My son wants to make games when he grows up. Since I work for a reseller of Autodesk software, I have hooked him up with 3ds Max and Mudbox. I also gave him the curriculum from Autodesk's student website. students.autodesk.com However it always seems more fun to play the games than actually work at learning the software used in creating them. With his grades slowing dropping as the school year progressed, I decided to try to find something that would spark some interest and push him into actually spending some time with Max and focusing on school work again.
My first thought was to take him through a college that offers some game design majors. While poking around on the web I happened across ECGC's website about a month before the event date. Registration was $105 per person. It sounded a lot like Autodesk University which is a blast. Several days of lectures given by professionals in the industry to others in, or looking to get into, the industry. The exhibit hall was always a major highlight as well. Having given lectures at Autodesk University for several years now I thought it would be exciting to be on the receiving side of something like that.
The first thing I needed to check was if there was an age limit. I clicked the Contact Us link and asked if there was an age limit and if this was something that would be appropriate for an 8th grader. I really didn't expect a response other than something automated. Surprise surprise! Not only did I get a response, it came in form of a phone call. I had a 15 minute call with Troy Knight. He listened to everything I was concerned about then offered some advice on what classes we should attend. I also learned that he works with Tim Castle, an old co-worker of mine who used to work in our Raleigh office.
That settled it, we were going. I requested some vacation time, cleared it with my son's school, and booked a hotel. I also talked my buddy Larry into going as well. Not that it took a lot of talking....... ok, so that clears up why two guys and a older kid are at a conference for professionals. 
We decided we would say our titles were "End Users" if asked what we do. Click the link to read the rest.
So how was it? Awesome! Will I be back next year? I sure hope so.
The lectures were broken up into eight different tracks. We didn't stick with a single track but instead jumped all over the place trying to experience the entire event.
We sat in on two classes that were about "breaking into the gaming world." It sounds much like any other industry.
- Network network network. It's all in who you know! I have had a number of engineering jobs now and EVERY ONE of them I knew someone on the inside! Simply filling out online resumes is not going to get you a job! You need to build relationships. If you want a date with a girl you don't walk over to her, hand her a resume, and then walk away hoping she will call. You take some time to try to build yourself up and listen to what she likes and don't like. Or in essence "building a relationship."
- Be better than average. With 1000's trying for 100's of jobs you have to be at the top of your class. Playing LoL all night while your in collage is NOT going to land you a job with a major developer. Spend those late night hours honing your skills.
- Post your BEST work online. Make it easy to find and only post ONLY your best. As you get better pull your older work that isn't as good. If they are looking at your work and run across some poor piece of artwork they will wonder if you think that is good and may pass over you. Wow them with 5 GREAT pieces and make them call you asking for more.
Find what you like and become AWESOME at it. Don't try to know everything. Few companies are looking for a programmer/artist/modeler. Instead they are looking for a great programmer or a modeler who rocks. - Finally don't pass on a job just because its not quite what your after. If you want to model monsters but are offered a job modeling buildings, TAKE IT. Get your foot in the door! But don't stop there. Keep on modeling monsters in the evenings and eventually you will land your dream monster creation job.
We did sit in on a number of sessions that went way over our heads, but it was still fun to see that side of the business. One of those classes was Gameplay Data Analysis for Gears of War 3 and Infinity Blade II by Ian Thomas of Epic Games. In this session Ian when into detail explaining how they managed to track a large number of data from the first few months of beta play. This ranged from match creation time to coordinates of every kill on every map. These coordinates were later mapped out into heat maps showing where all kills were happening ensuring fair and balanced maps. Marketing also had a list of things they wanted logged during the beta. One of the items was total number of bullets fired! To physically pull all of this info would have required hundreds of gigs of hard drive space per hour for the entire two months the beta ran. Ian went into detail explaining how they managed tracking all of this data while keeping overhead to a minimum. It was very interesting but most of it I didn't understand.
The image on the right is only the start of a two day list of lectures and classes that were offered. We had to have several "meetings" to agree on what class we were going to attend next. I would love to see these all online, for those who attended, to view throughout the year. More often than not we were torn between two different classes and had to settle on one.
For lunch we seemed on our own. There was a deli across the street that was pretty good, and for the location, reasonably priced. If I go next year, I will be staying at the hotel across the street as well. We ended up having to drive a few miles each morning.
The floors of the convention hall seemed confusing and I never did actually figure them out. Maybe it was because we always used the elevator but it seemed 50% of the time we ended up on the wrong floor. Its been too long now but if I remember right, there was a floor 2A and 2B or something like that and floor 1 wasn't the main floor. I think we were on the second floor originally and that made it feel like the first floor. Like I said I never did figure them out.
The exhibit hall was a HUGE hit with my son Taylor (and Larry). I tried several flavors of energy drinks from the NOS booth but just couldn't find a flavor I liked. Taylor finished mine off for me. Sorry NOS your going to be hard pushed to replace my need for coffee.
I did try my hand at building a spaghetti/marshmallow tower but after getting three boxes high it kept falling to the side. If only I had a few more minutes. This was put on by BLDG-25 and seemed quite a hit. I never did find out what the highest tower was. When I was last there someone was three spaghetti boxes plus three inches!
The girls at Red Storm spent time with us and wrote down some other modeling software packages that they thought he should try to learn. A hour later he was missing and I found him back at the Red Storm booth. 
I did spent a bit of time lusting over this screen. 
Larry and Taylor both had a great time playing The Secret World a whole month before their closed beta released. If we were ever separated in the exhibit hall I could count on them eventually ending up back at FunCom's booth killing zombies. Before we left they gave all of us dog tags with closed beta access codes! http://www.thesecretworld.com You see them in this video playing away. I shot this with my phone so its not the best quality.
Maybe I didn't do my homework, or maybe I was too scared I was bugging people and didn't ask, but turns out we missed some cool parts of the show. Like a kick off party with food and drinks sponsored by Funcom the evening before. Wake Tech providing free chair massages both days and another closing party on Wednesday night.
Overall we had a blast and we were able to meet some cool people from behind the scenes of the gaming world. Way Cool! Also while going through the exhibit hall I learned about some great new gaming companies and games. I decided to post some scans of some of their flyers for you to view as well. Press the View Slide Show link below to view all of them.
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