Things today that made me laugh until I snorted:

• • Translating a boring work conversation into hula
  • Faygo Rock n Rye soda exploding in a Last Stand sort of way inside Chuck’s motorcycle case
  • Blurting out “stranger danger!” when surprise-hugged by my friend Rayne in the subway
  • Getting my butt handed to me by the office Galaga machine
  • My father-in-law’s introduction to the tapioca lumps in bubble tea
  • My new Frog Hat
  • Wearing my new Frog Hat on a video conference and demanding to be taken seriously

Greetings from an ethnic librarian working in the games industry!

I’m posting this review of my experience last year at GDC (the Game Developers Conference) held every year here in San Francisco. It was originally part of a letter to my team here at Linden Lab, but I thought you librarians might be interested/amused, considering the gender ratio at most library conferences.

-Erica

Hi guys -
I went to the Game Developers Conference last year and found it to be of dubious value.

The best part of the conference for me was the Expo room, which proved to be a valuable source of alternative employment opportunities. I learned that if I want to move to Las Vegas and design slot machine interfaces, I can more than double my salary, which I’m keeping in mind for when I have a stroke and develop an unquenchable desire for polyester and/or chicken wings. I enjoyed scanning the various game interfaces set up to demo motion graphics products, and filed away a few ideas from the Pirates of the Caribbean MMORPG.

Photo by ruminatrix

For me, however, the most memorable moment was riding the escalator of the Moscone center and gazing across a sea of black-clad gamed devs among whom I was the only woman.

As a Person of Estrogen and part of a numeric majority in this world, I’m used to being one of many women developers, operations experts, release managers at work. This isn’t the 1970s. Nerdy women exist and thrive. San Francisco is a welcoming place. Linden Lab is a welcoming place. GDC. Was. Not.

I get the feeling that all is not well with an operation that returns such a limited array.

This scene, riding the escalator, about five years too old but still worried about being mistaken for a boothbabe, has become my personal benchmark for outsider discomfort.

In summary: meh to the GDC.

Borrow someone’s pass and check out the Expo. Cruise the demo games. If you really care about a session, read the person’s book or website instead. And if you really care about making better games, spend the three days watching user observation videos.

Happy news! I was invited to be a panelist at the South by Southwest Interactive conference next month, as part of their ScreenBurn track. I’m on a panel called “Funologists live and in person: Guerilla Game Research.”

I’ll share my experience starting some low-budget user research cycles for Second Life, and my work translating those frustrating observations into shippable engineering requirements.

There will be pretty pictures, and possibly cake.

The cake is a lie, but you should stop by anyway. There could be cake.

There certainly won’t be cake and not cake. Not at the same time, I can assure you.