International gamers in SF for convention ‘shell shocked’ by ‘dangerous city’

More than 28,000 international gaming professionals recently congregated at San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center, where they tested the latest VR tech and sampled hundreds of indie games.

But some attendees, many of whom traveled thousands of miles for the annual convention, found the city streets outside the Game Developers Conference (GDC) inhospitable, the sights disturbing.

“My GDC feedback was simple: Stop hosting it in SF,” wrote Emre Deniz, director of Melbourne-based game company Opaque Space, in a recent viral tweet that received more than 2,500 likes.

San Francisco, Deniz continued, “is a dangerous city and America is not welcome to non western developers.”