Comments on: GDC Swag: Don’t Do It

By: nightrise

nightrise — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:27:00 +0000

Swag is why I always carry around my messenger bag. Obviously I don’t go shopping for said swag, but if you go back in my blog to last May I think it was, you’ll see a swag review from SCAD’s Career Fair last year. Activision got a big thumbs up for having frisbees. I was going to one for the ESA-hosted Post Mortem back in October, but didn’t end up collecting enough for a review. I must say, however, that my ESRB Rated M keychain is my favorite piece of swag, ever.

By: Ian Schreiber

Ian Schreiber — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:33:00 +0000

No, but it’s not like you can’t make connections at the booths as well. The swag is secondary to all the job notices I bring back for students, but if I’m getting one there’s no reason not to collect the other.

By: Darius Kazemi

Darius Kazemi — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 03:51:00 +0000

I just don’t think it’s worth the cost of missing out on connections and so forth. If I see something I know someone back home will like, I’ll pick it up for them, but I won’t go shopping from booth to booth or anything.

By: Ian Schreiber

Ian Schreiber — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 01:18:00 +0000

You've said this before so I'll repeat myself too: swag isn't for you, it's for the people back home who didn't get to go.

If you're working for a company and there are some people not going, bringing back some cool stuff for them lets them feel a little bit less left out.

If you're teaching a class, swag makes great prizes for students (and shows them in a tangible way how cool it is to go to GDC... even if they won't actually collect any swag when they go themselves).