As a true hearted inhabitant of Brno (the second biggest city in the Czech Republic) I don’t need to go into Prague too often. But the Friday night November 18th was promising an interesting weekend because I was packing and travelling into our capital city to visit GDS 2011. Game Developer Session comes once in a year and lasts for one or two days. The second length, great looking program and interesting possibilities made the weekend filled with fun.

Anděl (one city part of Prague) is for me the most known part of the city. It may be thanks our FreeGame office settled there and it was my base from which I travelled to Nation Technical Library. The first day on Saturday was more special because I was accompanied by Hynek (our boss), chief-editor Apofis and our young photographer Káťa. When we arrived to the source of nerds and geeks we immediately bumped into a huge line showing us that the event won’t be empty at all. After few seconds we met several colleagues and organizers, one of them was our ex-journalist Jan „Sysel“ Jirkovský.

Coats, jackets and caps were given into the cloakroom and we started deciding which session or lectures will be good visiting as first. The trick of this sized event is in having minimally two halls or rooms to choose from. The problem was that both possibilities (main hall and workshop) had most of the program filled with so interesting stuff that cloning was needed. Probably the first attraction was in
the person Dan Vávra and his advices how to begin your own carrier or game studio. The next names were strong as well – Tomáš Krcha told us something about AAA 3D games in browsers or we listened to Miloš Endrle from Geewa and his encouraging talk for beginning game creators. We learned about new thing called Gamification which we will describe deeply in another article (if I have time) and I recommend finding something about this meaning.

During the short breaks, necks were visited by liters of coffee, lemonades and several types of tea. The hungry stomachs were easily silenced by piles of baguettes (surprisingly good). More interesting than sessions and speeches (for our chief-editor Apofis and Káťa) were games and consoles. When you thought the program doesn’t offer you something interesting at some point you could enjoy Xbox, Xbox Kinect, Dance Pads, 3D monitors or special 3 monitors game.

I shouldn’t forget about the foreign guests. Projjol Banerje and Dan Wentz arrived. I didn’t manage to hear and see the first guy but let’s stop at Dan. You may have read our short chat with him. So on Saturday I had chance to speak with him much longer and managed to make one big interview with him. Wentz had his own two sessions where he showed his career as game music composer and designer and introduced his work and what devices he uses.

The whole first day was closed showing some free and Indie games which competed in a small competition and a discussion and bout technologies of the future. But they day wasn’t finished at all. There was an after-party in Jam Café with two Djs and audio-visual show with Duna theme.

I think, I don’t have to write to much how the Sunday morning was hard from the waking up view but, surprisingly, the next day attendance was the same as the day before. The program was promising again and you could meet people from 2K Czech, Bohemia Interactive or from the GDS’ general partner Keen Software House. I was getting tired so I made one hour break and tried several games. I’m definitely recommending following Miner Wars game which is under development and I had possibility to try it playing with three monitors for the best cockpit space feeling. Then I spoke with Dan Wentz, eaten several baguettes and went to learn and listen to more stuff.

The end was about saying farewells, giving thanks to the organizers – great work guys! – and returning back home. If we have more events as this I’m not afraid about the future for our game industry.

Pictures: Káťa Jandová, Alina Shupikova a Jaroslav Wágner