There are an increasing number of game development related conferences happening around the world. I went to GDC and Freeplay earlier this year and I’m attending GCAP tomorrow.
Gamification has just been announced and it seems like the changing landscape in game development is being mirrored in the conferences held. Whenever conference time comes around I hear a lot of debate within the indie scene about their value. Today I’ll discuss the ways I determine whether a conference is worth attending and hope to help you with the decision.
Different Perspectives
From my experience there are three main opinions when it comes to game conferences within game development (both indie and mainstream).
Shut Up and Code
I often hear people say they don’t have time to go to conferences as they want to make games, not talk about making games. This opinion is particularly prevalent among programmers.
When laying out the entire costs of many of these events, they often make up a substantial proportion of an indie. For this reason, many developers I meet simply don’t have the time or money to burn on conferences and most tell me they will go there “when they make it big”.
Networking, Networking, Networking
Another viewpoint I often see is from those that go to every event they can and give talks whenever possible. To this group (often in marketing or management) the whole reason for making their game is to get it out there for people to see and play it.
This group will often miss all the talks/lectures and can instead be found walking the halls looking for new contacts or reconnecting with old ones. A lot of value is achieved at most conferences from these people, none of it related to the speakers. It is difficult though, particularly for the more introverted members of the development community.
I've found the best way to achieve the networking goal is make full use of whatever contacts you have (the higher the better). You receive invitations to bigger and better parties and you’ll get more introductions. The friends I went to GDC with introduced me to people working on Halo Reach, Mass Effect and a bunch of influential people attached to the Australian game industry.
Cost to Benefit Analysts
I fall into this group. We are the people that list out all of the costs of going to a conference and weigh these up against the expected benefits. I’ll dig deeper into this analysis and shed light on how you can quantify whether a conference is right for you.
Costs
It’s easy to quantify the costs of going to a conference. The major costs are associated with time and money. Below is a list of the costs I’ve found from the average trip to a conference:
Conference Tickets (the cost of admission)Travel (airfare, insurance, taxi’s)Accommodation (hotel)Food (approximate per-day price)Drink (mountain dew and/or alcohol)Miscellaneous Expenses (passport, present to appease partner upon return)Lost time (per day cost of being away)Spending money
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