GDC conference organizers drop the ball [update 2]
This is a brief list of some of the quality issues that I noticed plaguing the Game Developer's Conference held in San Jose and ended on Friday. It seems that nobody really talks about these things, perhaps because they're simply grateful that there's any GDC at all. Well, I'm also grateful for GDC, but that doesn't mean it's immune from criticism.
I should note that my beefs here are primarily informed by my perspective as a blogger covering the convention. We're sure that developers, publishers, recruiters and other major GDC constituent groups have their own issues. We encourage submission of other issues in the comments, below. If you prefer to send something anonymously, use our tips form located at http://www.joystiq.com/tips/.
[Image at right is from www.demotivation.com. The caption reads, "Mediocrity: it takes a lot less time and most people won't notice the difference until it's too late."]
In no particular order, gripes follow.
Food. It's not easy feeding hordes of hungry conference goers, but an army marches on its stomach. Trying to prop up conference energy with junk food is a trick that works in a single-day conference but backfires over the course of a weeklong affair. GDC vittles were awful in just about every respect. Food quality was low: soggy buns, low-quality ingredients, lack of condiments for sandwiches.
The menu itself contained many items that nutritionists would classify as junk food: potato chips, sugary cookies, starchy sides, muffins, bagels. Fruit didn't exist. What's more, the tables were quickly cleared of more palatable options leaving boxes upon boxes of vegetarian sandwiches that few wanted to eat.
To be fair, we should note that beverages were excellent. Peet's coffee, high-quality tea, water, diet drinks, and water were thankfully plentiful.
Technical glitches. As with GDC San Francisco from last year, conference technology was notable for the frequency with which it failed to service conference-goers. Most of the meeting rooms lacked Wifi connectivity, meaning that smaller media outlets without budget for expensive EV-DO connections were frequently unable to provide coverage of the big keynotes.
There are entire cities with millions of people in them getting ubiquitous Wifi networks. Surely a competent tech team should be able to Internet-enable a few meeting rooms in the middle of Silicon Valley.
Tech also failed in the area of audio quality. Of the 10 or so panels I attended, 80% started late because the technical gurus at the sound boards were futzing with the microphones. Two panels I attended were still troubleshooting microphone levels approximately 10 minutes after the scheduled start time.
Sound issues weren't limited to the start of panels. Microphones would frequently stop working in the middle of a panel discussion. It got so bad on one panel that multiple panelists got in the habit of testing their microphones before they started to speak. Nothing kills a good back-and-forth conversation like constant "am I on?" microphone checks. Sound quality was a frequent issue during last year's GDC as well.
Then there's the whole GDCTV and GDCRAdio fiasco. We're not sure what went wrong with the tech crew, but this much is certain: the amateurish technology implementation resulted in an inferior conference experience.
Media confusion: We have no idea what was going on with the camera policy. There was no clear statement about when cameras were allowed and when they were not. Chris Grant was threatened with forcible removal from the Sony keynote when he was caught taking pictures, despite lack of signage indicating that photos would be forbidden, and despite a special green sticker on his ID badge that supposedly allowed him to take photographs in sessions. If you took out your camera in some sessions, nobody would complain. In other sessions, you were warned to make sure your flash was off. In still other sessions, you were told to put your camera away. We're happy to play by the rules, so long as the rules are consistent and well-publicised. GDC 2006's media rules, if they existed, were capricious, invisible, and inconsistently enforced.
Quality inconsistency: Some sessions were simply excellent. Great energy, great content, and flawless technical execution. Some were low-energy infomercials, and we're not talking about the "Sponsored Sessions" either. In one session that I attended in last year's GDC, conference goers walked out of a ninja infomercial visibly upset. The speaker had somehow secured a slot at GDC and used his allotted hour to shamelessly sell his product to the audience. How do creeps like that make it into the printed program? Because I was manning the doors for that session as a Conference Associate, I can verify that the feedback submitted for that session was unanimously terrible (except for the shill ballots filled out by employees of the speaker's company, who gave him very high marks).
GDC conference organizers need to do a better job of verifying content quality before anybody's in front of a microphone.
Duct tape and chewing gum. Here are some examples of the generally amateur nature of the conference organization. During one very popular session on downloadable content, the big GDC 2006 poster that covered the front of the lectern simply fell off, exposing the tape that had held it in place. There were giggles from the audience when this happened, but the poster sat there for approximately 5 to 10 minutes before anything was done about it (I believe a conference attendee got so fed up with it that he picked it up and rested it against the lectern).
Another example: the show floor closed at 3:30 PM on Friday afternoon, which was a little early and caught more than a few attendees by surprise, self included. Some of the security guards who were posted at the doors to the exhibit hall were more terse and unfriendly in the way in which they told attendees that the show floor was closed. With proper training and with the right customer service attitude, I'm sure that these security personnel could have put on a happy face and politely informed conference goers that the exhibit hall had closed. Instead: threatening looks, raised voices, and blunt denials of admission. The message was clear: we were no longer valued conference customers but were riff-raff to be bounced from the real work of shutting down the exhibition hall. Simply unprofessional yet so easy to remedy.
Conference Associates rocked the house. On a positive note, the legion (260 of them, to be exact) of orange-shirted Conference Associates who volunteer a week of their time to help run the conference were friendly, helpful, and earnest in their endeavors to make the conference pleasant. These people were generally motivated by the right customer service attitudes, though it's a wonder that they managed to remain upbeat, given the lack of healthy food options.
Counterpoint on the CA front: Reader "Codemule" writes in:
"I strongly, strongly disagree on the "conference volunteers were great" tip, especially those who worked the keynote presentations.
The absolutely horrible manner in which people were forced to sit and the rediculous treatment of attendees was inexcusable.
In many cases, these are people who paid $1,400 or more (as I was) to attend this conference. To be yelled at for standing next to a wall (because there were no seats available where anything could be seen) is absolutely retarded.
It's one thing to overbook a hall on attendance (which hopefully won't happen in SF next year), it's completely another to try to rectify the situation by being heavy handed with the people who are trying to get information for business planning purposes first hand."
This is not to say that the conference was worthless. GDC is valuable (and mandatory for anybody that's serious about the industry) but it could be far, far better given the quality of the speakers and the conference attendees. The organizers did not do the games industry proud with this conference.
Finally, a quick aside to establish my basis for comparison. I'm comparing this conference to other conferences that I've attended including: the CFA conference in Denver, CSFB conferences in NYC, an asset-backed bond conference in Bermuda, E3 (in LA), State of Play (NYC), TGS (Tokyo), the Wharton Technology Conference (Philadelphia), and others too numerous (and too small) to list here. I provide this partial list just to establish that I've got some basis for comparison and that I'm comparing the games conference to conferences in other industries.
[Update 1: Included quote from Codemule on the CA issue.]
[Update 2: minor typo fixed.]
