Our visit to the Game Developers Conference 2024
The Game Developers Conference took place in San Francisco between the 18th - 23rd March. This year Jo Ward, our Senior Design Researcher on the Media Cymru team, made the trip as part of the Cymru Greadigol | Creative Wales contingent. Here's what Jo had to say about her trip.
Why were we there
The GDC (Game Developers Conference) is the largest annual gathering for games industry professionals, and thanks to the team at Cymru Greadigol | Creative Wales, we were able to venture to San Francisco with some of Wales’s foremost emerging technology talent. The delegation this year was a mix of more experienced companies as well as some brand new to the games industry, or in our case, adjacent to it. For me, it was the perfect chance to get to spend time and learn more about some of our Media Cymru consortium partners (Rescape Innovation Ltd, Wales Interactive) and funded projects within the Innovation Pipeline (Sugar Creative, Good Gate Media Ltd).
Key Takeaways
Though globally there are some challenges within the industry, the talent and potential in Wales is strong. I was fortunate enough to see and test a number of the demos brought by our friends as well as listen in on conversations with interested parties from different nationalities and angles; from investment to licensing – there is a lot of potential!
Future hopes
With conversations sparked by a number of our delegation around their future R&D hopes, turning to how Media Cymru might be able to support them, I’m positive the industry will continue to grow and be more innovative.
GDC also helped me forge a better relationship with the excellent team at Creative Wales – Diolch am bopeth Kath, Dai a Paul!
So, here’s to successful applications (hopefully I’ll see a few familiar faces on the Seed and Development calls over this year) and to the relationships old and new that were strengthened by games!
