GDC 2016, That Was Fun
I finally went to GDC 2016 in San Francisco. I recommend going for anyone who develops games in any capacity. I think I learned as much from the workshops and sessions as I did from standing in lines talking to people. Most of my time at the conference was spent in the indie game areas because that's where most of the things I wanted to do were located.
The first part of my week at GDC was spent in a game development workshop, where we were put into groups to with the goal of making game giving many restrictions. The first day we had to emulate a video game the group knew using pens, paper, and dice. The idea was to figure out the main aesthetics of fun the game used and iterate (or play test) the group's paper game until we had achieved the aesthetic fun of the original game; my group was tasked with emulating Rocket League. The second day was similar to the first where iterated through game mechanics to create a better game. The big difference on the second day was that every group started with the same card game. After a few hours, we created a fun house party themed drinking game. There were also other activities, like one call Game of Games were groups had to continuous combine simple games into a more complex game.
Outside of the workshops, I played a ton of virtual reality games using Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, and Samsung Gear VR... and only fell off a bean bag chair once. Right now I'm leaning more toward PlayStation VR since I already have a PS4.
Last was the expo, I spent a lot of time talking to programmers and artist at the indie expo. I was able to show off my game when it came up in conversation and give and receive a some business cards while at the expo. People seemed to be more impressed with my business cards than my mobile game, but to be fair the cards were a finished product and my game clearly wasn't. I did get some good feedback from people who played my game. So, I'll definitely go back again next year if I can afford it, but I might not stay for a whole week again.