I attended the Develop Conference for the first time which was hosted in Brighton this week. For those who don't know about Develop, it is a conference set on the seafront that brings a few thousand (~2000 in 2016) developers from all parts of the gaming community from indies to some of the most famous faces. There are a number of presentations from developers and others who work in the industry, along with an expo and plenty of spaces to network.

I really enjoyed my time at Develop and there were some great presentations given, which I feel I should at least mention briefly. "Perfectionism and Plateaus: Finding Balance in a Competitive Industry" by Adriana Pucciano, was the best presentation I saw on Wednesday morning. Criterion Games "Tears of Joy in Star Wars VR: Creating Battlefront's X-wing VR Mission" presentation was interesting to see from a design point of view of how to design a VR experience whilst staying true to the Star Wars license. Plus I'm a Star Wars fan. There were many other presentations I enjoyed and walked away with great information, such as the presentation given by Alex Moyet, however I want to keep this post short so can't talk about all of them.

Finally, I would say to anyone who hasn't gone to Develop and is thinking about going to a conference, especially if you are in the UK, I would make sure it is on your list of considerations. It doesn't matter if you are a student or from the smallest indie studio to the largest game studio, Develop has a whole range of good stuff to offer.

I've just returned from spending a week in San Francisco to attend my second Game Developers Conference (GDC 2017).  Before I left for America I did wonder "if my second GDC would be as great as my first GDC or a greater experience?". It was greater and let me tell you why.

However, before I do that for those who are reading this post and are thinking "what happens at GDC to make it so great as I've never been before?" or "I'm thinking about going but not sure if it's for me?" I would encourage you to read my blog post from last year about attending GDC 2016, for an insight into what an incredible 5-day experience GDC is.

Back to GDC 2017. I attended with a Bootcamp pass that allowed me to attend a wide range of summits on the Monday and Tuesday. The AI, Community Management, Mobile and Game Narrative summits just to list some of the summits that took place.

The summit that I attended the majority of was the AI summit, which had a number of great talks. There were two sessions that really stood out to me from the other great sessions. The first was about managing crowd AI in Watch Dogs 2 (Ubisoft) and the second was about how asynchrony can be used for AI tasks (Havok).

For the last three days, I spend my time between seeing sessions covering a range of different topics, exploring the expo halls and meeting up with friends, most of whom I haven't seen since GDC last year. This is what GDC is about, not only do people from the Games Industry present the cutting edge techniques and technology they developed in their games and game engines that they've been working on to their fellow colleges in the Industry. But it is also a great opportunity to catch up with friends and make new friends, there are many people who attend GDC for the networking opportunities rather than the sessions.

The networking side of GDC wasn't anywhere near as daunting for me compared to last year. Even before I had boarded the plane in the UK, I was talking with people who were also attending GDC. It's not hard to figure out who's going to GDC and start a conversation (well this bit can be a little bit more difficult) with them when most of the people sitting around you are waiting for the same plane and for many of the same reasons as you. For those reading and looking for ways to make networking a less stressful experience, I'm afraid I don't have any answers for you other than to say the more you do it the easier it is to meet and talk with others which in its self is an easier said than done bit of advice.

A week of attending sessions, catching up with friends, making new friends, networking and travelling are what made GDC 2017 a great week. To answer the question I had before leaving for the conference, the main reason why my second GDC was greater than my first was that I knew what to expect, how to get more out of GDC and did get more out of GDC this time round.

This week I attended the annual Southern Independent Games Network (SIGN) conference hosted at Southampton University, which focused on the support and services available for Indie game developers. The conference venue is rotated between Southampton Solent, Portsmouth and Bournemouth University each year.

There were several presentations and panels this year made up of new and veteran Indie developers, UKIE, Unity and the Council, with the keynote speaker being Jan-Pieter van Seventer from the Dutch Game Garden. 

It was interesting to hear about the state of the UK games industry this year presented by UKIE, as well as hearing about support available to Indie developers such as the incubator project that the Hampshire County Council is trying to get funding to set up. This event could be worthwhile for any Indie developers or anyone thinking about going Indie to find out what support is available in the local area, network with others and the ticket, food and drink was free, or was at least this year.

I attended, for the first time, Bournemouth's Visual Effects, Animation and Games Festival (BFX). The event ran for a week to celebrate and promote visual effects, computer games and animation by providing workshops, art exhibitions, competitions and careers fair.

I only went for the last day but I would recommend BFX for anyone with an interest in any of the industries this festival is for to attend, whether it's just to walk around and look at the concept art of films on the walls and view workshops or to talk with people in those industries. The concept art on display this year were from some of the latest Disney films Zootopia, Moana and Star Wars, the majority being for Star Wars The Force Awakens and as I'm a Star Wars fan was awesome to look at. Attending the careers fair was also very useful for anyone looking for jobs in VFX, animation or games, although mostly VFX and animation studios attend there were two game studios this year.

Going to the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2016 in San Francisco is one of the best decisions that I've made. A decision that I won't just remember but also a key event in my life.

If I had been asked the question of "would I of seen myself at GDC?" 12 months before I went, the answer would have been different from the answer that I gave about 4 months before I was going.

Shortly after the online registration opened a friend of mine, who attended the year before, posted a link on social media and said if anyone has the opportunity to go they should. I'm not sure what made me buy a pass, book off my holiday days from work and everything else that you do when going abroad, but looking at my their post and the GDC website it just made sense to go. Then I waited for a few months until those 5 days of talks, meeting new people and learning about new things to come around in March.

The Monday and Tuesday are reserved for the higher passes and mostly filled by talks, on Wednesday the Expo floor opens up and great numbers of people attend. The Expo floor is filled with booths from developers demoing off their games to companies looking to recruit or showing off new technologies. One of the biggest booths was the towering Oculus Rift booth that was meters away from the doorway so you couldn't miss it.

On the Monday morning I sitting in one of the rooms waiting for the first talk about DirectX 12 being presented by Nvidia and AMD to start. I'm sitting about 2/3 back from the front in a middle of a row by myself, looking around seeing friends chatting and people talking to old colleagues and friends they haven't seen in years. I'm thinking "how do I make the most of this event?", I've not been to a conference that been more than a day long before and I also don't know anyone attending. As I'm sitting in the room surrounded by some of the best and future best in the industry, it hit me that if I wanted to make the most of GDC that I'm going to have to throw myself outside of my comfort zone. Just making the journey to the other side of the world that I've never been to by myself before wasn't going to cut, I had to jump straight into the deep end and quickly teach myself to swim otherwise I'd sink wasting this opportunity.

Tuesday I woke eager to build up my networking skills as well as go to as many talks as I can. I felt that the previous day had been successful as I gained new knowledge and started talking to people  that sat around me during breaks. But I felt that I could do more and so I did, in fact, a good number of the people I met on this day I would meet again later in the week and we'd chat whilst waiting for a talk to start or just in passing.

Wednesday the Expo floors opened and the conference got very busy. For the next two days, I split my time between going to talks and walking around the expo floor talking with people from different studios at booths and playing some of the games that were being demoed. One such game was Dreams by Media Molecule, which grabbed my attention as I like creative sandbox games and also a Little Big Planet fan. I went to a number of graphics talks, such as new Ambient Occlusion techniques and geometry culling.

When I got to the conference I was a reserved, slightly nervous, shy person who only months before would never have thought about doing this. I left the conference confident in my abilities, inspired and determined to start my career in the games industry, being warmly welcomed by a great community which I felt part of.