The IGDA Student SIG hosted a roundtable session at GDC 2018 called Better Game Developer Clubs: Improving Student Orgs Roundtable. Roundtable sessions aren’t recorded, but this article is a summary of our discussion, thanks to notes taken by Zoram Mercado. This isn’t an outline of the conversation as it played out, rather it’s a loosely organized list of suggestions that were brought up.

In this article “clubs” refer to student-run organizations in higher-education (colleges and universities). This also includes IGDA academic chapters, which are clubs that have become officially affiliated with the IGDA. If you want to affiliate an existing or new club with the IGDA, please click here.

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[This is a transcript of our most recent roundtable event.]

[Transcriptor’s Note: I’ve edited the transcript of the audio for readability and flow purposes. It captures the spirit of the roundtable but not the letter of it.]

Livio: I was thinking of starting with a general introduction of what GDC is and why it’s important and all that.

Rory: That’s good. I like that. Go.

Livio: So… for people wondering. Why is GDC such a big deal? So GDC is the game developers conference. They host multiple throughout the year. But the one this month is the flagship, main conference. The other ones that they hold, I believe there’s GDC Europe, GDC China… they often do topical ones. They had GDC Play back when mobile was really big. Yeah.

But GDC, the main one, is in San Francisco in the US. It’s a really big conference. It’s definitely the biggest professional conference I’ve ever seen or been to. I don’t know how SIGGRAPHcompares. There might be bigger ones.

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