I figured I'd start another thread about GDC, instead of continuing to de-rail the other thread.
GDC pricing:
gdconf.com/attend/passes.html
I will going to go GDC in 2013, but i'm still not entirely sure if it's worth it to spend the money on the top teir full GDC pass. It looks like the early bird price is only about $1500, assuming it stays the same as the last GDC.
I personally have to take into account that I will be paying for my own trip entirely out of pocket, so that means a week in a hotel, and because of my location i'll need to fly down there, all in addition to the pass price.
Anyone else have thoughts on this? Also, I know a few others on here are planning to go, so we could potentially plan to meet up if anyones up for it. I think they offer group rates on the pass prices as well.
I'm reposting Rez's comments from the other thread because they made me want to get the full pass, rather than the $195 base expo pass.
GDC pricing:
gdconf.com/attend/passes.html
I will going to go GDC in 2013, but i'm still not entirely sure if it's worth it to spend the money on the top teir full GDC pass. It looks like the early bird price is only about $1500, assuming it stays the same as the last GDC.
I personally have to take into account that I will be paying for my own trip entirely out of pocket, so that means a week in a hotel, and because of my location i'll need to fly down there, all in addition to the pass price.
Anyone else have thoughts on this? Also, I know a few others on here are planning to go, so we could potentially plan to meet up if anyones up for it. I think they offer group rates on the pass prices as well.
I'm reposting Rez's comments from the other thread because they made me want to get the full pass, rather than the $195 base expo pass.
I completely missed this reply! Sorry!
GDC is like 2+ hours away from San Jose, depending on traffic. It would be a brutal commute; 101-N gets ugly.
There are basically three levels of passes. Student passes and expo passes will get you on the floor talking to companies and seeing new tech. It's a lot of fun to wander the floor and chat with companies (all of which are hiring) as well as looking at new software and hardware that's coming out.
The next level up is the main conference pass and the summit passes. Both of these passes allow you to walk the floor, but these passes get you into the lectures. GDC is split into two sections: the first two days are tutorials and summits. The second three days is the main conference.
The summits are targeted, specialized, mini-conferences. There's one for social/mobile games, one for indie games, and many others. I'm part of the AI Game Programmers Guild (gameai.com) and we put on the AI Summit every year. Last GDC, I did an 8-minute rant on background AI and was on a panel of AI experts talking about why we even need AI in games. The year before that, I did a postmortem on The Sims Medieval AI.
The main conference has the majority of the lecture content and is more generalized. There are tracks for each discipline (engineering, art, design, production, etc) with lectures all day for each one. Most lectures are about an hour and are usually (but not always) given by someone who works in the industry. It's usually about they solved some particularly interesting problem. Last GDC, my main conference lecture was about developing debug visualization tools. There are also round table discussions, which is basically a somewhat guided conversation between about 30+ game developers on a number of different subjects. I go to the AI Roundtables every year.
The final level is the Full GDC pass, which lets you do all of those things. That's the $2000 pass.
Each pass has a different price range. I would say it's worth getting an expo pass, but if you can swing it, you really should go for a main conference pass. It's WELL worth it and you'll learn amazing game development secrets from people like us who have been there. The thing you really can't put a price on is the networking. "Hey Joe, I saw your talk on network bandwidth optimization and had a question...."
GDC fuels my passion for another year of game development. I leave every year feeling energized and invigorated, full of ideas and wonder. I've met some of my very best friends at GDC (like Mr. Mike), learned new techniques that I directly applied to my work, and grew my career. These were all a direct result of me going to GDC.
Do whatever it takes to go this year. Trust me.
-Rez