Gamedev events in Europe
So I was thinking of going to Europe for a trip in August (I'm an Eurovirgin), so I thought why not have a look and see if I can attend a conference or something. So I googled. And I saw GDC Europe was on 19-21 in Germany.
Then I saw this:
So just wanted to ask you experienced peeps:
1. are these all worth going to, if you happen to be in the neighbourhood? And
2. if you go, what do you do?
3. What should be your goals?
4. Should you go with/without a game/release under your belt?
5. How do you go by "yourself"?
Then I saw this:
And that's just August!!! Holy Crap!August
1-4 QuakeCon 2013 Dallas, Texas
3-4 Gaymer X 2013 San Francisco, California
7-8 India Game Developers Conclave (IGDcon) Bangalore, India
8-11 Dare Indie Fest 2013 Dundee, United Kingdom
8-11 Dare ProtoPlay 2013 Dundee, United Kingdom
9-11 Nine Worlds Convention 2013 London, United Kingdom
10 GameLoop 2013 Cambridge, Massachusetts
11-13 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence in Games (CIG) 2013 Niagara Falls, Ontario
15-18 Gen Con Indy 2013 Indianapolis, Indiana
15-18 PLAY Guayaquil, Ecuador
19-21 Game Developers Conference Europe 2013 Cologne, Germany
19-23 Notgames Fest 2013 Cologne, Germany
19-20 Respawn Gathering Cologne, Germany
19-21 GAMEON-NA'2013 San Diego, California
20-22 Serious Play Conference Redmond, Washington
21 CODAME GAMES San Francisco, California
21-25 Gamescom 2013 Cologne, Germany
22-24 Digital Game Expo (DGEX) 2013 Novo Hamburgo, Rio Grande do Sul
26-28 Serious Games & Social Connect Conference 2013 Singapore
26-29 DiGRA 2013 Atlanta, Georgia
28-29 PAX Dev 2013 Seattle, Washington
28-30 Unite 2013 Vancouver, British Columbia
30-2 PAX Prime Seattle, Washington
30-2 Dragoncon 2013 Atlanta, Georgia
31-1 Play:Vienna 2013 Vienna, Austria
So just wanted to ask you experienced peeps:
1. are these all worth going to, if you happen to be in the neighbourhood? And
2. if you go, what do you do?
3. What should be your goals?
4. Should you go with/without a game/release under your belt?
5. How do you go by "yourself"?
Comments
I really think it's worth travelling, and seeing game development in other places. I think it's fantastic seeing how different and how similar it is, and I've always come back from GDC both pooped (long flight) and pumped. I also think that going for the sake of going might be a waste of money, so it's good that you're doing some research. What I think is particularly useful is to be a bit active in networking with people internationally beforehand. So, in my case, I've been cold-mailing people for years, asking questions, learning things, taking courses, etc. So by the time I went to GDC, I had some acquaintances I'd organised meetups with (from Blizzard, Valve, Naughty Dog, Bioware), as well as events I'd planned to go to where I could learn from even more people (Polycount meetups, mixers, where I met even more people, from Valve, Irrational, Gearbox, Double Fine, some others). And many industry people know other industry people, so just by hanging out with a tech artist at Valve, I ended up having dinner with tech artists at Microsoft and at Volition, etc. I knew who I wanted to meet, who I wanted to talk to, and I placed myself in the best positions I could to meet and talk to them.
By now, it's probably obvious that my goal was to interact with AAA game tech artists. (A side goal was to do the same things with indie developers, but I was much less successful interacting with them, in part because I'd prepared much less for that, and my art portfolio wasn't indie-focused.) For a long while, I wasn't sure we had enough of a local game industry to have long-term, sustainable work with decent income. I wanted to keep my options open, and to do that I felt I needed to know whether I could find work overseas if I wanted to. I also felt that only AAA studios would be in a position to pay for the move, as indies, being much smaller, generally gave me the impression that it'd be very unlikely for them to jump through the hoops of getting the government to grant me a work visa, along with all of the costs involved. So yeah, for the most part I was aiming to see the portfolios of my competition and gauge how I compared, see if there were particular skills I was lacking, as well as see how many studios were looking for tech artists, and if we were in as much demand as I'd heard.
As someone who's an introvert, I found taking some of my art along to be invaluable. I'm not really someone who can just talk to people about arbitrary stuff and network my way to victory that way, and I found that flashing my art portfolio around was useful both in terms of getting feedback, and in terms of being a pretty meaty talking point. I believe it's the same thing with game prototypes if you've got them.
None of this required me to be travelling with anyone, and although both times I went with other South Africans, my goals were always different, so I seldom saw them. In some ways, I think being alone is a bit of an advantage, in that you're forced to network, or face standing awkwardly alone, but I think that's a particular obstacle that I face just because I'm an introvert. Going with a super sociable friend could have many benefits.
Your goals are different to mine, I imagine, but I think the overall approach would be pretty similar.
Going to a GDC has more costs because you have different levels of pass to the conference - do you pay to access all the talks, only some of them, only the expo?
I would say that something like GDCE is going to be much broader than AMAZE was because it's not just focused on one area of the world/industry. But it'd also be different because of the sorts of people that are going to be there. Obviously if you have a game to show off, carry that with you. Extra points if you can get into something like a Megabooth, but that's expenditure and stress and all sorts of different stuff to consider, so that's up to you and how you feel about working yourself to death on holiday ;)