{"id":3203,"date":"2016-03-18T17:22:57","date_gmt":"2016-03-19T00:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/?p=3203"},"modified":"2016-03-18T17:22:57","modified_gmt":"2016-03-19T00:22:57","slug":"departure-angle-on-viewer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/18\/departure-angle-on-viewer\/","title":{"rendered":"Departure Angle on Viewer"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ve used that title before, but I do know once again GDC has come to an end. The Game Developer\u2019s Conference has treated me very well over the past \u2026 uhh \u2026 darn near 20 years or so, and every year I think I\u2019m going to do a trip report. And every year I don\u2019t. But this year, I do know I\u2019m going to at least give a brief retrospective.<\/p>\n

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For those that don\u2019t know, the Game Developer\u2019s Conference is one of the largest conventions for computer game developers in the world – it might be the largest, but on the one hand I don\u2019t have Internet yet, and on the other hand just because it\u2019s huge doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s the biggest. (I used to think San Diego Comic-Con was the biggest media convention, but Comiket is 3 times its size).<\/p>\n

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In general, I find the biggest bang for the buck at GDC is the first two official days – Monday and Tuesday, the tutorials and summits. The next biggest bang for the buck is ad-hoc meetings between people – just getting together with people in the industry and chewing the fat. But, and this is the question I once had, how do you do that if you don\u2019t know anybody?<\/p>\n

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That\u2019s why on the next three days they have Roundtables – more informal discussions aimed at people in your specific area. For game AI programmers, there are the AI Roundtables hosted by Neil Kirby, but I\u2019ve been to other roundtables as well, and they\u2019re a great way to both learn about the field and to meet people of all different levels.<\/p>\n

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Now, the people you meet at a Roundtable may not be your best friends the first time that they meet you, but if you come back again and again – show up, be nice, and try to contribute – you\u2019ll build relationships that are enduring in time. For AI game programmers, there\u2019s the Game AI Programmer\u2019s Guild and some associated dinners; there will be one for your area too.<\/p>\n

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But beyond the first two days, there\u2019s two or three main draws to the conference for me. There are talks, of course, and some would say that those are the real meat of GDC – we wouldn\u2019t have a reason to come here to network if there wasn\u2019t something we\u2019re here for in the first place, whether it\u2019s a product announcement or a technical talk \u2026<\/p>\n

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\u2026 or an unexpected bit of wisdom, such as the story of the creator of Diablo, who turned down an offer from a friend of a friend to \u201cjust let me use that empty room in the back as my office. I\u2019ll give you ten percent of my company.\u201d Diablo was in crunch time, so he told him \u201cget lost kid\u201d \u2026 not knowing he was turning down $40 million dollars when Hotmail sold the following year for $400M.<\/p>\n

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Beyond the talks, there\u2019s the show floor, which is so full of interesting things that you can\u2019t begin to compress it into an easy tale; the pickings are better in some years than others, but you\u2019ll still see amazing stuff.<\/p>\n

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And \u2026 some more inexplicable stuff. I bet you didn\u2019t know cloud computing involved actual clouds, but they had one:<\/p>\n

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Finally, there\u2019s the GDC store, where you can get swag of all sorts, from GDC gear (which people often see me wearing) to game gear to books of all sorts.<\/p>\n

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For someone who believes the future of books is bright, I have to admit the pickings seem leaner each year \u2026<\/p>\n

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\u2026 but I still found some awesome books directly related to my area, and as much as we want ebooks to be everywhere, I just moments ago was chatting with someone at work who turned down a free PDF in favor of ordering a physical book on Amazon, because, like me, he found it easier to read that way.<\/p>\n

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Finally, if you\u2019re not local, GDC is a great chance to experience a new city. San Francisco is great, Union Square is a short walk, and there are many restaurants and coffeehouses and sights and parks that you can experience.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s better if you can experience it with friends too – so make time for your friends while they\u2019re in town.<\/p>\n

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-the Centaur<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ve used that title before, but I do know once again GDC has come to an end. The Game Developer\u2019s Conference has treated me very well…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[96,5],"class_list":["post-3203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gdc","tag-we-call-it-living","ratio-2-1","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}