Paris GDC was my first “excuse” to go to Paris, and so I took my wife along for the trip (hooray for frequent flyer miles). FYI, we stayed a week extra to vacation, but I won’t bother going into that here…

By all counts Paris GDC was a success, with packed rooms and many good sessions. As it turns out, trying to co-locate with Game Connection in Lyon last year was too great a distraction/conflict for all the biz dev that usually goes on. Whereas, running solo in Paris during the lovely summer season seemed to be the right choice.

Several of the sessions were repeats from the main GDC earlier this year. But, since I don’t actually get to attend many sessions while in San Francisco, it was a nice chance to catch up. That said, of course, there were also many new and specifically tailored sessions - including some given in French - big surprise!

Sadly, the publisher<>developer debate session I was suppose to moderate fell through. No publisher was willing to duke it out with Bill Dugan (Torpex), and so the organizers relegated to an updated version of Bill’s Leadership Forum talk on external producers.

Given that I stayed in Paris for an extra week, timing worked out great as IGDA-Paris was having a chapter meeting the day before I had to leave. As always, very cool to see how IGDA chapters from around the world operate, their vibe, etc. (In case you were wondering, my wife was asleep early that night after an exhausting week of playing tourist - so she didn’t mind me going out solo for this bit of work action).

Anyway, on to some photos:


The opening VIP reception, on a lovely terrace with views of the Eiffel Tower.

 


The Eiffel Tower at night.

 


Paris GDC was held in the La Defense biz/tech area on the outskirts of Paris.

 


Ralph Baer recounting the start of our industry.

 


Mark Healey and Alex Evans impressively present their keynote from within their game, LittleBigPlanet.

 


Jurie Horneman packed the room to discuss team productivity.

 


Chris Kline (2k Boston) gives a revised version of his BioShock postmortem (which he first presented at IGDA-Montreal).

 


Chris building the courage to wrestle with giant slugs (aka escargots)…

 


Kim Pallister (Intel), Amanda Mae Miller (Think Services) and Martin (2K Australia) chow down on more standard foods.

 


John Nash (Blitz Games) gives an excellent talk on the value of training (and investing in) staff.

 


Jamil Moledina (Think Services) drills Rob Pardo on all things Blizzard…

 


French developers start to arrive/mingle at the bar for the IGDA-Paris chapter meeting.

 


Renowned French developer Olivier Lejade recounts his colorful history in game development…

 


…much to the pleasure of the larger-than-expected audience.