Speaking at GDEX

A week ago, I woke up extra early and drove to Columbus, Ohio, to speak at GDEX. I have known about this event for some time, and I have friends who have spoken at it, but I had never attended before. Shortly after the speaker submission window opened, I proposed to give a short introduction to game programming with Godot Engine. The proposal was accepted, and so I made my travel plans.

GDEX is co-located with Origins Game Fair. I had been to Origins in the early 2000s but had not been back since. We get down to GenCon fairly recently since it is right in Indianapolis, but friends have told me that Origins is a better event for playing games. From my first pass through the exhibit hall, I was struck by how on one hand, it was a lot like being at GenCon, and on the other hand, it wasn't shoulder-to-shoulder people. Indeed, I could see myself going back and taking the family.

Everyone I met at GDEX/Origins was friendly and helpful, starting right from registration. I was able to find my room shortly before another speaker began his talk. I sat through the first third of it until he turned into more Unity-specific details. Then I decided to stretch my legs and clear my head before my own talk. When I returned, I had a chance to meet the speaker and get set up. Only three people had reserved spaces for my presentation, but seven or eight people showed up. That's kind of a small crowd, but the truth is that it's more people than I've spoken to for some peer-reviewed and published academic papers, so I was happy to see them. The online description for my talk clearly asked people to bring laptops, but it seems some of the attendees either did not read that or disregarded it. Only one attendee had a laptop, so my talk ended up being more of a demonstration than a workshop. I think that actually turned out OK. One of the challenges of speaking at a public event is the wide range of backgrounds of attendees. I got the impression, which was strengthened by post-presentation discussion, that some of the folks had done a little programming, some were active developers in other languages, and some were just curious.

Based on this experience, if I were to present again, I would probably go with something more like a guest lecture. Really, many of the kinds of topics from GDC would not be out of place here, just with a smaller (and more amateur) crowd.

There really wasn't anything at GDEX that bound it together. A badge for GDEX was a badge for Origins. Anyone with those badges could attend a GDEX talk. The GDEX exhibit area was one part of the larger hall where Origins booths were. This is to say that it doesn't feel like a separate event but like a single one. Even the Thursday night speakers' mixer, which I mistakenly thought was GDEX-specific, was for anyone running any event at GDEX or Origins. This meant that the majority of my networking time was in the exhibit hall.

There were about two dozen GDEX presenters in the exhibit hall. Three were from higher education, a few were from small independent teams, and several tables were staffed by individuals pursuing side-projects. I talked to devs from Michigan and all over Ohio. When I asked about their local development scenes, I was surprised that none of these had any. They had the Internet of course, but I expected more of them to come out of local development groups. This was a little disheartening: if the five-person VR team reports that they don't know anyone else in Cleveland doing this kind of work, what hope do I have of building a game developer community in Muncie?

It was definitely a worthwhile trip, and it helped me build expectations of how I or my students might participate in future years.

In closing, I will share here some quick notes and links for some of the nice folks I spoke with.

• The Boundary Condition is a fascinating demo of a game involving slicing a 3D space into cross-sections.
• three times sixty is an interesting physics game
• McClure School of Emerging Communication Technologies at Ohio University have a game development program in a college of communications.
• Shawnee State University is a small institution in southern Ohio with a highly-ranked game design program.
• I met a nice team of college students who partnered with the US Forest Service to make an education game... but the swag they gave me doesn't give the game name nor their school's name, and now I cannot find it. I believe they were from a regional art school.
• Charmakards is making a non-religious collectible card game inspired by the Bible

And, with nothing to do with higher education or game development per se, I talked to some nice folks from Creature Caster about the incredible miniatures they make. They are lovely.