A group of students at Buena Vista University, left Tuesday morning, March 18, for a trip to San Francisco’s Game Developers Conference.  

Students who attended were able to participate in multiple educational sessions daily, network with others in their future career fields, and receive critique from professionals over portfolios and other projects.  

Taylor Carlson, Professor of Animation and Graphic Design at BVU, as well as the organizer of the trip, said, “GDC is the biggest talk about game development. Period.”  With that in mind, Carlson led nine hopeful students to San Francisco to learn, participate, and grow in their fields through this event.   

The goal of the conference, according to the GDC website, is to “Bring the development community together to shape the world’s leading entertainment industry across five days of education, innovation, and networking.” GDC is an annual national conference that brings in developers and designers of the game industry from all backgrounds and disciplines. Amongst the roster of speakers that hosted sessions during this year’s GDC were professionals from Google, Ubisoft Studios, Riot Games, and even Discord, discussing topics related to game development. As for the audience, the 2025 attendance numbers reached well over 30,000 people, showing just how large and diverse the conference is and the abundance of opportunities it can offer to those who go.  

Amongst the group of students who decided to jump at those opportunities was a third-year animation student, Voldy Kadisha. When asked how GDC helped him prepare for his future career goals, Kadisha mentioned a session he attended that was presented by Isaac Olander who is, according to the GDC website, “The CEO and Art Director of Tallgran, a 3D outsourcing studio specializing in high-quality character creation for the most demanding game and film projects.” The session covered the design of black hair in game development. This presentation stuck out to Kadisha because of the networking he was able to do with Olander himself afterwards. Kadisha said, “I network with him; he’s a bit aware of me. So, now we’ve got a little familiarity. Best case scenario is ‘I like your work, let’s start talking about a job,’ and that’s what I want.” 

BVU plans to offer this same excursion bi-annually as a co-curricular experience. From positive feedback about the trip from her students, as well as having personally attended the conference, Carlson believes that GDC is a formative and beneficial experience that should continue being offered. “This is one of the most important co-curricular opportunities that we would have in game design because it allows students access to higher levels of very specialty education.” said Carlson.

Along with Kadisha, Carlson also mentioned how networking was a huge part of the conference, “It’s not just networking, it’s understanding your field, the next step, the next way you can access it,”  said Carlson.

GDC was a memorable and valuable trip to those who went. Buena Vista University looks forward to more conferences to come.