Game Developers Conference 2013

It has been a few years since I have been able to attend the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. That is a travesty considering I work for a video game company. I joined my current company just a few days after GDC and so I didn't attend that year. The next year, I was busy implementing a new system and couldn't break away for an afternoon to attend. Last year I was set to attend, but had to babysit a sick database machine that kept overheating (adding a 1-U space between a networking switch and one of the database servers solved that problem).

I decided that this year I would make every effort to attend GDC simply to see the state of the industry. Monday and Tuesday were filled with class sessions and I only had an Expo pass. Wednesday was busy with yet another product rollout. Thursday looked like it was going to be the day and so I planned accordingly. I went to the office and made sure there were no issues to fix. I waited for my team to show up and nothing seemed out of the ordinary, so I headed to downtown San Francisco. Things were looking good as I headed to the show.

I enjoyed the show and it was good to see what other companies are doing. The most enlightening section was where gaming companies are looking to hire. Everyone is having trouble finding the right talent. There were a number of people looking for jobs but the majority of them seemed to be students and companies want people with experience. I continued through the rest of the conference but didn't see anything groundbreaking. Just as I finished with the last booth, I got a call from our network operations center and there was a problem I needed to address. I jumped on a BART train back to my office and then spent most of last night fixing some configuration issues related to our recent product rollout. I was able to get everything working correctly and am now at the airport ready to board my flight back to Salt Lake City. It was hectic but at least I was able to attend the show this year.