My name is Cole Tourney, and I’ve attended the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco for the past two years. The Game Developers Conference, or GDC is a yearly hub for game developers from all over the world to come together, interact, and learn from one another. My first experience with GDC, being March of 2025, I wasn’t lucky enough to be sponsored by the school. Still wanting to show my dedication, a few others and myself elected to drive the 26 hours and go at our own expense.
I can only describe my first experience as “eye opening”. The sheer amount of people and industry professionals all crammed into 3 different event centers was nothing short of a shock. I would have to consider my first experience a “precursor” more than anything else. It clued me in on what to expect and how to interact and network when surrounded by thousands of people.
GDC is an amazing place to make connections with other devs in the industry. Even if you don’t attend as many talks as you’d like, there are still plenty of spots around the Moscone Center where developers enjoy hanging out and meeting new people. My largest takeaway from both years of attending the event is that devs are just people. I’ve met former producers at some of the largest game companies in the world and didn’t mention games, just got to know them as people and on a more personal level.
I attended a panel with Jac Carlsson, a game designer for Battlefield 6. The panel talked about finding the right animations for your project. What BF6 elected to do was use procedural animations in order to produce the best audiovisual experience for the player. Rather than relate everything purely to gameplay, he relied on his experience in dance. He’d later go on to talk about how, even if the parts were separate, it was more important that they contributed smoothly to the whole.
Through both years of attending, my favorite experiences by far were getting to learn the city with the people both that I’d attended with, but also met at GDC. This year, I was able to ride scooters around Golden Gate Park with a friend of mine. Getting to see the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset from a mid-speed scooter was an experience that I wouldn’t trade for anything.
