GDC is always known for its presentations and panels. But one unique part about the experience of the conference is what happens just outside of Moscone Center.
Through all of these events, this hashtag, “#GameAudioGDC”, is a great way to keep up to date on what game audio-related events are happening at the conference, and a great way to share anything you learned yourself that day. Not everything was related to the official GDC talks, too.
Damien Kastbauer of PopCap Games and Anton Woldhek of Guerrilla Games both lead the Game Audio Podcast, and at 7am everyday at Sightglass before the conference day officially starts, a roundtable of audio folks is held and recorded! Composers, sound designers, audio programmers, voice actors, you name it. Any profession of any skill level is invited to join the round table. This year, the discussion were led by Damien, where we all talked about what we learned from GDC the previous day and what we were looking forward to on the present day.
These discussions are always wonderful in that they can either be technical, like discussion FMOD vs. Wwise or the best microphones to use in voice recording, or social and philosophical, like the motivations we all have that led us to our profession or if our profession can help make the world a better place. As a young sound designer who’s only been to GDC twice, it is incredible to find a place where I can learn all of these ideas from both students and professionals, and that we all have something to contribute to the discussion, even when just being present and listening.
These are great to attend especially after listening to many talks and wanting to discuss the ideas learned. There were ideas brought up the day after the Composer Confessions panel, like different ways a person can strike a conversation with a client when we are confused about what to do in the music or sound of a project. Maybe we should invite our client to coffee. Maybe we should schedule more Skype sessions. Maybe we should remember to find small moments of time to chat about others things in life, like common interests or other things happening in a person’s life.
Damien created this community get-together with coffee and discussion as a way to share our strengths and challenges, a way to forget about the competition of finding the gig and being able to learn from one another.