The Road to GDC09 (Ep. I)

I am a member of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). Go to the meetings, watch devs deconstruct their games, drink some of the free beer, all in all a good monthly Wednesday eve.

A few months ago I became aware, through the IGDA newsletter, that they were offering scholarships to go to GDC ‘09, this year’s incarnation of the annual Game Developers Conference, March 23-27. The idea behind the GDC, as near as I can recall, is to get together some of the biggest names in the video games industry and bask in their awesomeness for one business week. The conference involves keynotes, thoughtful debate panels, tutorials, lectures—essentially, it’s a respected, mature, week-long game discussion. And the IGDA was offering 25 scholarships.

Long story short, by answering 6-7 rather simple 100-words-or-less questions, I won one of the 25. This gets me a free main GDC pass (value: $1500-2000), an accompanying industry mentor, an on-site game studio visit, and all the gold I can eat.

I’ll be honest. I very rarely win anything. I think the last prize I won was in elementary for “Most Z’s in Surname.” This latest is somewhat of a pleasant surprise.

News as soon as I blog about it.

Holy frak.