This is an article series of stories about the GDC scholar experiences in March 2022.
Tunisian university teacher Bassem Seddik is one of the Global Game Jam Scholarship recipients for GDC 2022. He has taken a vacancy in 2022 to launch his own startup called ViZmerald. In addition to electronic air filter helmet they are developing a serious game for dental cirurgical simulation and GDC was an excellent choice to get inspiration and connect with the industry leaders in both hardware and software.
Bassem participated in GDC fully online and enjoyed the experience. He wished to network with the industry leaders and in the end he was able to connect with most other GGJ scholars.
“I followed the GDC for the first 3 days EXHAUSTIVELY! I tried not to miss any online accessible session that's streaming live or that was opened from a pre-recorded video. Starting from the 4th GDC day, as more and more contents were becoming available from their recordings, following EVERYTHING was not an option”, Bassem says smiling.
Bassem was active in many chat sessions and even listened to multiple sessions streaming at the same time. He also connected early on with another GGJ Scholar, Alireza Seddighi from Iran. They were commenting together on the different sessions.
“The highlights I remember include the game awards ceremony, with the INSCRYPTION game collecting 5 awards, I think! I also did like the retro games presentation made by their own creators, and the stories they told behind. I followed the AAA games technical talks and was very interested in the facial and body realistic capture projects”, Bassem sums up what the conference delivered.
He was also curious about the new NFT trend, and checked the related presentations. He is planning to watch a lot more talks as they appear in the GDC vault.
“One take away for me is the humble attitude, the friendly and open mindset that many presenters had, yet still they are working on top notch technologies”, Bassem reflects.
As an additional takeaway Bassem mentions is that some sessions did remind him of the importance of sound content within the feedback loop with the user. He notes that there is even a prize dedicated to that in the Game Developers Choice Awards.
“I surely want to say thank you for giving me this opportunity to get access to the GDC2022. I wish I could have been in person there, but this is going to be one additional goal on my list for the future. Hopefully with a product that could speak to many interested users when attending it next time. One thing is sure, I'm into the gaming industry, and I will carry more people sharing this passion with me!”
You can watch Bassem's video greeting below.