Running the Gauntlet: My week at GDC
Running the Gauntlet: My week at GDC
Reflecting its host city of San Francisco, GDC combined awards and creativity with a screaming session.
I had the pleasure of attending the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco last week. This was my second time, having first attended to speak on behalf of AWS for Games in 2022. 2022 was an interesting time for the event; it being the first instance of GDC since lockdown ending, and so this year was an opportunity for me to see the real GDC.
But… if GDC is a reflection of the games industry, what would it actually be showing? The games industry is NOT in a happy place right now. More than 10,000 people were laid off in 2023, and 8,000 are showing as laid off in this year in Q1 alone! Studios impacted range from the smallest to the very largest, such as Epic Games and Microsoft.
Come dive into my stream of consciousness as I write about all things games, running and San Francisco (baby!)
Taking the San Francisco warp gate
I flew out and back with United Airlines - my first time! This worked out pretty well, to be honest. There were no dramas with anything related to the flights, other than the gate staff on the outbound leg causing chaos by deciding to call every single group simultaneously. I was feeling very flush that I was in ‘Priority Group 2’ (work perk despite having to endure cattle class), but then quickly realised that half the plane seemed to be in this group. ONE DAY I WILL BE TRULY SPECIAL.
Kudos to the United app developers as well. It is an app that is actually decent and actually gives you all the information that you might want. In a sea of vendor apps that are utterly terrible at times this was a breath of fresh air.
Immigration was seamless, thanks to a tip from a colleague to use the Mobile Passport Control (MPC) app. This very simple app is a replacement for those old paper immigration forms that used to get handed out towards the end of the flight. Using the app got me through passport control in about five minutes. The queue for everyone else was epic, and once word spread, others were quickly downloading the app to fill in the details to change lines.
In further evidence that I might be in some sort of The Good Place simulation, my baggage rolled off the line within 5 minutes, and the weather was mild and sunny all week.
All of these good vibes persisted when coming home. This was helped by me having cracked the “We’re going to arrive in London 30 minutes early” code some time ago. This without a doubt always means, “We’ll land early and then sit on the tarmac for at least 30 minutes because the gate staff don’t know we are coming for some reason”.
Uber to the hotel took about 25 minutes. As is standard with US hotel rooms, it was about the size of the entire downstairs of my house.
Running the gauntlet
My method of dealing with jet lag for short trips like this is really simple: I don’t deal with it. I doom myself to waking up at around 3-4 am every morning and going from there. The plus point is that my recovery upon coming home again is exceptionally quick.
I was determined to keep up my running regime during the week to help prevent myself putting on 19 stone from the local cuisine. My hotel was located within the Embarcadero district, and I could run to the highly popular waterfront route within a couple of minutes. A loop out to Fort Mason and back was a nice 10 kilometres. I discovered pretty quickly that everyone else out running at 7am is FASTER THAN ME: San Francisco breeds dedicated runners!
The decent number of people about (but not toooooo busy - the place is a real tourist trap later on) meant I felt safe. And I need to write about the elephant in the room: San Francisco has a bit of a reputation at the moment in terms of its (reported) decline.
With the thousands of people descending on the city for GDC, there was a high police and security presence (The number of stores with visible security in broad daylight was telling). The homeless and drug problem was obvious (I spotted used needles at one bus stop - nice) but nothing stood out compared to other US cities I have visited in recent years. However, I’m a 6’ man who can do a good impression of being athletic, so I very rarely get accosted. On numerous occasions I witnessed others, typically women, being targeted as a mark and needing to get away quickly. I was comfortable walking back from the GDC venue to my hotel in the evening along the main streets — but had read enough about BART to not fancy that at all.
Blue warrior needs food badly
This was a real mix.
I made the mistake of picking up breakfast at Moscone Centre just once. An anaemic sandwich, drink and apple cost $32. THIRTY-TWO ACTUAL DOLLARS.
Much better was grabbing breakfast after my morning runs from 5th Avenue Deli which was right next to the hotel. These sandwiches were epic. Imagine Subway but delicious and good. I suspect they had about a gazillion calories in but SO WORTH IT!
Other than that, I grabbed what I could amongst the chaos of running to and from meetings and the various evening events. Everything from Mexican, through classic American breakfasts to a staple Super Duper Burger.
I think I got the balance between exercise and ALL THE FOOD about right: My weight was pretty much the same once I returned home. The elevated number of steps from just walking everywhere no doubt helped as well.
What about the GAMES?
I should probably write about the conference itself.
It was a busy week, packed with meetings with customers, colleagues and partners. These stretched into the evenings as there were various events happening and it was impossible to go to all of them. On a personal level, it was wonderful to meet some of the key Godot Engine people, given I used it to create my gaming passion project. Godot has a decent sized presence at the show in terms of Expo footprint, and it makes me very happy to see it becoming more mature and adopted over time.
I helped to support one talk from Larian Studios on ‘Capturing the Magical Realm of Data Generated by Baldur's Gate 3’. This was heavily attended which was to be expected given the wonderful success of the game (a pivotal part of the talk was the game exceeding launch expectations).
Generative AI was, as expected, a big topic of the week. Saltwater Games presented ‘Harnessing Generative AI to Create Unlimited Content Within Game Worlds’. The part I liked here was the use of their ‘ThorAI’ to allow the player to customise their little drone helper with their voice. E.g. “Please talk to me like a cockney gangster”. There were many tech demos of GenAI littered throughout the conference, but of course the contentious elements were an overriding theme (Some studios still have an outright ban on Generative AI for philosophical reasons). 4 in 5 surveyed developers surveyed by GDC have ethical concerns over the technology. Giovanni Colantonio interviewed SAG-AFTRA’s Sarah Elmaleh on the union’s position on AI in gaming: It it is a good summary of the potential of the technology versus the challenges.
“There were people who thought the advent of talkies would be the end of the motion picture business. The lesson from that is that you can’t avoid new technology and, second of all, the sky thus far isn’t actually falling. It feels like it! I don’t mean to make light of anyone’s concern, especially as it comes to AI technology. It does contain within it the risk of an existential threat, but history teaches us that the only way out is through. You are not going to be able to skirt around technological development and protect people by just avoiding the technology.”
My favourite part of the accompanying Expo (feeling much more at full strength than my last visit) was the alt.ctrl.GDC section. It goes without saying that there is a huge amount of talent and creativity within the games industry. This exhibit took that up a notch, with its demonstrations of alternative control systems for games. There was a game using a WAFFLE IRON as a control interface. In the video below, it’s BAR CODE SCANNING!
Oh, and I will always be magnetically attracted to any retro gaming museum exhibits. I am duty bound to include a photo of Pong…
All of these positive stories immediately slam into the opposing force of the redundancies that have been hitting the industry. There were many attending that don’t have jobs right now. Amir Satvat did an outstanding job of securing free passes for those in need of them by working with numerous partners across the industry — this work is very much to be applauded!
Put it this way: When was the last time you attended a conference that featured a screaming session?
"Can we just get people together for just a moment of catharsis – a single minute, smack in the middle of this entire GDC, can we just have some cathartic caterwauling together, even if we can say nothing else, even if there's nothing else we feel like there's nothing else we can say at this moment, don't let GDC go by without acknowledging that collectively, we feel like things are not okay and we want things to be different."
The right sort of loot box
Then I went home.
I don’t go too overboard with going after swag from events any more. I got some decent t-shirts and socks (standard), but most of my focus was on assuaging the terrible guilt of abandoning my family for a week.
The pictured swag (Baseball caps, cute bears, totally random arm warmers) probably forms a large chunk of our monthly mortgage repayments.
I really enjoyed the week. It was busy and exhausting. However, I got to catch up with people from around the world I hadn’t seen for some time, meet others for the first time, and be totally immersed in this amazing industry of ours. Times are tough right now. Fingers crossed that the passion, creativity and sheer grit of those within Games pulls us safely to a more prosperous and stable future.