That's a Wrap (GDC 2026 Edition)...

Well, the Game Developers' Conference is behind me. 

This year, the stars aligned, and my gamer and eventual game developer son was home from college for spring break exactly during GDC week.  That turned into GDC 2026 being his first GDC, and for me will be remembered as "that time I got to show my son why I do what I do".  It was pretty amazing :).  We hung out, I got to introduce him to way more of my favorite people than I expected, and he came away crazy inspired from some unexpected talks and even made some accidental new connections.

Every year, I wrangle and help curate the Experimental Games Showcase at GDC. It's an annual showcase of prototypes, games, interactive experiences, and generally unexpected, marginalized, and just weird and creative mostly-digital-but-sometimes-physical things.  

The conference graciously guarantees us a slot in the schedule every year, and this year they also supported us adding a second session for live demos and meeting the devs and presenters.  The main session had a snaking line an hour before, and the follow up demo session was packed... at 3pm on a Friday at GDC.  So many devs and random creative wanderers sharing ideas and just sharing a space.  It was lovely.

The showcase is really just one 2 hour session once a year, but we spend almost five months preparing.  Soliciting and reviewing submissions, curating selections, mentoring presenters, and wrangling a dozen presentations and demos into a coherent something.  It's a lot, but I always come away inspired and ready to get back to my own work, excited and hopeful about the experimentation that's quietly going on out there every day in every time zone, and looking forward to kicking off next year's session with a call for submissions.

Aaaaand, as an added bonus, my son creates these showcase videos for us each year :).  It's a bunch of work wrangling all the source material, but it helps us give a tiny bit of exposure to as many games as possible.