GDC 2004
I spent Wednesday at the GDC and I have to say it was excellent. I served on a panel discussing Quality of Life and a roundtable on the same subject. Unfortunately I did a crappy job of presenting on the panelword to the wise: public speaking is a real skill that needs to be maintained and practiced (and a good presentation requires good prep). The roundtable went well though and we talked about some really good stuff. I was a fan of the idea of having an IGDA Top 50 Studios To Work For each year, sorta like Forbes does for all industries.
There was a lot of talk about unionization, which was a little startling to me. I’m not a real fan of unions but a lot of people seem to feel that we either do something to patch up the QoL issues or we are going to be faced with that debate in the next few years.
Neil Youngs talk about how to organize ones efforts in game design and pacing was really good as was Dave Perry’s talk on how to be a good producer. I would have loved to go to more, but I didn’t want to neglect my duties at work. I really think EA should send more people to the GDC, but the powers that be decided to only send a handful this year and I went on my own pass. It seems like such an awesome learning and relationship building opportunity to me…