What to expect for your first trip to GDC - A game dev diary

We asked game developers Sasha Mutch and Joel Davison from Wali Studios to document their experiences at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), a five-day industry leading conference for game developers. Delve into their diary entries as they break down their week at GDC which includes their favourite sessions, places to eat and key takeaways.

Sasha and Joel at the airport departing for GDC

Sasha:
Hey I’m Sasha Mutch, Co-founder and Art lead of Wali Studios. I’ve worked in the games and animation industry for over 10 years and was the Story Artist on the Bafta and Grammy nominated Stray Gods: The roleplaying musical!
Joel:
I’m Joel Davison, Dunghutti & Gadigal mob, the other Wali studios co-founder, my responsibilities are production, design and programming. I’ve worked in the tech industry for the past 7 years, where I’ve led agile software delivery teams through innumerable projects.
Sasha:
We decided to take the leap last year to start our own studio and are working on a game about traumatised space pirates committing faster than light heists! It’s a tile tactics card game where every card is a crew member’s memory. It’s called WyrmSpace Tactics and we wanted to start networking and showcasing the prototype around at GDC this year.
Joel:
We were lucky enough to attend GDC with the support of VicScreen and Screen Australia through their GDC travel fund and Future Leaders Delegate (FLD) funding respectively - this covered our major costs, such as hotels, flights and insurance.
Sasha:
So let’s tell you a little about our trip.
 

Pre GDC

Touching grass before the big week.

Muir Woods National Monument hike in California

Sasha:
Our flights over to San Francisco took around 24 hours due to delays, but we managed to pull through and fight jet lag by taking short naps on the plane like me, or just being burdened by insomnia like poor Joel. We got in on Saturday night, two days before GDC was set to begin.
Joel:
Waking up early on Sunday, we had a scheduled team trip to the Muir Woods national monument with the Future Leaders Delegates. Honestly, any future travel I do is going to start with taking the time to connect with the land I’m travelling to and breathing some fresh air before committing to a big trip.
We did a quick hike of the Woods and even got to meet a banana slug!

On the way back to the city we stopped by Sausalito and had our first Mexican meal of the trip - can’t recommend this enough - since we’re so removed from Mexico geographically back home, you should take advantage of the abundance of authentic Mexican Cuisine throughout the city.

Joel, Sasha and some of the Future Leaders Delegation at Day of the Devs

Attendees at Day of the Devs

We then took off to Day of the Devs.
Day of the Devs is an event put on each GDC by Double Fine & iam8bit to showcase upcoming indie games by emerging developers. This was a surreal experience - we’ve been plugged into Day of the Devs for years, and to attend in person was incredible. We each have our highlights but getting hands on with Despelote a couple of days before it won the Indie Games Festival award for “Excellence in Sound Design” might be my pick!

Also we got to chat to Matthew Jackson, who was manning the “My Arms Are Longer Now” booth! It was inspiring to see a Naarm based team showing off their game amongst so many other talented developers.

 

GDC Day 1 - Monday

Talks and prototypes.

Crowd watching a presentation at GDC

Sasha:
I started the day by joining the GDC morning run club organised by Logan Williams, then grabbed our badges and made my way to my first few talks:

• Maximising your visibility with online festivals & free during development: An Unusual marketing strategy. - Derek Lieu, Dana Trebella & Walt Destler.
• How to plan for Audio as a Developer - Em Halbersadt.
• Marketing your game under the new steam rules. - Chris Zukowski.

All these talks were great references for new indie studios that need advice on marketing, audio and business development.

Play testing The Wyrmspace Tactics Prototype at the BYOG Australian Showcase

That night we showcased Wyrmspace Tactics’ prototype at the BYOG Australian showcase event held at Buzzworks and organised by Matt Schenkel and Dylan Polglaze. We were nervous, excited and only partially prepared, but it turned out well. It was a nice chill event and we got a lot of really great feedback on the prototype. It fuelled our passion for the project and we ended the night with other fellow Aussie devs at a San Francisco staple, The Melt. Classic burgers and fries to clog the arteries.

 

GDC Day 2 - Tuesday

The day we'd been preparing for.

Joel:
The day started with myself joining Sasha and our good friend Chantel Eagle from the Naarm based studio Little Pink Clouds for a run with the GDC morning run club.
Then we drilled our pitch! We made sure we had it on lock before we left for our meeting.

Nothing anyone said truly prepared me for the Marriott lobby. It’s a common meeting spot near the Moscone Center where GDC is held. It is maybe the single busiest place on planet earth during GDC.

We pitched our game in the crowded hotel lobby and had a great conversation with the publisher we were meeting. It may be that nothing comes of it, but we left the conversation feeling like we did a fantastic job and were more confident in our game and our chances of finding our audience.

Ramen from the restaurant Mensho 

We debriefed with some friends at Mensho ramen, which despite a long line was more than worth the wait! As we were paying the bill we were lamenting that we’d likely not get to visit Mensho again, until the server informed us that there’s a Mensho back home in Naarm! The moment I’m hit with a craving for good ramen I’m making a beeline there. (This article is NOT sponsored by Mensho!)

 

GDC Day 3 - Wednesday

Walking the show floor.

Expo hall at GDC

Sasha:
This was a bit of a chill day where we spent some time with the Future Leaders Delegation, and checked out the expo floor for a bit. The Indie Games Pavillion was filled with incredible games that I was excited to get my hands on back home! I attended the GDC Pitch Day where games on the show floor volunteered to showcase their pitch in front of an audience and receive feedback from publishers such as Finji, Outer Sloth, Raw Fury and more! These were great! I learnt so much about pitching and was keen to see these games get released. The feedback given was great insight into where the publisher landscape is at and what things they are on the lookout for.

That night was the IGF awards where we witnessed Consume Me by Jenny Jiao Hsia, swept the awards. There were some great speeches that addressed some hard-hitting issues the world is facing, and it was refreshing to see devs address this. We caught up with the Future Leaders Delegation and went for some awesome Yucateco food at El Sabor Yucateco.

 

GDC Day 4 - Thursday

Lost Levels and the Raw Fury Mix.

Joel:
I started the productive part of my day just in time to catch Chad Toprak and Heidi Borge at Lost Levels in Yerba Buena Gardens. Lost Levels is a community organised “unconference” that invites developers to give impromptu micro talks on whatever subject they’d like. Refreshing, re-energising and deeply humanising, I’d recommend keeping an ear to the ground for the details of Lost Levels in any given year.

After attending the Game Design micro-talks session (An annual instant watch on YouTube for me for the past who-knows-how-long), Sasha and I recollected ourselves and took the trip out to the tourist hot spot, Boudin’s Bakery for a hearty clam chowder with some of the Future Leaders Delegation folks before we hit the town for a night of partying!

Sasha:
By now we had said our elevator pitch a million times and it came naturally to us and were happy with how it was being received. But the most notable part of the day was attending the Raw Fury Mix. A Mixer put on by the folks at Raw fury and the Mix. It was a bar with loud pumping beats that you had to shout to speak to someone standing half a meter away from you. We met some awesome folk and stayed till the end of the night when all the free drink tokens needed to be used so it was shots after shots after shots. We ended up heading to the 24 hour Pinecrest Diner at 3 in the morning and ordered some classic diner food and a plate of spaghetti bolognese. Bless you Pinecrest Diner, you didn’t sober me up but you did put me straight to sleep.

 

GDC Day 5 - Friday

The Golden Gate Bridge.

Landscape image featuring the Golden Gate Bridge

Sasha:
Waking up with sleep in our eyes we realised we needed a restful but energizing day. We were invited to walk the Golden Gate Bridge by friends we made during our trip. It was exactly what we needed. Hair of the dog and all that. The bridge was wonderful if not a little loud. The hike to the west of the bridge was refreshing and wonderful. It was a tiny little crew, but we met some awesome folks and got to really connect.

Delegates from Screen Australia's Future Leaders Delegation

What better way to wrap up a hike and cure a hangover than head over to In and Out, a classic burger joint in America with some cheaper food options. We then ended the night with the Future Leaders Delegation and had a fancy dinner of lobster ravioli and Ahi tuna tartare at John’s Grill where we went through our highlights of the week. It was truly heartwarming to see everyone get something unique and useful out of GDC, mine oddly enough was meeting and finding support in the other Aussie devs. I’m excited to see them thrive and help them all out wherever I can.

 

Post GDC

We made it.

Cityscape of San Francisco

Sasha:
We took a few days after GDC to enjoy a bit of San Francisco. Here’s a few places we went to:

• Taqueria Mana - A delicious little hole in the wall with authentic Mexican food.
• The SF Moma - Great emotional works of art with a very fun gift shop I went back to twice.
• Fort Mason Center Farmers' Market - In my opinion some of the BEST food we had in San Francisco. If you are there on Sunday, be sure to get some crispy green onion pancakes!
• Musée Mécanique - An incredible museum of antique arcade artifacts!

 

The exterior of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

 

TLDRL:

• Sasha: I loved Meredith Hall’s advice of “if you can, attend GDC before you NEED to attend GDC.” We did exactly that and didn’t overwhelm ourselves too much by thinking we needed to hustle constantly.
• Joel: We were told that no matter what you do, you’ll never feel like you “did GDC the right way”, and that’s absolutely true. Writing this article drove home how much of an overwhelmingly busy week we had and in spite of all the things we learned, the connections we made, the bonds that were strengthened… There are still so many more missed opportunities, connections and roads untrodden. There’s just too much for even two people to experience in one week at GDC, and that’s okay!
• Sasha: If you’re like me and need time to decompress, make sure you let yourself rest. It’s easy to want to get the most out of a trip or conference like this but it might just mean you’re letting people meet you at your worst and that may not be helpful in the end.
• Joel: Video Games are a miracle and the people that make them are all interesting and passionate in their own ways! Coming from a career in the tech industry, I find it so energising to be on the same journey as so many folks filled with a love of the craft. Whether it’s at GDC or Melbourne International Games Week.

Top GDC related events to attend:

• Day of the Devs
• Lost Levels
• Slug World

Top San Francisco sites:

• Muir Woods
• Musée Mécanique
• SFMoma

Top eats in the area:

• Mensho
• Taqueria Mana
• Fort Mason Center Farmers' Market 

Sasha Mutch attended GDC with support from VicScreen’s Game Developers Conference travel funding program and Joel Davison was supported through Screen Australia’s Future Leaders Delegation - GDC. Learn more about VicScreen’s travel programs here.