Learn to make your game run better on mobile devices at GDC Europe

June 22, 2016

GDC officials are lining up some smart talks for this year's big GDC Europe event in Cologne, Germany, and today they're happy to announce another cutting-edge session taking place at the August conference.

Antoine Cohade helps developers optimize their games as part of Intel's Developer Relations Division, and at GDC Europe he'll be sharing his expertise in "You've Got the Power: Your Game Running Better on Portable Devices."

Check it out to learn how to efficiently reduce a game's power consumption by performing simple modifications such as capping the frame rate, reducing AI threads, changing the rendering resolution, and choosing the right algorithm. Developers will leave the presentation with an increased understanding of key power optimizations to take back and use in their next games.

First standalone VRDC debuts in November, call for talks now open

June 22, 2016

Great news, VR enthusiasts: GDC organizers are proud to announce that the first ever standalone Virtual Reality Developers Conference, the premier event for creators of immersive VR (and AR) experiences, will be held this November 2-3 in San Francisco.

This will be the second edition of VRDC, following the strikingly successful debut of VRDC as a sibling conference to GDC 2016 earlier this year. Bringing an expanded focus overseen by a new advisory board, the two‐day event will bring together VR/AR experts from multiple industries to share best practices, demo new technology, create new business partnerships, and exchange ideas with innovators shaping the industry.

To meet the growing demand for high‐quality content in the space, VRDC’s second edition will expand to cover virtual and augmented reality in games, entertainment, and beyond into subjects such as healthcare, journalism, travel, manufacturing, retail, live events, real estate, training, so much more.

Come to GDC Europe and see how LawBreakers' gameplay is designed

June 20, 2016

What comes first in game design: fun or functionality?

There are a lot of moving pieces to account for when designing a video game, and it's easy to focus only on getting things working before they're actually fun.

At this year's big GDC Europe conference in Germany, GDC organizers are excited to announce that Boss Key Productions' lead designer Dan Nanni will be delivering an expert talk on how to design a game that's both fun and functional, using the studio's work on the upcoming multiplayer shooter LawBreakers as a prime example.

In "Following the Fun -- How We Designed Gameplay for LawBreakers", Nanni will detail design considerations that should allow attendees to evaluate their own designs and make more innovative choices based on mistakes Boss Key has made, past experiences the team has worked through and conclusions they've come to while developing LawBreakers.

Get all the game industry insights, data and trends at GDC Europe

June 17, 2016

The days between here and the big GDC Europe conference this August are dwindling, and today GDC organizers are proud to announce another excellent, expert talk that will be taking place at the renowned event in Cologne, Germany.

Joost Van Dreunen is the chief of video game market research firm SuperData Research, and as such he has direct access to a wealth of fascinating data about the trends and tendencies of the game industry. At GDC Europe he's going to share some of that wealth in a session simply titled "All the Insights, Data, and Trends" that promises to be a fascinating talk.

Learn proven formulas for balancing your next game at GDC Europe

June 15, 2016

GDC officials are organizing some great talks for this year's big GDC Europe event in Cologne, Germany, and today they're happy to announce another exciting session taking place at the August conference.

Brian Davis has been balancing games and game economies for years, from FarmVille to CityVille to Tiny Monsters. He's currently working on a new project at Wooga, and at GDC Europe he'll be talking frankly about "Balancing Your Game: A Formula-Driven Approach."

Game balancing can be an esoteric art form, and there are few resources available to learn about it. How long should this quest take? How much should a sword cost? In his talk Davis will share the methods used to balance dozens of games and show you how to apply these methods to your game. He will cover the set up, process and share the exercises he's done to prepare for balancing even the most intricate game systems.

GDC Europe and Gamescom team up for second annual Women In Tech Day

June 10, 2016

Mark your calendars: GDC Europe organizers are pleased to announce that they're continuing their partnership with gamescom to help put on the second annual Women in Tech Day in Cologne, Germany.

The limited-capacity event will once again take place immediately after the close of GDC Europe, on Wednesday, August 17th -- the first day of gamescom.

As always, the Women in Tech Day is meant to be a common space and forum for women working in all areas of technology, including the game industry, IT, digital and other fields. Prominent leaders from the video game industry and other areas of tech will come together to speak, network and share their unique experiences.

Goals include inspiring women to collaborate on innovative solutions by providing opportunities for learning and networking, promoting diversity in technology industries, advocating technology and celebrating women role models who have chosen a career in tech and who inspire others to do the same.

Limbo devs share tips on creating games with striking visuals at GDC Europe

June 10, 2016

The big GDC Europe conference in Germany is just months away, and today GDC organizers are happy to announce a popular talk that will be taking place at the August conference from the developers of the critically acclaimed Limbo.

Playdead visual effects artist Mikkel Svendsen and graphics programmer Mikkel Gjoel will speak at GDC Europe about techniques you can use to achieve striking, high-fidelity visuals in your next game.

Their talk, "Low Complexity, High Fidelity - Inside Rendering," will describe the variety of effects used to achieve an atmospheric look, including local shadowed volumetrics and a robust water-rendering system, in their upcoming game Inside (pictured.)

To explore how a unique art style is created technically they'll also show you how they authored lighting as entirely separate diffuse, specular and bounce-light entities, while focusing on artist-approachable tools meant utilizing analytic primitive-based ambient occlusion and screenspace reflections.

At GDC Europe, see how military theory can help you design better strategy games

June 9, 2016

This year's GDC Europe conference in Germany is coming up quick, and today event organizers like to tip you off to a great talk about strategy game design that will take place at the summer conference.

Come August, GDC Europe 2016 attendees will have an opportunity to attend the "Strategy Game Design and the Operational Level of War" talk from Plarium's Guy Ulmer.

The one-time Red Alert modder now serves as an expert on optimizing mobile games, and during his presentation he'll show you how a better understanding of some basic military discipline when building a strategy game will help designers better define their niche in the crowded strategy/RTS game markets.

GDC Europe: Get a behind-the-scenes look at Call of Duty art production

June 6, 2016

The popular GDC Europe conference in Cologne, Germany is coming up fast, and as organizers continue to line up great talks for the show they're excited to announce that Activision Blizzard is backing a talk on the art production process behind the hit Call of Duty games.

Check out the "Art Production for 'Call of Duty'" talk to hear Activision Blizzard's Carlos Garcia and Red Hot CG's Claas Grimm take you behind the scenes of AAA game production.

From setup to planning to execution, the pair will afford attendees detailed insight into the inner workings of a large-scale art production process. They'll also offer advice and lessons learned about resource management, tools selection, creative challenges, and ongoing trends in the game industry.

Get cutting-edge tips on building great game backends at GDC Europe

June 3, 2016

GDC organizers are working with top game industry talent to line up great talks for this year's GDC Europe conference in Germany, and today they're happy to debut a fresh talk on the design of video game backend architecture that automatically scales.

Check out "Developing an Automatically Scaling Game Backend Architecture with Microservices," a GDC Europe talk from experienced backend developer Kevin Daniel Setiono, and you'll walk away with a solid understand of how to develop actor-based game features optimized for distributed, survivable systems.

Setiono's goal is to teach attendees to perform technical miracles by utilizing a state of the art game backend that's simple in its design. He'll show you how to leverage Service Fabric, an Actor Model-based software framework on Azure, and distributed systems that won't add unnecessary complexity to existing monolithic counterparts -- but will add the peace of mind that comes with disaster recovery and scalability.

GDC Europe: Learn game design tricks to keep players immersed in a story

June 1, 2016

The popular GDC Europe conference in Cologne, Germany is coming up fast, and as organizers continue to line up great talks for the show they're excited to announce that longtime game designer Mata Haggis will be there delivering a great talk on interaction design in games.

In "Narrative Experience First: Interaction Design in Fragments of Him," Haggis will showcase the many small design choices made to amplify the game's narrative through interactions in order to better keep the player 100 percent immersed in the narrative.

Haggis aims to cover the successes and failures we came up against in the development of the game, including many practical examples of topics such as reticule design and iteration, forced player movement, removing interactions to create additional immersion, and more.

Come to GDC Europe and get practical tips on surviving your startup

May 31, 2016

GDC officials are pleased to announce another great talk taking place at the big GDC Europe conference this August in Germany, one that will offer advice and support to anyone starting up their own game business.

IEP president and EEDAR cofounder Greg Short has a long career in the game industry, and at GDC Europe he'll deliver a talk on "How to Survive Your Start-Up." Check it out and you'll learn about the darker side of start-ups and how to survive some of the most dangerous perils they face.

Some of the topics Short plans to cover include: burning your boats, managing angel investors, when friends become foes, planning for growth, and riding the motivation roller-coaster. Whether you're already in a start-up now, or are thinking of one in the future, this session will help to prepare you for the worst, so you can work to be the best.

Come to GDC Europe for tips on coworking with devs to make better games

May 27, 2016

Heads up, European devs: GDC Europe is just months away, and today conference organizers are pleased to debut an intriguing session on the growing popularity (and power!) of game hubs that will take place during the conference in Germany this August.

Modern Dream (Typing of the Dead: Overkill [pictured]) director and cofounder Oliver Clarke also helped cofound U.K. coworking space Arch Creatives, and at GDC Europe he'll be delivering a great talk on "Game Hubs: A Quest to Revolutionize Game Production."

His talk will provide a clear understanding of what Game Hubs are, why they're popping up around the world, what the advantages are for developers -- and what major pitfalls to avoid. His talk will also provide ideas on how to set one up, and afford you a better understanding of their potential to improve your game production process.

Come out to GDC Europe and learn how to revive your aging F2P game

May 25, 2016

Sophie Vo is an experienced product lead at longtime German game developer Wooga (Futurama: Game of Drones, Jelly Splash [pictured]) and in her talk "In It For The Long Run -- Sustaining Mobile Hits Over Years" she'll show you how to take an old dog of a mobile free-to-play game, teach it some great new tricks and give it a fresh lease on life.

Wooga has had a lot experience successfully doing just that, and if you check out Vo's talk you'll learn from that experience how to make a maturing casual mobile game profitable and growing again, as well as how to innovate and test new features without harming live operations.

Better productivity through game design: Ubisoft shares tips at GDC Europe

May 24, 2016

The big GDC Europe conference in Germany is just months away, and today GDC organizers are happy to debut another excellent, expert talk that will be taking place at the Cologne conference in August.

David Lightbown serves as User Experience Director at Ubisoft, and at GDC Europe he'll be presenting a fascinating take on applying game design principles to improve your game production tools and process.

Check out his talk, "Hiding in Plain Sight: The Untapped Resource that is Helping Ubisoft to Make Better Tools" to learn how, exactly, Ubisoft has helped its teams work more efficiently by applying game design tenets to its production pipelines.

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