This past week, I had the enormous privilege to go to the Game Developer's Conference - known more commonly as GDC - for the first time. Held once a year in San Francisco, GDC is something of a place of pilgrimage for developers of all experience levels - an opportunity to pitch yourself as someone to hire, a chance to meet new people and link up with old colleagues, and a rare platform to learn how other people in the industry do the esoteric things that we do in order to make games go.

Despite its place in dev culture, I'd never been in my seventeen (!!) years as a developer, owing almost entirely to cost. Not only is a week long trip pricey, especially one to the one of the most expensive cities in the United States - but tickets run you several thousand dollars, depending on what level of access you want for the the event. Do you want to go to talks? The expo floor? All week? Weds through Friday? More access will cost you.

The stars aligned this year, owing to my place of work and to my former director, both of whom generously helped me in their own ways, and I was finally able to attend for the full week, with a pass that let me go pretty much anywhere I wanted.

I made an ambitious list of all the talks I wanted to go to, and managed to burn myself out pretty darn good on the first day by simply ... going to all of them as much as I could. The rest of the week was more deliberately paced, going back and forth between talks inside the Moscone Center (a enormous, multi-building exhibition center that occupies part the Market neighborhood) and hanging out in the beautiful Yerba Buena Gardens the rest of the time. Yerba Buena was the essential place for finding your people, catching up, eating a snack, and sharing gossip.

Which isn't to say there wasn't fun to be had in the halls as well - there was a surprise concert conducted by game composer Austin Wintory which played some of my favorite music (some of it composed by people in the audience!), as well as the IGF Awards, honoring some of the most remarkable independent games to come out over the past year.

Some of the talks I attended that I really enjoyed included:

• I Am Fandom (and So Can You!)

• The Player vs Dream Logic: Developing the Mission Structures for 'Alan Wake 2'

• Bullet Time Without Bullets: Building 'El Paso, Elsewhere'

• Starting a Story You Can Finish: Narrative Design Structure and Scope

Some of the games I'm most excited to check out from the show are:

• Tchia, a beautiful looking island exploration game

• Phonopolis, a hand-drawn puzzle-platformer

• Mediterranea Inferno, a dazzling-looking visual novel

• Kevin (1997 - 2007), a .... video game??

Here's some of the other stuff I'm into lately:

• 📺 SHOGUN!!!!!

• 📽️ Dune Part Two delivered in a big way. Excited to see what happens next, whenever that happens. I also deliberately went to the movie theater to see Madame Web, which, well.

• 🎮 There's another new Final Fantasy out, and this one's an old one, and it's very big, and it's very long, and it may never end.

• 🎲 We've been playing a lot of Frosthaven since the beginning of the year, but for obvious reasons we went back to Dune Imperium recently and ohmygodit'sstillsogood

• 📚 Reading has slowed down. I need to pick something up from the stack.

Everything else is fair here. Pullo is well. Freya is napping in the sun. See you soon.