Ringling College of Art and Design students, faculty, and staff recently attended the 2024 Game Developers Conference (GDC), held in San Francisco March 18-22. The group represented the College at an informational booth in the event’s expo hall while also experiencing essential seminars and workshops.
This year’s featured speakers at GDC included Nintendo Executive Officer Takashi Tezuka, Larian Studios Founder/CEO Swen Vincke, Brass Lion Entertainment Senior Writer Evan Narcisse, and Glow Up Games Co-founder/CEO Mitu Khandaker. There were more than 1,000 speakers in total across 730 sessions, workshops, and networking events, and nearly 30,000 attendees registered across all five days.
The Ringling College contingent hosted a booth during all three days of the GDC Expo, answering questions, showcasing student work, handing out swag bags, and providing a constant presence for the College. The expo also featured leading technology companies such as Meta, Epic Games, and Microsoft, and included community spaces for experiencing a wide variety of arcade games, alternative controllers, and tabletop games from independent developers.
In addition to sharing information and making connections with prospective parents and students, companies, and other participants, Ringling College students and faculty gained invaluable industry knowledge and opportunities at sessions, summits, and workshops that touched on many aspects of the games industry, including programming, narrative, visual arts, audio, leadership, and career development.
Ringling students from several majors, including Game Art and Virtual Reality Development, also garnered potential job and internship opportunities, and seniors were able to show off their thesis projects to recruiters from the highest-level companies in the business. Ringling College student work was frequently praised for its caliber, with many game company representatives commenting that the College’s creations stood out as superior to other schools being showcased.
The content of this year’s conference was guided in part by a 2024 “State of the Game Industry” survey, which asked more than 3,000 game developers around the world about far-reaching topics like accessibility, social media, unions, AI, and workplace policies.
Begun in the 80s as an informal gathering of developers, GDC quickly became a formal computer game conference. The international event now hosts prominent game industry names—both established and upstarts—to explore the future of computer games, consoles, mobile devices, online games, and now VR and AR game and entertainment spaces as well. Next year’s event has been scheduled for March 17-21, 2025.
