Gaming Outdoors: GDC Austin 2009

Living in DFW is not exactly what one would consider the epicenter of video game culture. Hell, we can barely keep the businesses alive up here, but Austin on the other hand is thriving. Mostly due to the rising popularity of MMO's, Austin has become home to 46 Developers, Publishers and industry related businesses. For a guy looking to get a job in gaming, I figured I could take a quick trip down to the Austin Game Developers Conference. *Note, that figure above came from http://www.gamedevmap.com/, a must stop on the internets if your looking to get a job in gaming. How was the conference though? Not so great honestly. First off, I am not looking for a job in design and I know that this conference is specifically about design (oops!). It is a place where various artists, programmers, and companies come together and share ideas for the benefit of the industry. So going into this, a Graduate student looking for a job in Marketing or PR is a little out of place. Still I paid my $100 and was gonna hit some panels and the show floor, try to take advantage of the opportunity. Altogether the panels were interesting, I went to the Friday morning keynote, took in a panel on building a resume and website for getting a job in gaming, along with a few others. So far everything was going well, but the show floor kind of killed it for me. No one was taking resumes, especially for my position. It seems everyone has wised up and taken the online route, rather than trying to roll out of a convention with 20 lbs. of paper. Then, there were only 2 Publishers there, Bethesda and Sony. So, I threw a few business cards around, made a few contacts, but little progress. I think that if I was in design, it may have been a more fruitful experience, but I probably won't do it again. One thing I learned in the resume panel, I have a much better chance at getting a job in the industry if I can make this blog successful, so everybody follow me!