GDC
Yep, The Game Developers Conference is next week.
I’ve attended several GDCs over the years including my first back in 1993, where I met Ernest Adams, Chris Crawford and Scott Kim and Alex Pajitnov. You can Wiki each of those to see why I’d bother to mention them, if you don’t already know who they are.
I think there were less than 3000 people at that one, but now more than 22,000 people will attend. The last time I attended was 2010 where I had a celebrity encounter with Masi Oka, his female friend and just me in an elevator. No, I didn’t push the stop button…but I did geek-out worse than Sheldon, I’ll tell you about it another time.
Ok, So I lived in Silicon Valley for 14 years, a place that I lovingly refer to as Nerdvana. And if Silicon Valley is Nerdvana, then the GDC is a holy city that exists for one-week every year. And when you look around, it’s obvious that the geeks will inherit the earth.
This year is special in that I’ll know more people attending than ever before. From Georgia alone, they’ll be between 10 and 20 people that I’ll know from the GGDA and IGDA groups in Atlanta (The 3rd Tuesday of each month is the monthly meet-up for IGDA and it’s my little piece of Nerdvana in the Peach State). Then there’s a handful of folks that I’ve worked for and with since 1993 when I hung up my Business-Programming-Shoes and traded them in for my Game-Programming-Shoes.
One other last thing that will be different this year is that I have a semi-successful Game Franchise that I own that I didn’t have last time. So I’ll be looking for even more distribution channels and possibly to form partnerships for future games.
I’m even going to an RPI (my Alma Mater ’79) hosted evening event which I believe that I’ll be the oldest person there. (30-50 people from RPI all connected to the Game Industry…who’d a thunk it.)
And I get to spend a little time with Mike Welch, a friend of mine and the creator of the hugely successful Pocket Tanks (Google it…You’ll love it)…and I think he even mentioned buying me a steak dinner. He’s the only successful PC and Mobile developer I have the pleasure of knowing. (Pocket Tanks even hit #4 on The App Store (yeah, THE APP STORE, you know, Apple)…when it first launched))
I’m a social nerd (more than most) and I love reconnecting with old friends. It’s going to be an exciting week and I might even talk myself into blogging each day while I’m there.
It’s been a very good year for Clutter and Clutter-III is beginning to shape-up into the best Clutter yet…and the GDC will energize me like no other event can. When I get back, I’m going to try to Blog every day as I sprint to the finish for Clutter-III.
Cassavaugh Out.