Is going to a GDC a good way to get your foot in the door?
August 19, 2003 10:01 AM
London Games Week is approaching. I am almost ready to apply for jobs as a game programmer and have a demo just about finished. Would it be a good idea to go to GDCE, ECTS or PlayStation Experience to talk to the developers there about how to approach companies etc or is that not what those shows are appropriate for? Could I show or hand them my demo? It would cost me quite a bit to travel there but I will do it if it is worth it.
[edited by - Billy Lee on August 19, 2003 12:14:53 PM]
August 19, 2003 12:02 PM
Most of the developers are there trying to meet with publishers. Some may also have arranged to meet potential staff but going along in the hopes of bumping into someone who is a developer looking for staff and who isn''t actually walking between meetings isn''t the best use of the event. It would be better to have already con tacted companies that are looking for staff and arranged to meet with them.
Still you may meet people at the bars (provided you can see their badges) or looking at games on the stand and engage them in conversation. I would suggest you don''t open with "I want to be....." Start by asking them what they are doing, whats cool about it and then work round to asking if they have any tips on getting into the industry.
Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions
Game Development & Design consultant
Still you may meet people at the bars (provided you can see their badges) or looking at games on the stand and engage them in conversation. I would suggest you don''t open with "I want to be....." Start by asking them what they are doing, whats cool about it and then work round to asking if they have any tips on getting into the industry.
Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions
Game Development & Design consultant
Dan Marchant - Business Development Consultant
www.obscure.co.uk
www.obscure.co.uk
August 20, 2003 05:17 AM
A woman at the careers advisor service at my university said she might be able to get me to visit her husband''s game company so maybe I should just stick to that.
1,826
August 20, 2003 05:22 AM
Of course, there are other reasons to attend these events 
If you do go along with your demo, take your laptop (fully charged of course) so you can show it off, and have a set of CDs burnt with your demo and contact details, in case anyone takes a passing glance and is interested enough to want to investigate further in their own time.
If you want to be really quite snappy, you could try burning the demo to the small-size CDs rather than the traditional large ones. Keep some large ones too though, because slot-loading CD drives seem to have problems with the small CDs.
Superpig
- saving pigs from untimely fates, and when he''s not doing that, runs The Binary Refinery.
Enginuity1 | Enginuity2 | Enginuity3 | Enginuity4
If you do go along with your demo, take your laptop (fully charged of course) so you can show it off, and have a set of CDs burnt with your demo and contact details, in case anyone takes a passing glance and is interested enough to want to investigate further in their own time.
If you want to be really quite snappy, you could try burning the demo to the small-size CDs rather than the traditional large ones. Keep some large ones too though, because slot-loading CD drives seem to have problems with the small CDs.
Superpig
- saving pigs from untimely fates, and when he''s not doing that, runs The Binary Refinery.
Enginuity1 | Enginuity2 | Enginuity3 | Enginuity4
Richard "Superpig" Fine - saving pigs from untimely fates - Microsoft DirectX MVP 2006/2007/2008/2009
"Shaders are not meant to do everything. Of course you can try to use it for everything, but it's like playing football using cabbage." - MickeyMouse
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