My networking successes and failures post-Gamescom
If you’ve read my previous post on GDC, you may have noticed I never wrote a part 2 on my personal feelings regarding the event. Honestly, I needed to figure out whether my feelings on the event were at all within the normal range of experience — anxiety can make that difficult to tell. When I did arrive at a conclusion, I didn’t think it would serve anyone to post it. However, I am now in my post-gamescom phase, an event that felt similar to GDC. That’s partly due to me attending it as a dev, with increasingly fewer people aware that I have been, and to a degree still am, a journalist, so it’s actually helpful for me to look at these two events and write that post now.
I’ve attended both GDC and devcom this year because my friend, narrative designer Arden Osthof, made me aware of opportunities to do this that don’t require a press pass. As mentioned before, I was lucky enough to attend GDC on a scholarship, and devcom as a speaker — I moderated the panel “Demystifying Networking”. I wasn’t sure why Arden wanted me to moderate the panel beyond my previous experience of moderation, and when I asked, they jokingly said “well, we have people on the panel whose job it is to network, I also wanted someone who really dislikes networking.”
I’m not retelling this story to put them on blast, and I hope they will forgive me for making this public, but it is important to mention this point specifically, because I noticed a disconnect between what I actually feel and the impression I give, which is not great! The reality is this — networking is difficult for me. Not because I dislike it, but because it is a business tool that I’m struggling to use as intended, which is to say, systematically and with intent. We gave a panel on the dos and don’ts of networking, and while I was listening to my fellow speakers, what I did was in essence to listen to the most professional networker out of all of us, and then go in and say “well, I don’t do none of that, but I’m still fine!”, which is true. But our rule for networking was to present your best self to people when meeting them for the first time, and it’s frustrating to me that I can’t seem to do that. So I don’t dislike networking, I love meeting new people! I’m simply not well-versed in the business aspect of what I’m doing when I am meeting people. You get the same Malindy out there that you’re getting right now, and ideally, there should be a very professional business Beyoncé waiting for you at a trade show, instead. I’m no business Beyoncé. I’m a regular Beyoncé. At some point my mouth just takes over, just out of sheer anxiety, and ideally, if you want to follow a networking script, that’s not what should happen.
I’ve told people my ultimate dream would be to go to Gamescom and to immediately run into someone I know in every hall I enter, not because I want to be famous, but because I question my sense of belonging the moment I’m not busily running from place to place. As a journalist, I used to go from no appointment invitations and no idea about any sort of after events to this year, a year I could have had all of this but felt too firmly on the side of thirty to bother with much of it, opting to rather take things at a sustainable pace. That sounds good, right? Still, the fact that it is other people who have to excuse themselves because they need to be somewhere and not me did make me feel as if I should have been busier. All in all however, I feel immensely blessed to meet people that I know, people who see me and approach me to say hi, and it just makes me happy to chat. I’ve had more of a hat with some people I met at GDC, I’ve met new people who immediately kept up, that was just lovely! People not only remember me, they also don’t feel the need to cross the street (or, er, hall) when they see me! How intensely lovely, honestly. That, more than anything, makes me feel like something is going right, even when there are things I need to work on, still.
GDC and Gamescom are not most people’s idea of fun: they go there with a fixed goal; pitching a game, advertising a game or a service, holding a talk to increase their visibility, whereas I am going there essentially to see these people do that. This is influenced by me spending most of my time freelancing from home, so now post-pandemic, seeing as people don’t do virtual meetings anymore, I rely on the events for a sense of belonging, and frankly, also social contact. But the mismatch here is that most other people aren’t at these events for that.
Essentially, this is what tripped me up during GDC, an event I visited during a very traumatic time in the industry with many very emotional people present. My friends at Sweet Baby were having the worst time, the layoffs, if you can imagine it, had not even reached their peak yet, and I just met a lot of Americans ready to dispense hugs and messages of solidarity. I then never heard from these people again, because they were network connections, people I couldn’t offer anything to and that, beyond this, actually had no personal connection to me. At the time, I didn’t know this, so it had felt as if I’d made several new friends, only to end up with follow up emails none of them answered, which made me very depressed and honestly give up on the second batch altogether. Again, from a business standpoint, this is not the clever thing to do!
So this Gamescom, I met new people, and I’m trying to be calmer about people and how absolutely desperate I am for some sort of genuine connection. It still doesn’t sit right with me that people told me the very standard “please give me at least two weeks, if you don’t hear from me by then, ping me” and while they are working, I am actively waiting to have that follow-up conversation. I’m also working, but I’m getting there. What I don’t like is feeling like I am a petitioner in this circumstance, that I think of my time as inherently less valuable and less contested, and struggle with at least making it appear as if I’m absolutely as busy and important as these people I’m describing. This is a general problem I need to fix before I go out to network again. I need to have more respect for my own time. Maybe those people who didn’t maintain a connection with me will come to regret it later, who knows, but the point is that I very much thought “why do these people not want to spend time on me/with me”, and that is a difficult mindset to get rid of, fuelled by an underlying mental health concern.
Undervaluing myself also makes me appear much younger than I am — it’s not just my youthful features! In a games context, it’s easy to make that assumption, based on my seniority in games. If you think I entered games out of university, you’d place me in the late twenties, early thirties, sure. Respectfully, people come from all walks of life, and I think it would serve some people to not make that assumption, or assume at all. The fact you think I’m younger than I am colours every single interaction that I have, and I now have to explore options how to come across differently, when this is really a problem that could also be fixed by bros not assuming their way is the highway. I could write a whole post on the dissociative experience that is being in games and coming from a working class background, which is another thing that affects me in so many different ways. (you know what, I probably will write that post, too! Try to stop me!)
I’m truly grateful for everyone I’ve met. I think games are made with people, by people and for people, and I will carry that philosophy forward. For my professional growth, I still need to reign myself in in some regards, but to be fair, honesty has served me well, and while I don’t have 500+ LinkedIn connections, at least I can confidently tell you I remember my connections, know what they do, and I’m cheering them on. Seeing people in person really does reinforce both that commitment and the idea that you meet people who are doing badly, absolutely, but there are also people who have successes I can celebrate, and I hope that celebration feels genuine, at the very least.