Casey Monroe wrote up a nice overview of GDC, themed around the difference between T-shirt and sport coat types. In particular, he talks about a dinner we had which was kind of a sequel to last year’s dinner that I recorded on video. I met Casey’s brother Will at last year’s dinner, and this year Will brought along Casey too. In Casey’s words:

One night, something strange happens.  My brother and I are attending a dinner at a nearby wine bar, with some (old and new) friends in the game industry.  We sit and talk with Adam, an old bandmate who now does iPhone/iPad development.  I finally meet Daniel Cook of Lost Garden, and Darius Kazemi of Tiny Subversions, as well as five or six other designers, developers and game industry professionals sitting around the table, and the conversation is…different.  We’re not networking—we’re just talking.  We’re talking about our ideas, our love of the art form, our belief in the potential of the future of gaming, the insight that games offer into the human condition.  We’re just sitting and talking about games—and it feels good.  After days and days of making contacts, suddenly I am making friends.  It feels relaxed.  It feels natural.  It feels, in fact, just like changing out of my sport coat and back into a t-shirt.

I think he does a good job of capturing the feeling of what I love about GDC. I think that dinner lasted about three hours and I missed a bunch of parties as a result, but it was worth it.

I would take exception to one thing he says: making friends is networking. In fact, it’s the most effective kind.

Speaking of T-shirts — Matthew Wasteland and I have a few new shirts available at the store. I’ll post about them soon, but you can check them out here.

As I mentioned before I decided to once again make an entire game on a long flight. I invited other people attending GDC to do the same — whether or not they did, I guess I’m about to find out!

Anyway, B6 631 (named after the flight number) is a run-and-gun platformer. The game procedurally generates a level and you have to play through with the object of getting all the coins. As the coins are often pretty high up, this might involve being clever about using momentum from jumping off of enemies. You have a gun but it’s not that useful unless you want to get a high kill count or a streak. You lose your streak if you get hit by an enemy or a a bullet.

All the art, sounds, and programming are by me. Everything was made in the five hours I was allowed to use my laptop on the flight from BOS->SFO. I used Game Maker, and started off with Matt Thorson’s Grandma Engine.

I’ll probably polish it up a little more and release a post-jam version, but I’m really happy with this one. Download the game here. (Windows only.)

Instructions: arrows to move/jump. WASD to shoot. Collect the coins to win. R button restarts.

Darren Torpey and I are going to attempt a game jam on our flight to GDC. Recently I’ve had really good experiences jamming on planes, creating AF337 and a few other prototypes that are going to become long-form games. Airplanes are  a great place to force creativity, particularly if you don’t have wifi on the plane.

• Being on a plane means you’re bored senseless and making a game is a great way to pass the time.
• No wifi means no internet distractions.
• No internet means you’re forced to use what is on your computer: make your own art, hack the code any way you can, don’t rely on other people’s tutorials or example code. It forces creative problem-solving.
• You literally have nothing else to do, so even if you’re only on the plane for a few hours, that is a few hours of directed, productive time.

So with that, I encourage anybody going to GDC to join the Going to GDC game jam! If you do participate, please post your results online somewhere and leave a link here. I’ll compile everything into a master list and put it on this blog.

Happy jamming, and see you at GDC!

I got some great comments on my last post about business cards, and I’m going to highlight them here in case you missed them. But first I’m going to subject you to a little rant that I’ve given at conferences.

Corporate vs. Personal Cards

There are two kinds of business cards. There’s the card that represents you as the employee of a company, and there’s the card that represents you as a person. The key difference is that the company card puts the identity of the company over your own identity. Here’s an example of a corporate business card:

Notice how much space the logo takes up, and how small the font is for the person's name.

The logo and the address of the company take up most of the non-white space on the card.

Now don’t get me wrong: this is a fine corporate business card. It does exactly what it’s supposed to do. But it sets a bad example for personal business cards. I often see students (and even professionals!) emulate the design of corporate cards on their personal cards, sometimes going so far as to design a logo and make that the biggest thing on their card.

Your personal card should reflect who you are. I don’t mean that in the warm and fuzzy sense: it literally needs to tell me who you are so I can remember you. This means your name should be the biggest thing on the card by far.

Here’s an example of a great personal business card.

It's memorable because it's funny.

The card above is from an excellent article about business cards for musicians (although the advice applies to anyone). There’s nothing fancy about it in terms of card stock or font or color. It’s completely unremarkable except that it’s well-designed and memorable. The guy’s name is the biggest single information band on the card, and right under that it tells me what he does. There’s contact information below, and then in the corners there are some tongue-in-cheek descriptors of the guy’s services. (This is a great technique for someone to use — provided you remember that this card has a context. Specifically this is a card that will be given to other musicians. “Bad attitude” and “always late” are things that will make a fellow musician laugh. If this same musician were trying to get booked to play weddings, the joke would completely backfire.)

Anyway, remember: you are not an anonymous drone. Your business card needs to reflect that.

Comment Roundup

I got some great comments on my business card post.

While I recommended Scribus for those designing their own business cards, Noah Kantrowitz pointed out Businesscardland, a website where you can design a card from templates for free. It’ll even render a PDF that you can take to a print shop.

Jeromie Walters asked whether he should put a head shot of himself on his card. Brenda Brathwaite once told me that she tried putting her head shot on her card, and the only thing it did was make her feel like a real estate agent! Bottom line: don’t put a photo of yourself on your card. Consider a cartoon or an abstraction of your face. It’s what I do.

Ian Schreiber talked about the backpack he always brings to GDC.

As for running out during the day, personally I always carry my backpack with me. In it I have:
* All of my cards, so I can “restock” in a few seconds rather than having to head back to the hotel;
* Notebooks and pens, both to take notes myself and to offer to the people sitting next to me if they need it;
* Laptop computer and power cord, also for taking notes and in case anyone needs one to show a software demo or something;
* Emergency snacks and drinks, so that I’m never in a session where I’m distracted from a brilliant speaker by something mundane like bodily hunger signals (and likewise, headache medicine in case my skull picks a bad time to vasodilate);
* Board games, because I want people to think of me when they’re trying to find the fun 
* Any swag or random stuff I pick up along the way.

My shoulders are usually sore by the end of the week from walking around like a pack mule, but the convenience of having everything I need in reach at a moment’s notice is too great to give up.

Alex Forsythe asked how a student should communicate their area of expertise on their business card, since a student can’t really claim to be a level designer if they haven’t really designed many levels. I responded that “Aspring Level Designer” or “Student of Level Design” would be fine. Ian Schreiber gave the following response:

I’ve seen some pretty clever student business cards. Darius wrote his tagline “a generally useful guy to know” which, aside from being accurate, was more memorable than “aspiring game programmer/designer” or whatever.

I saw one student card, I still have it somewhere, that introduced the person as “the mythical female programmer”… again, more memorable than “aspiring.”

I suppose you need to be careful with this, though. It’s easy to cross the line from “memorable” to “cliche” or “cheesy”. So maybe that kind of thing is best for your second year at GDC, after you’ve already seen what other cards are out there.

As always, thanks to everyone who commented for their good questions and helpful answers.

Update, June 2010: Erin Hoffman has additional advice:

Ian’s point is a great one. It’s the one thing I would add to Darius’s advice… I suspect for first-timers the words on the card are actually more important than the card’s visual design, though it’s certainly possible to excessively advertise non-pro status by having a business card that looks out-of-date, is too busy, or has poorly printed graphics. The worst one I saw from a student was glossy and black with a grainy graphic of something on it — I’m not even sure what. A classy but plain non-glossy white card with Times New Roman on it is much safer.

When I was a student I had “Creativity for Hire” on my card, which got comments from most of the people I handed it to. I didn’t really even expect that reaction — I just had an assortment of things I wanted to do and needed a broad phrase that would capture them. And I didn’t have that card very long. :) If I had to do it over again I would stick to the same — keep it simple, put your web address on the card, and aim your thought energy at a memorable (unique) phrase that encapsulates what you have to offer

Someone recently asked me, “How many business cards should I take to the Game Developers Conference?”

The short answer: 300, but you should bring up to 500 if you can afford it.

Longer answer: the one time I ran of out business cards at GDC was my first year. I brought 200 and ran out by my fifth day. You should assume that you’ll probably give out 50 cards a day at GDC, especially if it’s your first year attending. (When you come back a second year you don’t have to give a card to people you already know, so your first year will probably be the most demanding in terms of card usage.) I think 50 a day is about average, but it’s very possible to give out 100 cards in a day.

So if you’re going to be there for five days, bring at least 300. If you’re going to be there for three days, bring at least 200. Honestly though, you might as well bring 500 cards. If you have a few hundred left over, hey, use them at the next networking event you attend!

Tips for Printing and Designing Cards

Vistaprint is probably the best-regarded online business card service (they serve both the US and EU). I tend to use Staples to print my cards by going to the store and placing an order in person — of the national brick-and-mortar chains that print business cards, I think their quality-to-price ratio is the best. As I’ve said before, you should print your card on non-glossy stock, as it’s hard to take notes on a glossy card.

You can design your business card in any software you’re comfortable with as long as you can create a PDF file in the correct dimensions. If you’d like to design your own business cards and don’t know where to begin, I recommend Scribus. The dimensions for an American business card are 2″ tall by 3.5″ wide, and you want to leave at least 0.25″ margins for printer variation. For some nice fonts you might want to use, check out this article and this website.

Update: there’s a followup post I’ve written.

I’ve uploaded a three-part video I took on Tuesday at GDC. This is a dinner conversation between Corvus Elrod, Jeff Ward, Eric Robinson, William Monroe, and Darren Torpey. I’m also there, but I was sick and had no voice at the time, so I’m the silent videographer. It’s about 18 minutes long, all three parts combined.

Looks like I have a networking challenge this year at GDC. I lost my voice completely. No idea what caused it. Seems like some sinus stuff compounded with yelling at parties. Yes, I am drinking tea, taking meds, etc.

A few years back I wrote a guide to the Game Developers Conference (part 1, part 2). In some ways, it’s badly outdated. In some ways, things still hold true. So I am writing an updated GDC guide here, which will feature some of the info from the old guide, but lots of new stuff too. I’ll be doing this in parts over the next few weeks — and they’ll all be tagged “gdcguide” so you can view them all here if you like. I’m writing them in order of whatever is most convenient for me to write first. So they may seem haphazard… I’ll reorder them at the end in a summary post, and then probably publish it all to a big PDF.

Jeff just posted some good advice, something that I’ve been saying for years (and saying to Jeff for years, I might add): he says you shouldn’t bother with swag at GDC.

The only time I ever sought out swag on purpose was for someone I had just met who really wanted the swag from a particular booth, but was stuck at his booth working. I went and got it for him and we became friends. That’s it.