Well, it was amazing.
I arrived in San Francisco on Tuesday afternoon around 12 PM with only like 3-4 hours of sleep from the night before. The weird thing? I shared the flight with one and only Mark Cearny - the lead architect of the PS4. Yeah, only about 3 hours into my trip and I was sitting next to an idol of mine from my childhood. He was a really interesting guy and pretty entertaining as well. After the flight, I got to the hotel and then met up with some classmates for some lunch and a walk around the open parts of the convention. In one of the lobbies, I was introduced to Al Yang - a combat designer for Superbot Entertainment who discussed some design mantras with me and gave me some feedback on my thesis game. We exchanged cards and such and then I managed to walk into Jason Mojica - a level designer from Irrational Games (a personal favorite studio of mine because they are located in Boston and make wonderful games like Systemshock and Bioshock). We discussed getting into the industry both with and without education and that a backlog of work is well worth doing to prove your passion for the medium. Talking to both of these guys really did inspire me to just never stop contributing to the thing that I love - games.
The next day, I worked at the EAE booth on the showroom floor and met some great people interested in the students, Utah, and the program in general. News had traveled fast around the conference that the EAE program was number 1 in the nation (US) for game design. I also got to meet an alumni from cohort 1 - Matt Anderson, and we talked at length about The Co-Signers, getting a job in the industry and the company that he worked for: Wyrd Games. We also conversed about one of my favorite games in the universe - Sentinels of the Multiverse. It was a good time and he offered to talk to HR about internship opportunities for me, which is fantastic! Later on in the evening, I went to Zynga for a mixer and met Gene Peterson who is a U of U alumni who sent out the invite for the mixer. He was an awesome dude and he introduced me to a bunch of people who are game and app developers.
Alas on Thursday, I was a bit fatigued yet that did not stop me from going out and meeting people. First, I went to a luncheon with Crystal Dynamics and met both an associate designer and the creative director on the newly released Tomb Raider game. They were both pretty down to earth and were very open about how AAA studios select employees and evaluate talent. It was a great experience and I got some cool swag out of the affair as well. Later that afternoon, I got to return to Zynga and got a tour of the entire studio. Interesting things going on in there, let me tell you.
Finally, on Friday we all decided to take it easy and just hang out with classmates and regroup on what we saw this past week. At the end we all went out to the karaoke bar and just had a quiet evening.
Since getting back from the conference, I have touched based with a bunch of the people that I met. Even have some plans to re-connect with some if I am in their neck of the woods so to speak. Well, I leave for Ubisoft in about 28 hours and we just finished crunching on the prototype earlier today. Time to sleep, for a little while at least.
