Some Steam Dev Day Thoughts
Hey! I am alive and still kicking after my adventures in Disney World. I decided to take a longer break after Disney, as I only had a couple days back home before I had to fly out to Seattle for Steam Dev Days. I figured I can jump back onto the blog post train with some thoughts about the brand new conference from the folks at Valve.
* Whoa this conference was small. I heard a rumor that it was just 1,200 people. It felt quite cozy and reminded me of the Independent Games Summit. There was more than enough space for everyone.
* The free stuff was out of this world. We got a Steam controller which is awesome, but Intel also stepped in and gave everyone a free Steam Machine. Madness!
* Actually on the topic of free stuff, we also got a winter hat (toque?) and an umbrella, which are two things I totally needed for this trip to the northwest! Plus they gave us all notebooks and pens which are also awesome things that I needed for the conference and made great use of.
* Valve blew every other conference out of the water when it comes to perks for just attending. Not only with the free bag of stuff, but also a catered breakfast and a pretty solid dinner on both nights. I don't drink, but there were open bars on both nights (I think it was both nights at least.)
* The Day 1 talks were right up my alley. A lot of perspective on development and marketing, and a lot of it coming from indie developers or developers from small studios.
* Day 2 though was a little off course for me personally. It was a lot of tech talks involving virtual reality and Linux stuff, which I would be interested in but is most likely over my head at the moment.
* Looks like Linux is the future for Valve which is a little scary for me being so bound to Windows. I do everything in Windows and have no clue about anything regarding Linux, so I hope I can figure it out for my upcoming projects. Using Mono with C# should be a great start though!
* Apparently there was some baller amazing virtual reality demo but I didn't get a chance to check it out. (Only 60ish people actually saw it during the conference.)
* I got to see a lot of developer buddies at the conference which was awesome, but I still missed a lot of people which makes me sad.
* I am really bad at meeting new people and generally don't like to socialize, and I need to fix this. I met a handful of new people which was cool, but I definitely didn't put enough effort into it. I too often fall back on clinging to people I know and people that I feel comfortable with. I get really mad at myself for being so introverted.
* There was a cool after party with some kinda live band or something but I peaced out after a few minutes because loud dark spaces are not my thing. I wish there were more things to go to that weren't loud dark spaces with drinking, or maybe I am just not social enough to understand.
* Valve wanted to put on a conference that had a lot of value because they believe that most conferences aren't worth it, and I think they succeeded. However it'll be interesting to see if there's a Dev Days next year and how many people register. I have a feeling that a lot of the conference was the way it was because of how limited the attendance was.
* Am I going to develop for the Steam Machine and SteamOS? I guess I should put some effort into it sooner than later, because it seems like it'd be a sure fire way to get good support from the Steam people, which is a big component on having a successful game on Steam.
* I'm nervous for when the time Steam is going to be totally open and the question will be not how to get your game on Steam but how to get your game on the front page (which might already be the case with Greenlight accepting so many games lately.) Successful games are featured time and time again, but getting a niche little known title to the front page is nearly impossible.
* Unfortunately Valve didn't actually give Tyler and I brand new Tesla Roadsters.
Overall I had a really great time at Dev Days, and I hope they put on another one next year! It was an awesome excuse to get out of my room and travel more and meet up with rad people that I only get to see a few times per year.
* Whoa this conference was small. I heard a rumor that it was just 1,200 people. It felt quite cozy and reminded me of the Independent Games Summit. There was more than enough space for everyone.
* The free stuff was out of this world. We got a Steam controller which is awesome, but Intel also stepped in and gave everyone a free Steam Machine. Madness!
* Actually on the topic of free stuff, we also got a winter hat (toque?) and an umbrella, which are two things I totally needed for this trip to the northwest! Plus they gave us all notebooks and pens which are also awesome things that I needed for the conference and made great use of.
* Valve blew every other conference out of the water when it comes to perks for just attending. Not only with the free bag of stuff, but also a catered breakfast and a pretty solid dinner on both nights. I don't drink, but there were open bars on both nights (I think it was both nights at least.)
* The Day 1 talks were right up my alley. A lot of perspective on development and marketing, and a lot of it coming from indie developers or developers from small studios.
* Day 2 though was a little off course for me personally. It was a lot of tech talks involving virtual reality and Linux stuff, which I would be interested in but is most likely over my head at the moment.
* Looks like Linux is the future for Valve which is a little scary for me being so bound to Windows. I do everything in Windows and have no clue about anything regarding Linux, so I hope I can figure it out for my upcoming projects. Using Mono with C# should be a great start though!
* Apparently there was some baller amazing virtual reality demo but I didn't get a chance to check it out. (Only 60ish people actually saw it during the conference.)
* I got to see a lot of developer buddies at the conference which was awesome, but I still missed a lot of people which makes me sad.
* I am really bad at meeting new people and generally don't like to socialize, and I need to fix this. I met a handful of new people which was cool, but I definitely didn't put enough effort into it. I too often fall back on clinging to people I know and people that I feel comfortable with. I get really mad at myself for being so introverted.
* There was a cool after party with some kinda live band or something but I peaced out after a few minutes because loud dark spaces are not my thing. I wish there were more things to go to that weren't loud dark spaces with drinking, or maybe I am just not social enough to understand.
* Valve wanted to put on a conference that had a lot of value because they believe that most conferences aren't worth it, and I think they succeeded. However it'll be interesting to see if there's a Dev Days next year and how many people register. I have a feeling that a lot of the conference was the way it was because of how limited the attendance was.
* Am I going to develop for the Steam Machine and SteamOS? I guess I should put some effort into it sooner than later, because it seems like it'd be a sure fire way to get good support from the Steam people, which is a big component on having a successful game on Steam.
* I'm nervous for when the time Steam is going to be totally open and the question will be not how to get your game on Steam but how to get your game on the front page (which might already be the case with Greenlight accepting so many games lately.) Successful games are featured time and time again, but getting a niche little known title to the front page is nearly impossible.
* Unfortunately Valve didn't actually give Tyler and I brand new Tesla Roadsters.
Overall I had a really great time at Dev Days, and I hope they put on another one next year! It was an awesome excuse to get out of my room and travel more and meet up with rad people that I only get to see a few times per year.
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