2010 Game Developers Conference

[peter5992]

Good morning everyone:

Does anyone here plan on attending the 2010 GDC next week in SF? If so drop me a PM - I'd love to meet you in person.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Peter
http://www.summeroflovemusic.com

[mazz]

I'll be there Wed and Fri for sure!

[stevebarden]

Hey Peter, I'll be up there on Fri and Sat only.

Mazz, it looks like I'll be attending the GANG Awards on Friday evening from 6-8 pm, so maybe we could hook up after that?

Looking forward to it!

Steve

[davewalton]

I'll be there Wed and Fri for sure!

Lucky duck

[zircon]

I'll be there Wed and Fri for sure!

Hey, awesome! I'm going for the whole thing I think we're going to have a VI Control meetup at some point... want to exchange cell #s?

[peter5992]

My schedule is kind of a moving target but I plan to be there this afternoon (Thursday), tomorrow and maybe Saturday.

John - I'll give you a call tomorrow.

[mazz]

As much as I'd love to be there today, I HAVE to get my taxes done but I'll be hitting it all day tomorrow and Saturday. Lots of good stuff in the audio world happening both days!

[peter5992]

Steve, sent you a pm - would be nice to try to hook up w you and Mazz tomorrow (sat).

One thing I learned this week - not for the 1st time - is to plan things in advance!

[mazz]

Yesterday (Friday) was quite productive. The Audio GANG awards were fun and it was a place to meet and hang with big time composer agents , big time composers (Inon Zur, Jesper Kyd, Sean Beeson, Tommy Tallarico, etc.), and the after party at Pyramind was an excellent place to network and schmooze.

http://www.pyramind.com/

Got to spend some quality time with Steve Barden and Zircon, and will see them again today, hopefully!

Going back today to hand out a few select CDs and try to reconnect with a few folks before the conference ends.

If you're serious about composing for games, the GDC is a must-do.

See you next year!!

Mazz

[stevebarden]

My first GDC was a great experience. I was only able to go for two days (Fri and Sat). I did not attend any seminars. My main goal was to make connections with game companies and future potential employers. Since my time was limited I thought it would be a good idea to organize a list of companies (from the GDC web site) that were potential game developer companies. It would make no sense to just walk the expo floor randomly talking to companies only to find out that they are engine developers and don't actually develop games themselves. They have no use for music!

My list consisted of 86 companies. I loaded the list into a spreadsheet and sorted it based on their location on the expo floor. I wanted to keep my walking to a minimum. I think I still ended up walking about 10 miles! I had trouble finding some companies that I had on my list and finally came to the conclusion that many of them dropped out at the last minute due to financial reasons. Attendance was down this year as compared to prior years. Participating in the conference would be a huge expense for some of the smaller companies.

Most of the would-be job seekers were programmers, graphic designers, etc. I found most of the companies I spoke with were very receptive to taking my CD. More than a handful of companies I spoke with responded with comments like "Yes, we're going to be needing some music for a project in about 3 months", and "Music is not something we're very good at, we could sure use some help!", and "Our main audio guy is going to be leaving the company soon and will have an opening".

I felt very good about the connections I made. In all, I handed out about 45 CDs. Originally I had planned on making the CDs myself, but the time and printer ink expense convinced me to just do a short-run 100-CD duplication project with DiscMakers. The packaging looks very professional, so I think that helped in my presentation.

I think that as a composer, if you have any interest in working in the video game industry you need to attend events like the GDC. And do your homework! Keep up with what's going on in the industry. Know what games are out and what's popular. Know something about the music and the composers of those games.

I also attended the Audio GANG Awards ceremony hosted by Tommy Tallarico. That was a fun event, along with the after-party!

But best of all was getting to hang out with Mazz for a couple of days and really getting to know him. What a great guy he is!

TRAVEL TIP: When visiting a city that you don't know very well, try to find a friend who lives there to show you around and take you to the best restaurants!

Steve