GDC Canada 10

So, GDC. Game Developers Conference, which has the same acronym as my industry membership, holds their conferences around various parts of the world - USA San Fran (Prime), USA Austin (Online), China, Europe, and finally the newest, 2nd run, is Canada. These conferences are a gathering of professionals from the gaming industry to talk, discuss, learn, inform, promote, network almost anything related to the gaming industry. I waded among the sea of pros, which wasn't that thick of a sea actually. It was a light and pleasant crowd, and then there was the occasional one that talked too much, but that's normal.

GDC Canada was situated at the Vancouver Convention Centre this year, though only a mere floor, which was sufficient (to a certain extent) for the size of the conference. I must say, whoever designed the convention map in the program UPSIDE DOWN is not very smart... for obvious reasons. Shame on their graphic designer.

As unrelated as all the panels I visited may seem, all the panels I went to (minus one) were all inspiring and interesting, regardless of its relevance to my present career. Just thought I'd note.

Day 1
I couldn't wake up for the 9:30 keynote opener. It was about social gaming, which was a meh topic for me so I took my time. My first session was the 'Ask the Decision Makers' at 11 where they featured four guys of different professional backgrounds (Capcom, Next Level, Playstation Network, F9E) and companies discuss pitching. What the higher ups want to see, and how to sell your idea well.

1:30 was 'Character Voices' with Zach Hanks where he touched on conceptualizing, casting and recording voices for characters in games. Awesome to know that he was involved in Dawn of War II. He was an even more amazing voice actor.

At 3, I sat in on 'The Art of Conversion' which was probably the least interesting to me as it revolved around social gaming.

4:30, 'Can We Talk? - Speech in Videogames' turned out to be a lot more technical than expected, though was still informative. Again, there were reps from various companies (Blue Castle, EA, Radical, Proganda) touching on their expertise and the process of making, organizing and using speech/dialog data.

Day 2
Started the day off with an awesome session on 'Bringing Dragon Age to Life' at 11 where the lead animator and lead character designer both came in to talk about the process they went through to create such a diverse and memorable cast, both main and side characters. Then they threw in some teaser monsters (The Harvester and the Strider) from the next expansion following Awakening. Means I'm holding off on another run of Dragon Age for a bit longer!

1:30 was Sony's presentation and demo on Playstation Move and Stereoscopic 3D technology. The room was too small to fit the amount of people who showed up to check it out. They first went through to explain their Stereoscopic 3D technology to come and they even had us use 3D glasses. The 2nd half was the background to the Playstation Move and a live demo using the developer demo kit. It's impressive enough that I might actually want one for those Playstation Move games to come just by seeing what can already be done via just the demo.

To finish it off, 4:30 was a lecture on leader practices by Brian Sharp of Bungie. The room was surprisingly insanely packed. The lecture was also nicely packed with some enlightening advice as well. Self note: will work on locking eyes.

The number of companies in the Expo hall were a bit disappointing, as I did expect more companies to participate. I haven't visited other/previous GDCs, so I don't think I can judge fairly though. Regardless, ModNation Racers was playable in there and I got to give it a whirl. There was a bar in the middle of the hall too. Not sure what it meant. I didn't ask.

The whole conference wasn't all just a one-way dialog: I somehow managed to establish some "connections" which I hope will see through eventually.

I also saw Shane Bettenhausen pass through. His name slipped my mind during that moment so I couldn't give him a shout out. Probably the only guy I recognized at the conference besides Tommy Tallarico who came to do his keynote for the game career seminar. Speaking of him, I hear VGL was not bad. CHRONO MUSIC - WHY NOT MY YEAR?!

Overall it was a pretty great conference for those who know more or less the ins and outs of the gaming industry and want to dive deeper and with more detail. The conference showed just how much this social gaming thing is really taking over too. LONG LIVE HARDCORE D:!

(Tagging this under conventions, even though it isn't one.)