What I’m Hoping to Get Out of the Christian Game Developers Conference

With only 15 days to go until the Christian Game Developers Conference, I thought it was worth taking a step back and asking why on earth I’d fly half way around the world to visit Portland, Oregon – what am I hoping to get out of attending this year’s CGDC? Here are my top four reasons:

1. Meeting Others in the Christian Video Game Community

As I mentioned yesterday, the Christian video game space isn’t huge – we’re still talking about a small handful of passionate people mostly doing it for the sheer love of it. In that kind of environment, I think it’s really important that those of us who are doing it don’t work in isolation, but that we stand shoulder-to-shoulder and share our ideas and our enthusiasm. I’m hugely excited about finally meeting some of the people whose names I’ve been aware of through the Internet, or friends from the Christian Developers Network, who I’ve never previously had the privilege of meeting in person.

2. Seeking the Wisdom of Older and Wiser Developers

We all know that iron sharpens iron, and another key reason why I’m heading off to the CGDC is to try and benefit from the wisdom of some of the veteran game developers. I feel like I have so many decisions ahead of me this year as to the future of Ebenezer, and I’m really hoping and praying that I’ll be able to get some sound advice whilst I’m out there.

3. Getting Some Feedback

It’s fair to say that in many ways I’ve been operating somewhat in the dark on Ebenezer. The nature of an adventure game means I don’t want to reveal too much about the storyline and the puzzles in advance, since that pretty much is the game – there needs to be some incentive to actually play the finished article. But the major downside of that is that it’s very hard for people to give feedback – there’s no way for people to give an honest assessment of what I’ve done so far. I’m hoping that, as painful as it may be, CGDC will be a great opportunity to find out what people really think. Maybe they’ll say it stinks and I need to keep working, or maybe they’ll like what they see.

4. Because it Sounds Like a Huge Amount of Fun

It’s also fair to say that it just sounds like it’s going to be a real riot. It’ll be awesome to visit Oregon and hopefully get to explore a little bit in the few days before the conference. Then during the conference itself there’ll be a tonne of opportunities to hang out with fun and interesting people, plus there’s going to be a live worship set from BarlowGirl and things like that.

If you’re going to CGDC this year, what are you hoping to get out of it?