The 2011 Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) was held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California. I like many other ETC students chose to attend this particular conference because this is the largest gathering of video-game development professionals, companies, students and enthusiasts. Game developers present their work and share useful information through talks, presentations, and expos. This was also a great place for the ETC family to reunite, students from the Silicon Valley Campus, Pittsburgh Campus, faculty and alumni were all present. GDC also provides attendees with tremendous networking opportunities through the expo, after hours parties and simple conversations.

There were tons of sessions to choose from based on varying subjects like business, audio, game design, programming, visual art and monetization.

A lot of people debate on whether to attend sessions or to network with industry professionals. So I tried to do both. It always helps if you have a planned schedule (doing some research on the talks and the speakers always helps) for the conference so you can at least attend the talks that you really want to attend and still have time to talk to some industry professionals, learn from their experiences and ask them questions. People were eager to share what they knew from their experiences in the industry with others and were also interested  in learning the work of other people. The GDC slogan of “Learn  Network Inspire” really hits the mark in describing what the conference is all about. One of my favorite presentations from this year’s GDC were the IGF/GDC Awards 2011.

One of the ETC teams from the Silicon Valley Campus – Team Ethereal presented their medieval combat game at the Expo, they received some good feedback from the industry and were encouraged on by the ETC folks present.

All in all GDC is a great way to know about the current status of the video-game industry and it also provides insight into the direction the gaming industry is headed in and future technologies. It also allows you to meet and talk to industry professionals which one might not be able to do in their day to day life, you may well also get a chance to speak to your industry idol! I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the gaming industry to attend it, it’s totally worth your time and effort. I think after attending my first GDC it has also provided me with guidelines on how to attend my next GDC, so I am highly looking forward to attending the conference again next year!!