So, I spent this weekend moving. Literally down the street from my old place, but still, regardless of how far you go, you always have to put things in boxes and you always end up throwing a lot of stuff out. In m y case, I actually ended up throwing out a lot of t-shirts that I’d gotten from GDC and other computer related events (I actually still had my two shirts from when I was on programming team in college. That’s right, I was on programming team). It led me to this piece of advice for students and others going to GDC.
Don’t waste your time swag hunting.
Darius probably has this mentioned somewhere on his blog, but your time is better spent elsewhere. This is my 6th year at GDC, and I will tell you right now that, after this move, I will have kept the following items from all 6 years at GDC.
- 3 large blue PlayStation cups, snagged during booth crawl
- 1 nVidia cup, also snagged during booth crawl.
- 1 deck of cards from ILM / Lucas Arts
- 4 IGDA shirts (from the past 4 years, I got rid of the other 2)
- 3 GDC shirts, the ones that actually come in your bag. I discarded the rest, including my shirts the year I was a CA
- 2 branded shirts, one for LoTRO, and one for Maya (which is completely black and on the back says “> south You have entered a dark place. You are likely to be eaten by a grue. >”, and on the front says “Maya: Can you imagine”)
- 1 (broken) Microsoft DirectX backpack and the accompanying organizer that went with it.
That’s it, and it should be mentioned that only the top three items were “swag” in the traditional sense (meaning I got them on the expo floor). And I didn’t have to hunt for it. The cups are filled with beer during the booth crawl. Stop by 2 or three booths, grab the cups you want. If you’re like me, you just go to the front of the line and grab a cup, since the beer is usually pretty cheap anyway. All the other stuff you can get from attending specific events or being a member of an organization, and hunting for it will do you no good.
So what did I throw away? Tons, and some of it before I even left San Jose / San Francisco. Until you actually do the rounds at the GDC expo, you have no idea how much crap swag hunting will generate for you. As soon as you step foot on the expo floor, you will be bombarded with mints, shirts, pens, puzzle boxes, demo CDs, rulers, key chains, silly putty, stress balls, bouncy balls, chap stick, boomerangs, rockets, calendars, pads, little gel creatures, silly putty, decks of cards, Slinkys (that don’t work), magazines, bags, and maybe (if you’re lucky) something that might actually be useful for you some day.
Now, I know that you’ll do the swag hunt. You have this big bag, and you want to fill it with stuff. Especially “cool” stuff like rockets you can fling at people and crazy t-shirts. But while you’re doing that, just remember there are people there, handing out swag, that probably have interesting things to say. More interesting than what they’re trying to give you anyway.