For people who don’t quite know me yet, I am a freelance HTML5 developer currently working at H4B Catapult, which is a New Jersey-based non-game company, who is interested in working in the game industry as a programmer.

To start of my first day at GDC 2013, I retrieved my all-access pass at the registration booth. It is my second time coming to GDC. My first time was in 2011. I didn’t attend last year because I didn’t have enough money. I’ve been saving my money from freelancing for this.

The first summit I attended was How to Make an Original F2P Game. I might have missed the first advice on that. I’ll have to look it up on GDC Vault. However, I managed to write down the rest on my notes on my iPad. Here are what I have wrote down so far:

2. Use (and make) tools that create gameplay quickly
3. Listen to what your customers do (not only what they say)
4. Build games w/ broad design space (and broad monetization potential as result)
5. Keep the team small
6. Big changes post release
7. Bring in art late (focus on making the game fun first, then make the art look good in the production stage)

Overall, these points will help you and your team develop a successful free-to-play (or non-F2P) game. These will help me well. The team I helped form recently ended up disastrous due to multiple reasons (very tiny team working on a big project with no clear deadline and recruited wrong people). It is very difficult for me to find the right people in Philadelphia area who is willing to work with me on a team project. Unless I get hired outside of Philly, I will try forming a team again when I get back.

I thought about writing more about all the other summits and tutorials I attended today, but I don’t feel like wasting a lot of time and space repeating some of the things I already stated on my Twitter tweets. You can follow my tweets through @DimensionalEye if you haven’t already.

I originally wanted to network with people attending this year’s GDC, but more people planned to attend the last three days. I’m kind of bit disappointed that I haven’t done that yet. I may have to try be more bold. I’m hoping that the more people I network with, the higher my chances of getting into the game industry.

Tomorrow, I plan to attend Game Design Workshop Day 2 since I have registered for it. When I tried to attend day 1’s workshop, I couldn’t get in because it was packed. I’ll have to wake up early and be there early as possible so I can be one of the first people in line.

I hope tomorrow will be better.