Untold Entertainment's GDC Survival Guide

I've been intently following and commenting on the Puck Stops Here blog since its launch a few weeks ago. Now that it's my turn, I wanted to write about a topic so shocking, so outrageously incendiary that I would light the site on fire and generate a intensely passionate debate. Then we could all meet up at GDC have a good old fashioned gang brawl. I'm talking chains and brass knuckles. And maybe some fancy jazz hands, West Side Story-style.

The topic I had planned was so damning that I've decided to shelve it until I can afford personal bodyguard detail. So instead, as we find ourselves on the road to GDC (though I personally prefer to fly there), let me share some tips I've learned from my past two visits. I'll also share a few pearls of wisdom from my experiences at E3, the Game Developers Conference's coked-out train wreck of an older sibling.

Untold Entertainment's GDC Survival Guide

The Conference

• register before the conference starts, and take your swag bag back to your hotel. Go through it and toss out all the advertising. You've just shed five pounds. The most useful bits are the notepad and the pen – the normal pen, not the one that transforms into a rocket.

• conference tees go quickly. If you want a wearable keepsake, find out which convoluted hoops you have to jump through (wristbands, lottery systems, secret T-shirt kiosks in the sub-basement), and get you some swag

• try to ask a question at the mic after every panel, slyly introducing yourself and your company first. When the panel ends, all kinds of people who want to meet you or contract your services will come out of the woodwork. It's the next best thing to carrying around a megaphone (which is actually not allowed at GDC, I discovered. Read that fine print.)

• the roundtable discussions are a great place to gather candid intel in an intimate setting. Confidentiality is betrayed, and NDAs fly out the window, as folks divulge all their business secrets in the name of contributing to the discussion. It's like being in a self-help group packed with game industry insiders.

• don't miss the keynotes. This rule was conveyed to me by a wide-eyed delegate with all the gravity of a crucial life lesson, like “don't cross the streams”. He told me it was because Microsoft had once divided the delegates into four teams at their keynote, and gave a quarter of the attendees a free HDTV. The story is legendary. With GDC as big as it is, I doubt we'll see a repeat, but the “what if?” factor is enough to pack people in their seats at every keynote. Arrive early.
  

Food and Drink

• there's a yankee-fried Mexican restaurant near the Moscone Center called Chili's. Don't eat there. The food isn't authentic, but they've somehow managed to import all the Mexican water to the restaurant, if you get my drift.

• unless you have a group of high-powered execs to impress, don't buy dinner. It's a breeze to stumble across a party every single night, so you can subsist on horse doovers all week. One mini-hamburger may not tide you over, but pack away forty-seven of the little bastards and you'll be good to go.

Culture

• if you get a chance to meet one of your game design heroes at the conference, don't play it cool. You're in the game industry. Get your geek on. I had a total nerdgasm when I shook hands with Cyan's Rand Miller, the designer of MYST. And when I met Tim Schafer of LucasArts fame, I didn't wash my hand for two years. It became gangrenous and they had to amputate, but come on – Tim Schafer.
  


• every year, there's at least one outrageous party that everyone talks about, like the debaucherous spectacle at the Three Rings headquarters, or the CCP Games' whips-and-chains bacchanal last year at a San Francisco fetish club. But the parties I enjoyed most had music that was quiet enough to faciliate conversation, and comfy couch seats to kick back on. Autodesk's swank disco-era fete last year, replete with bean bag chairs and Atari 2600 consoles on every teevee tops my list of favourite parties.

San Francisco

• the city has TWO giant bridges: the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Other One. The conference center is closest to the Other One. Try not to look silly by extolling the virtues of the Other One, thinking it's the Golden Gate Bridge the whole time. People remember that type of thing. And then they blog about you years later in their GDC Survival Guides.

• the city hosts a lot of professional panhandlers. In contrast to Toronto's palm pilots, the fellas who prey on San Francisco's tourists put a lot more oomph into their pitch. Instead of a half-hearted “spare change?” muttered under someone's breath, I had three restaurant recommendations, a brief history of my hotel, and a bawdy joke. I rarely toss coins at our local folks, but the effort the Californians give it deserves a few greenbacks.

• don't bother visiting Alcatraz. If you've played the Alcatraz level in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, you get the gist.
  

Travel

• if you're flying back to Ontario or parts East, the best flight is the Friday night red-eye. Sleep on the plane. When you wake up, it's morning in Montreal, and the risk of jet lag plummets. Sure, you'll miss out on that little packet of pretzels they offer on a six hour flight, but keep in mind that you just ate forty-seven mini-hamburgers.

• We're not guilty of this ourselves, but here's a hot tip: if your company received public funding for a project, and it's widely known that you blew your deadline and failed to launch the project with its original scope, don't fly first class. It's tacky.
  

See you all at GDC in March!