Game Developers Conference 2018
Or, how I escaped the booth to roam free and love GDC
Game Developer Conference (GDC) 2018 focused on immersive tech, featured latest standalone headsets to support the metaverse experience, and provided the stage for key industry players to shake up the traditional conference format. Two big names, Unity and Magic Leap, dominated the online and onsite experiences this week by skipping the traditional Expo booths, pulling attendees into their owned branded spaces outside of the construction-hell of Moscone Centers. This year Mozilla skipped the booth as well, leaving me free from producer responsibilities! Instead, I took advantage of my unfettered schedule to actually enjoy the week and meet the 27,000 plus gamers and creators in town.
I love seeing great programming, and Unity did it best by having the entire week scheduled out clearly on their website, providing streaming and recording content online, as well as directing a lot of foot traffic to their main SF building, and then some.
In case GDC attendees couldn’t be bothered, they had a truck outfitted with VR gear as well — totally Insta and tweetable.
And once again, making their evening parties some of the most coveted social event to join.
Magic Leap, probably the crowned darling of this year’s Conference, created one of the most intriguing pop up spaces I have visited yet.
Along with special meetings and demos, Magic Leap hosted a women in tech breakfast session (furnished with comfy sofas and two barista stations!) to encourage female creators (along w their allies) to mix and mingle at a beautiful naturally lit space, catered with avocado toast and crafted coffee.
Who would say no to such a warm invitation?
Along with food and discourse, demos, of course, were available onsite at the Breakfast. And naturally, I gravitated towards the one with fur and ears. I am thankful that I did because it introduced me to creator extraordinaire, Nicole Lazarro, VR Dev at PlayWhiteRabbit, who tweeted a comment in which I wholeheartedly agree with : “A large percentage of our players have no interest in fighting and killing things. Instead they want to care and befriend things.” Several talks focused on the importance of empathy and keeping the human side of tech very much alive. Which made me sigh with relief as Unreal decided to reveal their cutting edge 3D graphics potential with synthetic human Siren (please, do NOT vote Siren as a women in tech you know…)
The evening concluded with our dedicated WebXR MeetUp core team meeting for happy hour to plan for our upcoming months for our SF community, and then joining the entire Bay Area community at Galvanize for the annual GDC WebGL/VR MeetUp.
And finally, I’ve been actually watching Kent, host of VoicesofVR podcast, live stream on Twitter his walkings, musings, demo-ings, and interviews at GDC this year. I was pleasantly surprised to hear his distinctly professional pod-cast voice behind me, and to meet him in real life! You never know who you’ll run into at GDC. Along with all the tech and the hype, the dinners and the hangovers, the people make the event a pleasure and a constant surprise - not to be missed. I guess that’s why I keep on going. See you all in 2019!
