Middle of Week 6

There's not a lot to report this week, so I'll talk about the Game Development Conference happening in less than three weeks in San Francisco. I managed to line up an interview with a recruiter for EA Games. No, it's not for me. I'm interviewing her. I'm writing an article for Loki's Planet about what recruiters in the game industry look for candidates, how they find them, what frustrates them about their job, etc. I think I mentioned I have a couple other meetings lined up at GDC. I've signed up for a lot of parties as well.

GDC is interesting. Once the doors close at 6pm for the night, you can go to any bar, club, or restaurant within a five block radius of the conference and it's going to be filled with game industry people looking to network. It's a good idea to sign up for exclusive parties though. Often a company will rent out a place and only let in people that RSVPed. Some of these events cost money. Nearly all of them involve alcohol. There are several a night, meaning I probably won't get a lot of sleep.

I'm not much of a drinker, but I did drink a lot last year at E3 since I was going out to clubs with some friends I have in LA. Unlike SF, LA is spread out and the area around the LA convention center where E3 is, isn't all that particularily a great neighborhood. So all the after parties were at specific places. That was actually a good thing since you drove a ways to go to a specific place filled with other game developers who were also looking to network.

Considering that I'll be hanging out with the crew from Loki's Planet at GDC, I have a feeling I'll be drinking a lot. GDC is a pretty exciting conference if you're into making games. It's so strange to be around a huge number of people just like me. You can walk up to anyone, start talking about game development, and they'll be really excited.

Game developers tend to be social awkward people. Also 90% of the industry is male. At E3, I found it pretty odd hanging out at clubs filled with dudes and walking up to guys I didn't know to start conversations. But usually I'd get reactions like, "Yay, someone's finally talking to me," and it was fine.

Let's see. Like I said, not much to talk about team progress so far. One of the artists brought in a huge amount of concepts, but just his original drawings because he keeps forgetting to scan stuff. Otherwise, a number of people were either sick or unable to make it, so this week wasn't vastly productive. We have two animals models created. These will be important for reasons I hope we can talk about soon. We're also working on creative high resolution models for a more interactive new website. Our two technical artists on the team want to start posting their own dev blogs, so I'll set that up soon. Otherwise, there's a lot in the works, just not much finished right now.