I was so happy that someone took my morning shift for the Speaker’s Lounge. It gave me time to finish tweaking my resume, print some copies, and run over to the Career Pavilion. I was expecting it to be very busy since Friday was the day student passes were allowed on the floor. However, I barely had to wait to meet with the recruiters there. It might have just been lucky timing on my part.
Already having an idea of who I wanted to visit, I made my approach to selected booths. I didn’t come looking for a job, but instead internship opportunities and additional feedback on how I could improve my resume. I was most pleased with my experience with Sony and Konami. They both gave me wonderful, detailed feedback about my resume and told me about potential internship opportunities for me on the horizon. Nintendo impressed me too by offering to assist me in improving my resume as well. There was probably a grin on my face as I left the Career Pavilion. This is because the feedback I got made me feel confident and optimistic for the future. Words can not describe my undying enthusiasm for this industry and my excitement to be a part of it.
GDC was definitely a conference full of love for Journey. My next shift was for “The Art of Journey” with speaker Matt Nava. Not that I mind. If you couldn’t tell, I’m a pretty big fan of the game, and as a new media artist I was looking forward to this talk all week. Arriving early, I was a little surprised to discover that a smaller room was selected for this talk. I was certain that it was going to fill up, and I prepared accordingly. The room ended up packed, just like I predicted, but it was one of the smoothest sessions I had the honor of managing. I really think this was the result of good communication between me and other CAs, the A/V technicians, and Matt. Afterwards, I was able to briefly introduce myself to Matt and I talked to him about his new studio, Giant Squid. I love its mission to “create artistic games that deliver beautiful, meaningful, and timeless experiences to a wide range of people.” Quite frankly, I’m pretty excited to see what Giant Squid and Matt Nava himself will produce in the future. There’s so much potential!
Unfortunately, I didn’t have much time after Matt’s talk until I had to go help out with another session called “Breaking in Game Biz!” Part of me was hoping to gleam a little insight from this talk, but at the point I was in my career path, I actually did not find it to be very helpful. Luckily, the rest of GDC was amazingly insightful. I met inspirational people and I had a whole new network of friends who shared my passion and drive for this fantastic industry. Industry is a word that doesn’t due it justice, because everyone honestly feels like family.
The CA postmortem was bittersweet. Helping bring a sense of closure to to a pretty amazing week, it marked the end of very successful GDC. After the CA postmortem, I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to GDC and all my new friends just yet. Neither was the majority of the other CAs. I’ve decided to join a group of CAs in playing a game called “Witch Hunt.” This was only my second time playing, and I used that to my advantage in order to achieve victory. Yes, I actually won a game of Witch Hunt! The story about how that was accomplished is pretty amusing to tell. However, I’ll save that for another time. Just know that I am not a witch.
GDC blog entries: