Is PAX Dev worth it?

jthom252jthom252 Duarte, CARegistered User regular
Hey, I've found myself in an interesting position this year where I have some additional time and travel incentives that line up with PAX Dev. What I'm curious about is if it's really worth the extra money. I would consider myself in the demographic of people who would want to attend (made some games and looking to do more of that as a career), but finding information about the convention itself has always been a little more difficult. I'm not going in expecting the same kind of scale as say GDC, but are there enough attending developers to make it really worth pursuing? Are the talks particularity good? Is it the networking experience that much more in-depth (I assume at least you'd find many more people willing to look at portfolios and resumes than on the show floor). Is the attitude more geared towards entry-level / students or more veteran professionals?

I'm curious to hear any first-hand accounts from people who've taken the time to go attend, and if they think they could shine some light as to whether or not I'd find much value in it.

Posts

  • zerzhulzerzhul Registered User, Moderator mod
  • jthom252jthom252 Duarte, CARegistered User regular
    Ah, that explains quite a lot then. I guess I'll still have to decide if it seems worth it from a personal perspective.

  • GinRyuGinRyu SeattleRegistered User regular
    edited August 2015
    I'll answer what I can without breaking the black box rules in regards to my experience last year.

    A lot of developers attend, of varying backgrounds. There appeared to be a lot of attendees more on the novice end of the scale, but there was a large variety of developers, especially in regards to the speakers.

    I found the talks to be quite good, but I will not be attending again this year due to the price increase. For me, it has passed the "worth it" line (I'm a self-funded indie, though, so that's a huge chunk of cash for me now).

    Networking is great there, but I never saw any exchange of portfolios or resumes on the floor. That is not any behavior I'd really expect there. From what I could tell, it was all developers, no recruiters. Even if you were to make a good contact that would be interested in hiring you, I think it would be a little weird if you had a resume on hand. That's just me, though.

    GinRyu on
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