GDC is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

GDC Next 2013 adds Xbox One Kinect talk, Riot eSports, ex-Bungie indie panels

Game Developers Conference Next 2013 organizers have added new sessions to the November "future of games" event in LA, including an exclusive demo-heavy Xbox One Kinect talk, an "evolution of eSports" panel featuring speakers from Riot, Twitch, and Team Dignitas, and another key panel on veteran triple-A developers (from Bungie, EA, and Zynga) going indie.
GDC Next is the spiritual successor to GDC Online. The new event aims to highlight the future of video game development, with tracks including 'Next Generation Game Platforms,' 'Free To Play & New Business Models,' and 'Smartphone & Tablet Games,' as well as cloud and indie game tracks.
It will take place alongside the App Developers Conference on November 5th-7th, 2013 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Organizers are announcing three new talks today, as follows:
In 'The Next Generation of Kinect,' Microsoft senior software engineer Claude Marais will cover the technical details of the hardware and software for the Xbox One's newest motion controller iteration. The exclusive session will include demonstrations of what developers can do with the new Kinect's high-fidelity natural user input.

GDC Next reveals Next 10 showcase; inducts Doki-Doki Universe

'Future of games' conference GDC Next, taking place in Los Angeles this November, has announced it will be picking ten innovative, yet-to-debut games to make up its ‘GDC Next 10’ showcase.
As part of the eventÂ’s cutting-edge content, each gameÂ’s creator will be invited to give a world-exclusive talk about the concepting, inspiration and design behind the title. Each 'GDC Next 10' game has been picked by GDC's organizers as a game to watch for the future, and a title that is doing something decidedly different in todayÂ’s increasingly crowded game market.
The first inductee to the Next 10 is Doki-Doki Universe [trailer] by HumaNature Studios, and studio founder Greg Johnson (also the veteran creator of Starflight & cult classic Toe Jam & Earl) will be presenting a session that describes how his team dealt with the challenges of developing an emotional, interactive story game.

What's Next? Thatgamecompany's Sunni Pavlovic on games' surge to maturity

[Ahead of November's GDC Next, GDC's Director of Online Community Patrick Miller reached out to many games industry luminaries to see where they think the future of video games is headed. This interview is the fourth installment of a multi-part series that will run up until shortly before the 'future of games' conference, which takes place in Los Angeles, CA from November 5-7, co-located with the App Developers Conference.]
Considering thatgamecompany's standout success with Flower, FlOw, and Journey, it's hard to think of a more forward-looking studio -- so, naturally, when I was tasked with seeking out people to speak with about the future of games, Sunni Pavlovic naturally came to mind.
The thatgamecompany studio manager is giving a talk at this November's GDC Next on "An Experimental Approach to Interactive Entertainment", so I asked her about how her work with TGC has informed her perspective on the future of the industry.

GDC Next 2013 adds Jill Murray on 'diversifying feminine archetypes'

Game Developers Conference Next organizers have added new sessions to the November 'future of games' event, including Ubisoft's Jill Murray on new narrative and gameplay options for female characters in games and Gamesbrief director Nicholas Lovell on a model to welcome more players into F2P designed games.
GDC Next is the spiritual successor to GDC Online. The new event aims to highlight the future of video game development, with tracks including 'Next Generation Game Platforms', 'Free To Play & New Business Models', and 'Smartphone & Tablet Games', as well as cloud and indie game tracks.
It will take place alongside the App Developers Conference on November 5th-7th, 2013 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Organizers are announcing two new talks today, as follows:
Ubisoft Quebec's director of narrative design Jill Murray will present 'Binders Full of Women: Diversifying Feminine Archetypes in Games.' The Assassin's Creed III : Liberation scriptwriter will discuss new narrative and gameplay options brought by a range of characters and personalities inspired by real women in history, and contemporary women important to game developers you know.
Attendees will gain insight to help them research and create female characters, as well as suggestions for drawing narrative design and game mechanics from such characters. The bulk of the talk will consist of real women's stories, from the outwardly heroic to the quiet heroism of the ordinary.

What's Next? Researcher James Gee on teaching children with games

[Ahead of November's GDC Next, GDC's Director of Online Community Patrick Miller reached out to many games industry luminaries to see where they think the future of video games is headed. This interview is the third installment of a multi-part series that will run up until shortly before the 'future of games' conference, which takes place in Los Angeles, CA from November 5-7, co-located with the App Developers Conference.]
When we play games, we're mastering systems to solve problems for fun -- and so, naturally, games hold immense potential for education, not just entertainment. That's why James Paul Gee, Arizona State University professor of Literacy Studies and author of What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy and Good Video Games and Good Learning: Collected Essays, thinks games are a crucial part of the future of education.

What's Next? Chris Pruett on industry trends and future of games

[Ahead of November's GDC Next, GDC's Director of Online Community Patrick Miller reached out to many games industry luminaries to see where they think the future of video games is headed. This interview is the second installment of a multi-part series that will run up until shortly before the 'future of games' conference, which takes place in Los Angeles, CA from November 5-7, co-located with the App Developers Conference.]
GDC Next advisory board member Chris Pruett has seen the games industry from several different perspectives; as a console games programmer with Activision, a software engineer and game developer advocate with Google, and most recently as a co-founder of indie game dev studio Robot Invader. He thinks that standardized hardware, free-to-play, and app store/platform discoverability are three trends key to following the future of the game industry; read on to find out why.

New GDC Next talks: Where's My Water, Chime's Curran, Realm of Empires

Game Developers Conference Next organizers have added new sessions to the November 'future of games' event, including Disney Mobile on level design from hits such as Where's My Water (pictured) and Where's My Perry, Realm of Empires's Facebook to Mobile HTML5 porting, and an inspirational talk from former Edge Magazine editor Ste Curran.
GDC Next is the spiritual successor to GDC Online. The new event aims to highlight the future of video game development, with tracks including 'Next Generation Game Platforms', 'Free To Play & New Business Models', and 'Smartphone & Tablet Games', as well as cloud and indie game focuses.
It will take place alongside the App Developers Conference on November 5th-7th, 2013 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Organizers are announcing three new talks today, as follows:
- For the inspirational 'In the Time It Takes a Heart to Beat,' Ste Curran (former Edge Magazine editor and Chime designer) will use "a 3AM phone call, a girl called Epher and a heartbeat" to explore crucial, memorable moments in games, how they affect the player, and why they are so important. Attendees will be challenged to examine experiences generated in their games and in their own lives.

GDC China 2013 adds DayZ, Ubisoft, Crytek production talks

GDC China organizers have announced new sessions added to its Production Track, including the Arma II mod DayZ's rise to 2 million users, Ubisoft's Splinter Cell Blacklist level art, and Crytek's game design-minded management tips.
UBM Tech Game Network's GDC China, now in its sixth year, has moved up to September this year, running from the 15th to the 17th at the Shanghai International Convention Center in Shanghai, China. The event will be co-located with Cloud Connect China.
As part of the full line-up of announced sessions for the event, the following talks are being highlighted by organizers:
- In 'DayZ: Producing the Ultimate Accidental Project,' Bohemia Interactive's Dean Hall discusses how his Arma II mod propelled to having over 2 million users in a year, becoming a standalone title. Topics will include negotiating a deal, agile planning, the pitfalls of open development, and how to get the best out of developers from vastly different cultures.
- Elsewhere, in 'Game Design Hacks for Better Management,' Crytek's Joshua Howard (free-to-play FPS Warface) will discuss how approaching management through the lens of game design can lead to happier and more productive teams.
- Finally, in 'A Believable World Meet with Dramatic Lighting" - The Level Art of Splinter Cell Blacklist,' Ubisoft's Liao Jun Cheng and Liu Yan Feng will explain how map development benefits art design, and how their experts balance technique and art in lighting all the maps.

What's Next? Koster talks 'the revolution', future of games

[Ahead of November's GDC Next, GDC's Director of Online Community Patrick Miller reached out to many games industry luminaries to see where they think the future of video games is headed. This interview is the first installment of a multi-part series that will run up until shortly before the 'future of games' conference, which takes place in Los Angeles, CA from November 5-7, co-located with the App Developers Conference.] 

 Raph Koster needs little introduction. His pioneering work on massively multiplayer online role-playing games as lead designer on Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and EverQuest II, among others, and his writing on game design (see his seminal book A Theory of Fun), and his work as an advisory board member for GDC Online and now GDC Next all made him one of the first people I wanted to talk to about the future of video games -- both the industry, and the artistic medium. 

GDC Europe 2013 breaks attendance records, returns next year

Organizers of 2013 Game Developers Conference Europe have announced 2,250 attendees across at least 56 countries enjoyed the conference and exhibits for last week's show in Cologne, setting an attendance record for the largest game development show in Europe.
Showing the depth of European and international presence at the show, almost 15 countries sent more than 25 attendees to GDC Europe 2013, including host country Germany, the UK, Holland, Finland, Sweden, Poland, and Italy.
In addition, more than 25 countries had at least 10 game developers and businesspeople attending - including Turkey, Spain, Ireland, with strong U.S. and Canadian presence and those from even further afield like Australia and Brazil.
Organizers have revealed that the conference will return to Cologne, Germany on August 11-13, 2014. It's once again co-located with gamescom, the leading European interactive entertainment consumer trade show, set to take place August 13-17, 2014 - gamescom itself also reported record numbers last week.
In its fifth year, GDC Europe 2013 (full Gamasutra event coverage) welcomed close to 130 national and international speakers and more than 75 exhibitors and sponsors. The conference featured more than 90 lectures and panels on the best practices in game development across five Main Conference tracks (Business, Marketing & Management, Design, Production, Programming and Visual Arts) and three summits (Free to Play Design & Business Summit, Smartphone and Tablet Games Summit and Independent Games Summit).

GDC Europe Day 2: David Cage, next-gen issues, and press outreach

Another day done at GDC Europe! If you weren't able to make it out to Cologne, Germany for the conference, read below for some of yesterday's session highlights. Also, don't forget to check out the day-one recap, or Gamasutra's GDC Europe 2013 event page for more up-to-the-minute coverage.
Highlights from the session talks included:

"I'm saying it loud and clear: We should learn from films. We have many differences, and gameplay and interactivity is the different thing, and it's very crucial, but at the same time we have a lot of things we can learn."

--David Cage (Quantic Dream) on the future of cinematic games

"We rushed Chasing Aurora for release. It would have been a better game with one or two extra months of development."

--Felix Bohatsch (Broken Rules) on Wii U launch title Chasing Aurora

"If we are going to be revolutionary on this next transition, this next generation, we're going to have to find new ways to do it."--Don Daglow (Daglow Entertainment) on next-gen challenges and opportunities
"It's just so much harder to get people to sing and dance about your game now than it was a few years ago."

--Mike Rose (Gamasutra) on how devs should reach out to press in 2013
Microsoft also made a few Xbox One-related announcements in their pre-Gamescom press conference: Microsoft veteran Chris Charla will be heading up the brand-new Independent Developers @ Xbox (ID@Xbox) self-publishing program, and a few more devs and games were confirmed for the Xbox One launch day.

GDC Europe Day 1: Child of Light, Crytek on team management, and show floor highlights

The first day of GDC Europe in Cologne, Germany is in the books! If you weren't able to check out the show yourself (or just couldn't be everywhere you wanted to be at once), read on to see what you missed.

Highlights from the first day of sessions included Ubisoft Far Cry 3 director Patrick Plourde debuting a new, small-team JRPG title called Child of Light; Linda "Brasse" Carlson's talk on Sony Online Entertainment's approach to community management; Crytek executive producer Joshua Howard on what game design can teach us about team management; Microsoft's Age of Empires Online executive producer Kevin Perry on how removing the spending cap saved the game; and Blizzard's Starcraft 2 lead writer Brian Kindregan on the importance of cinematics for storytelling in real-time strategy games.

To continue following Gamasutra's live show-floor coverage, just head over to the GDC Europe 2013 event page.

IGF China finalists, Indie Summit talks announced for GDC China 2013

GDC China organizers have announced the finalists for IGF China, and have highlighted a series of talks for the Independent Games Summit, including talks by former IGF nominees Thirty Flights of Loving and Retro/Grade.
UBM Tech Game Network's GDC China, now in its sixth year, has moved up to September this year, running from the 15th to the 17th at the Shanghai International Convention Center in Shanghai, China. The event will be co-located with Cloud Connect China.
With over 250 entries this year, IGF China saw almost a 60% increase from 2012's event. The eight main competition finalists and five student finalists are as follows:
Main Competition:
Coated - Muhammad A.Moniem (China)
Dusty Revenge - PD Design Studio Pte Ltd (Singapore)
Eagle & Chicken - Geeeu company, Inc. (China)
Framed - Loveshack Entertainment (Australia)
Mr Pumpkin's Adventure - PUMPKIN Network Technology Development Ltd. (China)
One Upon Light - SUTD Game Lab (Singapore)
Save The Dummy - Sandyloisa (India)
Strange Adventure - Xie Chuang (China)

GDC Europe 2013 reminder on next week's packed session line-up

With GDC Europe 2013 less than a week away and the session schedule finalized, organizers have highlighted a collection of can't-miss sessions for the event.
Highlighted talks include postmortem sessions on Candy Crush, Ridiculous Fishing, Badland, and the classic soccer sim Kick Off, along with next-gen tech talks featuring a new demo of Quantic Dream's The Dark Sorcerer, Sony's PlayStation Shading Language for PS4, and Oculus VR on Virtual Reality game development.
GDC Europe will take place next Monday through Wednesday, August 19th-21st at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany -- just ahead of (and co-located with) the massive 275,000 person Gamescom event, with all GDC Europe passes also guaranteeing entrance to Gamescom.
Highlights from the complete set of 80+ sessions happening next week are as follows:

Connecting the Global Game Development Community

GDC Vault icon
Game Developers Choice Awards icon
Independent Games Festival (IGF) icon
GameDeveloper.com icon