The Game Developer's Conference starts in less than 2 months. It is so close that I am already planning out when I am going to my barber so I look sharp but don’t have that first-day-of-school-I-just-got-a-haircut look.
I am excited to be giving two talks in GDC 2020. Here they are:
Back in March 2019 I gave the biggest talk of my career at the Game Developers Conference. It was all about email marketing. You can watch it here.
<iframe title="Build Your Own Fan Club: How to Use Your Email List" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/jZ5H6DeaKKs?rel=0&enablejsapi=1&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gamedeveloper.com" height="360px" width="100%" data-testid="iframe" loading="lazy" scrolling="auto" class="optanon-category-C0004 ot-vscat-C0004 " data-gtm-yt-inspected-91172384_163="true" id="431242296" data-gtm-yt-inspected-91172384_165="true" data-gtm-yt-inspected-113="true"></iframe>I thought it went well just judging by crowd reactions. I had no idea...
When I received the feedback report I was shocked to discover it was the highest-rated talk among the entire GDC 2019 summit!
Several people suggested I do a GDC talk about how to do a GDC talk. I am not ready to do that. Instead, here is a brain dump of some rules I use when writing and giving my talk. If any of this doesn’t make sense just ask me.
If you have a talk in GDC 2020 congrats! I can’t wait to watch it and meet you. If you didn’t get accepted to GDC this year but want to give a talk, this will hopefully help too (see the section at the bottom for tips on getting in)
Here are my tips.
Disclaimer section
My talk was ranked #1 by the attendees. But that is in no way an indication that it was the best talk. Here are some disclaimers to put this in context.
First a disclaimer. Privilege alert big time.
I am a white cis man. We have been the voice of authority for so long that people are just used to, and are comfortable with, us talking. I am absolutely sure that women and POC speakers got fewer positive votes and more nasty comments just because of who they are. I am sure systemic sexism and racism wrongly affects the ratings of non-white male speakers because of the sound of their voice, because they “seem” to be unsure of themselves, or a million other tiny shitty reasons. Before we begin I want to signal boost some awesome talks that I saw at GDC 2019 that deserve to be ranked just as high as mine:
Bonus: Victoria also wrote up a great article about how to beat your fears and give a talk
Second disclaimer: These are just the rules I live by when I give my talks.
I am not saying that if you don’t follow these you can’t give a good talk. There are many great speakers who have a completely different style from me. All I am trying to say is that these are the rules I follow when I write and give my talks. Also my topic was an informative talk (meaning I was trying to teach something.) Advocacy talks have a totally different tone and goal. Not all of these tips will apply for other types of talks. But at least some could.
Third disclaimer: I had the last slot of the day with a boring title like “Email Marketing.”
The only people who would attend a talk like that had to be business-minded and anyone who would have hated my talk probably decided to go to dinner instead. Several other GDC talks earlier in the day were more general interest and better attended. That means my audience was more tuned in and more likely to give me a high rating.
Here is a long list of tips:
Fun fact: Grace Bruxner's great talk was at the exact same time as mine and both our talks were about "building." The GDC schedulers were like eh... this is building hour.
How I write my talk
My talks are a story instead of just a long list of facts. I always build the talk around a natural story arc which will show up between the boring facts. I also build in payoffs and callbacks to the beginning of the talk.
I give tiny actionable facts that someone could implement. I try to take advice so specific, so step-by-step that viewers have everything they need to actually try it.
I deconstruct the bullet point pages. If I have a page with a list of bullet points it makes it so easy to just sit and read them to the audience. That means I will be stuck on a single slide for a long time. That is very hard to make interesting! Instead, I make each bullet point its own slide with its own awesome picture. Then I explain what that picture is. It makes my talk feel so much more kinetic and interesting.
Instead of trying to generalize my tips to apply to more people, I do the reverse. I make my tips more specific for a smaller audience. Viewers are smart. If the tip doesn’t directly apply to them, they will adapt it in a way that will. I am more worried that if my content is too generalized, it is just boring because then I would just be saying “well it depends on the situation.” People don’t travel thousands of miles and pay thousands of dollars to hear “it depends.”
I take advice that is well known and research who originally said it the backstory and the original context. I appear to know 1000% more than what I do because I gave a very specific fact about Elias St. Elmo Lewis.
My audience is actually Youtube. About 150 people saw my talk live at GDC. On the other hand, when my talk was posted on youtube, it earned almost 16,000 views. So I make sure I make the first minute super exciting so the youtube audience doesn’t click on the other video that is in the “up next” column. Also, they will have access to the web so give them links to go to. Also, I have a call to action so they can follow me.
I keep revisiting my main points throughout the presentation. If you rewatch my talk you will see I referenced the sales funnel on 18 separate slides. I kept calling back to it from every possible angle I could. I know I have to hammer and repeat and repeat my point for people to get it.
I add pathos and nostalgia. I talked about my kid and who I was when I was 9 years old. I can’t just be a fact spewing automaton. I have to be vulnerable up there and talk about who I am even if I were to give a talk about pre-baked-lighting UV Maps.
I always give examples to prove my points. When I see a talk with a piece of advice without showing “why” it makes me wonder where it came from. Was that something they tried and it failed? Are there charts or numbers to prove that? I always back up every bit of advice with real-world proof.
I never put fully animated GIFs in my slides that loop. On the big screen it is very distracting, it can hurt people’s eyes, and be very hard on people who are prone to sensory overload. Keep gifs to less than 25% of the screen size and make sure they never contain strobing effects. I also don't spend very long on slides that do have those animations.
Hey this is the line in front of my talk. It is really cool to see.
