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GDC Business Matchmaking service returns for All-Access GDC 2013 attendees

With just a week left for discounted registration to the 2013 Game Developers Conference, show organizers have opened the Business Matchmaking website for All Access pass holders, GDC Play exhibitors and Expo exhibitors to set up onsite meetings with each other.
This online tool is now officially available and will allow GDC 2013 All Access Pass attendees to identify, contact, and request and receive meetings with GDC exhibitors of all kinds.
Meeting possibilities also include those in the GDC Play Pavilion, a separate area of the San Francisco show that showcases emerging and independent developers with a series of kiosks and meetings rooms.
In addition, GDC Play exhibitors are able to contact more than 100 notable distributors, publishers and funders in a special 'VIP' pool, as part of this program. The Business Matchmaking tool remains a great means of establishing business deals, starting new partnerships, and more.

GDC 2013 debuts design lectures from Diablo III, Lili, Dear Esther creators

Game Developers Conference organizers have announced new Design Track lectures for the upcoming March 2013 conference, including a design postmortem for Diablo III, mid-core mobile lessons learned from Lili, and Dear Esther co-creator's case studies on apocalyptic games.
The Design Track is just one of seven focused Tracks for the Main Conference to be held Wed-Fri, March 27-29 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, CA.
The first new talk is a design postmortem from Blizzard's game director Jay Wilson entitled 'Shout at the Devil: The Making of Diablo III.' He will focus on the core design goals his developers set, focusing specifically on those they struggled with and the design lessons they learned during those struggles.
In 'How to Build a Better Apocalypse,' Dear Esther creator thechineseroom's Dan Pinchbeck will assert that end-of-world games can show "perfect fusion of content and mechanics." He will use case studies to demonstrate how a strong, well-honed apocalyptic story and setting can support and enhance gameplay.
Lastly, former Epic lead designer turned BitMonster president Lee Perry will present 'From Gears to Lili, Lessons About Mid-Core and Mobile.' Perry will focus on production, promotion, and design lessons that are shaping his company's choices and thoughts on "the next evolution in gaming" -- the mid-core mobile segment.

GDC 2013 adds visual art talks from Journey, Rayman, StarCraft II

Game Developers Conference organizers have announced new Visual Arts Track lectures for the upcoming March 2013 conference, including talks on the tech behind StarCraft II's visually lush cutscenes, the creative process for the acclaimed Journey's art, and the standout animation tools created for Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends.
The Visual Arts Track is just one of seven focused Tracks for the Main Conference to be held Wed-Fri, March 27-29 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, CA.
The first chosen talk is from Blizzard's Matt Schembari, and is named 'Cutscenes Everywhere: The Tech Behind StarCraft II's Storytelling'. The lecture presents "how the new cutscene editor and its underlying engine were built in StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm", and will review the design process, and how having a user-focused approach shaped both the tool and engine alike.
In 'Rayman Reinvented,' Ubisoft animators Eric Verwaerde and Anais Dusautois will discuss how their team brought the limbless character to life in Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends (pictured). This talk will cover the creation of tools such as the Ubi-Art Framework Animation tool, "which were designed specifically to put artists at the heart of the development process."
Finally, in 'The Art of Journey,' Otis College of Art and Design staffer and former Thatgamecompany art director Matt Nava will share his creative process while working for thatgamecompany on the studio's award-winning PS3 game. Nava will base the talk on his book, "The Art of Journey," and will offer behind the scenes looks at "the design of the character, creatures, landscapes, architecture, and sequences in the game."

GDC 2013 to include unique Summit talks on DIY indie games, African game dev

Game Developers Conference 2013 organizers have revealed new Summit talks for its March conference, with lectures featuring VVVVVV creator Terry Cavanagh and Porpentine's DIY game curation showcase, Touch Arcade's iOS press promotion tips, and Leti Games' lessons in African video game development.
These talks are part of the Independent Games, Smartphone & Tablet Games, and Localization Summits that will take place Monday, March 25 and Tuesday, March 26 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA during the first two days of GDC 2013.
For the Independent Games Summit, VVVVVV and Super Hexagon creator Terry Cavanagh will share his curation initiative in 'Free Indie Games: Curating the DIY Revolution.' Co-editor and game designer Porpentine will present overlooked indie games from 2012 and will describe "how outsider voices are challenging and redefining the nature of games."
For the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit, Touch Arcade editor-in-chief Eli Hodapp will argue that 'There's More to Life Than Press Releases and Promo Codes.' He will show examples of a community-building, snowball effect that creates downloads and leads to media coverage without a single press release.
Finally, for the Localization Summit, Wesley Kirinya and Eyram Tawia of Leti Games will discuss the political and cultural sensitivities needed in 'The Emerging Landscape of African Game Development.' Using their 7 years of experience as developers in Africa, they will also explore unique challenges such as a very low internet penetration rate and a need to educate the player in using gaming technologies.

GDC 2013 adds Papo & Yo talk, reminds on Feb 13th reg deadline

The 2013 Game Developers Conference has announced Papo & Yo and more talks and the return of its '100+ talks in one' Flash Forward session, ahead of the February 13th early deadline for pass registration.
Sessions just added for the March 27th-29th Main Conference include Vander Caballero of Minority, sharing the new way he brought an emotional journey to PlayStation Network players in 'Rethinking How We Build Games and Why: The Papo & Yo Story.' Attendees will learn how to use their own personal stories to inspire interactive narratives and provide growth or meaningful takeaway.
In 'Your PR Is Broken: Journalists Speak Out,' Alec Shobin of Fieldrunners developer Subatomic Studios will moderate a diverse panel on helping PR get the message out. Scheduled panelists include Ben Kuchera (Penny Arcade), Alexander Sliwinski (Joystiq), Eli Hodapp (TouchArcade), and Dan "Shoe" Hsu (VentureBeat).
Finally, Mikkel Christiansen and Frans Galschiot Quaade of IO Interactive discuss how they created an audio engine from scratch for the Glacier 2 proprietary engine in Hitman: Absolution. In 'An In-Depth Look at the Sound Design Choices and Technical Solutions in Hitman: Absolution,' they will share how creative discussions led to an audio tool "that empowers the sound designer and greatly reduces the need for custom code."
Details on these and all of the sessions at GDC 2013 can be found at the official GDC schedule page, with new talks still being added every week.

GDC 2013's Classic Postmortems feature Myst, X-COM, Crystal Castles, Pinball Construction Set

By popular demand, the Game Developers Conference (GDC) is bringing back the Classic Games Postmortem series for the third consecutive year with sessions taking a close look at four seminal games at GDC 2013.

Organizers have revealed that postmortems for Crystal Castles, Myst, Pinball Construction Set and X-COM: UFO Defense are confirmed for this year's conference. Organized by the UBM Tech Game Network, GDC 2013 will take place March 25-29 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California.

The Classic Game Postmortems series provides GDC attendees with sessions that examine the development of some of the industry's most influential landmark titles. The series debuted at GDC 2011 as part of the conference's twenty-fifth anniversary celebration, has featured games including Pac-Man, DOOM, and Maniac Mansion, and has returned each year since due to its ever-increasing popularity.

This year, the original designer and programmer of Crystal Castles, Franz Lanzinger, will discuss secrets of the classic Atari arcade game; Robyn Miller, co-director of Myst, the best-selling PC game of the 1990s, will share how he and his brother created a game that remains relevant more than 20 years later.

In addition, Bill Budge, father of the seminal Pinball Construction Set will lay out one of the earliest examples of an in-game editor - a title that game developer legend Will Wright has credited as a key influence on the simulation games that launched him to stardom; and Julian Gollop will reveal tactics he deployed in directing, co-designing, co-programming and co-drawing X-COM: UFO Defense. Additional details for each postmortem are as follows:

GDC's Game Narrative Summit adds Spec Ops, ZombiU, Ghost Recon talks

Game Developers Conference 2013 organizers highlight recent additions to the new Game Narrative Summit, including mythology for Wii U launch title ZombiU, narrative in Spec Ops: The Line, and authenticity in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon.
The Game Narrative Summit is just one of eight total Summits that will take place Monday, March 25 and Tuesday, March 26 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA during the first two days of GDC 2013.
In these new talks, Ubisoft Montpellier's story design director Gabrielle Shrager and New York Times best-selling author Antony Johnston together discuss scripting a rich mythology, back story, and narrative for a highly desired Wii U launch title in 'ZombiU: Creating an Undead Cult.'
In this session, attendees will learn "what steps you can take to enhance your game's narrative depth without making the designers scream, how fiction and genre concepts can positively influence gameplay, and how to use a player's familiarity with genre tropes to your advantage."
Red Storm Entertainment's senior narrative designer Jay Posey will use Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon as his main example in 'Tastes Like Chicken: Authenticity in a Totally Fake World.' His talk will cover "differences between realism and authenticity, the importance of research, the role of entertainment, and even how our fans contribute to their own acceptance of our game worlds."

GDC 2013 adds Halo 4 web series, BBC, Hitman AI Summit talks

Game Developers Conference 2013 organizers have revealed new Summit talks for its March conference, with topics including lectures on the Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn web video series, smarter tactical behavior in Hitman: Absolution and Lichdom, and the BBC's challenges in building worldwide game brands.
These talks are part of the AI, Localization, and Game Narrative Summits that will take place Monday, March 25 and Tuesday, March 26 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA during the first two days of GDC 2013.
Part of the Game Narrative Summit, 343 Industries's Kevin Grace, Frank O'Connor, Kiki Wolfkill, and Matt McCloskey will speak on creating the Halo 4 web series in Bringing the Game to Life - Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn (Postmortem).'
343 Industries will share the challenges of introducing the Halo world via episodic content to newcomers while satisfying its legion of fans. Along with building partnerships with Hollywood, the studio will also discuss the creation and marketing of episodic content and how it integrated these episodes into game planning.
For the AI Summit, Mika Vehkala of IO Interactive and Matthew Jack of Moon Collider will examine more intelligent modern shooter and action game agents in 'Spaces in the Sandbox: Tactical Awareness in Open World Games.' The two will use examples of Hitman: Absolution, their work developed at Crytek, and Xaviant's upcoming RPG, Lichdom, to explore two different approaches to dynamically processing spatial information, which leads to AI acting in believable, tactical ways.

Journey, Dishonored, The Walking Dead lead Choice Awards nominations

Organizers have revealed the finalists for the 13th annual Game Developers Choice Awards, the leading peer-based video game event celebrating the industry's top games and developers.
Winners in all categories will be honored at the Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony, taking place on Wednesday, March 27th at 6:30 pm at the Moscone Convention Center during the 2013 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Independent titles are heavily represented across multiple categories this year, with games from that segment of the industry being nominated alongside some of the year's biggest mainstream releases.
Overall, Thatgamecompany's visually-and-aurally stunning emotional adventure Journey leads with nods in six categories: Best Design, Best Downloadable Game, Best Audio, Best Visual, Innovation and Game of the Year. Bethesda Softworks' and Arkane Studios' historical revenge epic Dishonored is recognized in four categories, Best Narrative, Best Visual, Best Design and Game of the Year.
Another leading nominee is Telltale Games' The Walking Dead, a post-apocalyptic adventure title based on Robert Kirkman's comic book series of the same name, honored in three categories for this year's awards: Best Downloadable Game, Best Narrative and Game of the Year. Rounding out the Game of the Year finalists are BioWare and Electronic Arts' action role-playing game Mass Effect 3, also nominated in the Best Narrative category, and Firaxis Games' and 2K Games' tactical role-playing strategy title X-COM: Enemy Unknown, also recognized in Best Design.
Additional titles with multiple nominations include Ubisoft Montreal's Assassin's Creed III and Microsoft Studios' and 343 Industries' Halo 4, long-running franchises which are nominated alongside newcomers like Giant Sparrow's The Unfinished Swan and Subset Games' FTL: Faster Than Light.
The 2013 Game Developers Choice Awards are open to any video game that was initially released and made publicly available to consumers during the 2012 calendar year, irrespective of platform or delivery medium. Industry professionals participate in open nominations for the selection of this year's finalists. Winners will be selected by the Game Developers Choice Awards-specific International Choice Awards Network (ICAN), which is an invitation-only organization comprised of leading game creators from all parts of the industry.
The complete list of nominees for the 13th annual Game Developers Choice Awards is as follows:

GDC 2013 reveals F2P Summit featuring Zynga, TinyCo, more

Game Developers Conference 2013 organizers have revealed its new Free to Play Design & Business Summit for the March conference, with TinyCo on using analytics for mobile game improvement, Zynga on why FarmVille won't go away, and more.
The Free to Play Design & Business Summit is just one of eight total Summits that will take place Monday, March 25 and Tuesday, March 26 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA during the first two days of GDC 2013.
Nick Ross of TinyCo, developer of mobile hits such as Tiny Village and Tiny Zoo Friends, will share how to find and exploit data in 'How to Lie with Analytics.' His discussion will include topics that help improve a game's success such as tracking, sampling, and balancing significance versus execution.
Zynga's Mike Perry and Abhinav Agrawal will share the platform expertise, game design, and development processes for its social gaming giant in 'Why Won't FarmVille Go Away?'
The two will discuss "how to leverage platform opportunities and use design refactoring methods to extend the lifetime of a social game. In addition, attendees will gain insight into the rapid design, scoping, and development process of features for FarmVille."

GDC 2013 donates Indie Games Summit tickets to Indie Giving charity

Organizers of Game Developers Conference 2013 are announcing a partnership with the Indie Giving charity effort, donating 30 GDC Indie Games Summit tickets to the 2013 Indie Giving event.
As part of the new agreement with Indie Giving, which is run by FGL head and indie community veteran Chris Hughes, generous indie game creators will get an exclusive opportunity to buy the now sold-out IGS pass (alongside a pre-GDC Flash Games Summit pass).
Along the way, they will volunteer on an onsite project just before GDC 2013, with 100% of their Indie Giving package price going directly to the U.S. National Parks Conservancy.
For those who sign up for the Indie Giving package, on Saturday, March 23rd, the group will be working with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy to help preserve and enhance beautiful landscapes and maintain historic buildings and trails.
Indie Giving package buyers will also have a chance to attend the Independent Games Summit on Monday, March 25th and Tuesday, March 26th at GDC 2013 - the only way you can get this sold-out pass right now. You can also attend Sunday, March 24th's Flash Gaming Summit with your Indie Giving package.

2013 Independent Games Festival announces Student Showcase winners

The Independent Games Festival has announced the eight Student Showcase winners for the fifteenth annual presentation of its prestigious awards, celebrating the brightest and most innovative creations to come out of universities and games programs from around the world in the past year.

This year's showcase of top student talent include the first-person meta-videogame ATUM, from the Netherlands' NHTV IGAD, the similarly meta-game-ified pen & paper RPG Knights of Pen & Paper, from Brazil's Instituto de Ensino Superior de Brasilia & Universidade de Brasilia, and the Jet Set Radio-esque Zineth, a game which "celebrates speed, movement & Twitter", from students of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

In total, this year's Student Competition took in over 300 game entries across all platforms -- PC, console and mobile -- from a wide diversity of the world's most prestigious universities and games programs making the Student IGF one of the world's largest showcases of student talent.

All of the Student Showcase winners announced today will be playable on the Expo show floor at the 27th Game Developers Conference, to be held in San Francisco starting March 25th, 2013. Each team will receive a $1,000 prize for being selected into the Showcase, and are finalists for an additional $3,000 prize for Best Student Game, to be revealed during the Independent Games Festival Awards on March 27th.

The full list of Student Showcase winners for the 2013 Independent Games Festival, along with 'honorable mentions' to those top-quality games that didn't quite make it to finalist status, are as follows:

GDC 2013 adds Pixar story, Activision Blizzard next-gen rendering talks

Game Developers Conference organizers have announced new talks for the upcoming March 2013 conference, including Pixar's 5 key plot points for great stories, Creative Assembly's Total War strategy design, and Activision Blizzard's next-gen programming tips for photo-realistic characters.
These talks are part of the Main Conference, encompassing the Design and Programming tracks, to be held Wed-Fri, March 27-29 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, CA.
For the Design track, Pixar's Matthew Luhn will make a rare video game conference appearance to present the lecture 'The 5 Key Plot Points to Creating a Great Story.'
Luhn, a story supervisor who has worked on standout Pixar titles such as Up and Monsters Inc., will explain how to create great stories and characters for animation, live action, and games. Using his tips, attendees will spend part of the session developing their own stories and characters with others.
Also part of the Design track, Creative Assembly's lead designer James Russell will provide insight into the dilemmas faced in 'Designing Grand Strategy: Making the Mechanics of Total War.' The acclaimed strategy game series evolved through internal debates on "realism, simulation versus game rules, mystery versus clarity, decisions and counterpoint, gameplay depth versus micromanagement, gameplay system dynamics, and more," which Russell will discuss in depth.

Bungie to offer first glimpse of 'brave new world' at GDC 2013

Bungie, a little over 20 years old, has spent nearly half of its life working on the multi-billion dollar franchise, Halo. After its long run with the IP, Bungie's developers faced an enormous challenge: how to tackle their next adventure?
In a session at the upcoming 2013 Game Developers Conference, writer and design director Joe Staten and art director Christopher Barrett will offer a glimpse at what their team has built for where the "next ten years of great Bungie adventures will unfold."
The hour-long lecture will cover the team's building techniques for the new world - widely reported to be codenamed 'Destiny' - that they aim to fill "with even more amazing mysteries, places, creatures, and opportunities for player investment." The duo will also use concept art and design case studies to illustrate Bungie's world building ideas.
While the talk is focused on art and design collaboration, it will also benefit all developers who are eager to improve their team's world building process.

GDC Play adds 'Best in Play' awards program for GDC 2013

Organizers of the 2013 Game Developers Conference have announced the new award program - 'Best in Play' - for exhibitors in the three-day GDC Play 2013 event.

GDC Play, which is still available for potential exhibitors, is a separate area of the San Francisco show that showcases emerging and independent developers with a series of kiosks and meetings rooms. It will take place Tuesday, March 26 - Thursday, March 28 at Moscone Center during the 2013 Game Developers Conference.

For the new 'Best in Play' award program, all GDC Play exhibitors will be judged on their in-development or complete games by a panel of veteran GDC organizers and Gamasutra editors. The top 8 will be named 'Best in Play' winners, and all 8 winners will receive 2 All Access Passes to Game Developers Conference 2014.

Winners for 'Best in Play' will be announced mid-February. Special 'Best in Play' designations will be attached to the honorees' GDC Play kiosks at GDC 2013, where their games will be playable to all GDC attendees. Existing GDC Play exhibitors become eligible for 'Best in Play' when they enter their booth information in the GDC Play Matchmaking Software.

In a new, expanded onsite location this year, GDC Play 2013 will be in the South Hall's Gateway Ballroom, in a prominent position directly opposite the main GDC Expo floor - providing enhanced opportunities to target the more than 20,000 attendees at the show.

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