinion of the change in community spirit because I don't know what it was like back in those days, but most of the people I met were quite friendly and enthusiastic.

Overall, I thought the GDC was a great experience for two main reasons: the things I learned and the people I met. I will definitely be attending the Australian GDC in future years (a trip from Australia to the U.S. is costly!).