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Facts, Figures and Fun of GDC and VRDC 2016

GDC16 expo
Attendees walk the floor at GDC 2016 in San Francisco./Photo by Paul Philleo

UBM Game Network’s 2016 Game Developers Conference started the Monday after the close of the show with a trumpet to proudly sound: This year, GDC organizers bumped last year’s attendee record by setting a new one, of more than 27,000 attendees.

That new record may have been helped in some measure due to the infusion of new blood (a new conference, that is) in the form of the Virtual Reality Developers Conference. The VRDC, an event dedicated to the creation of new video games, entertainment and technology around virtual and augmented reality, was held alongside the Monday-Tuesday Summit portion of the GDC. vrdc sign
In fact, coincidentally or not, after the long lines and packed rooms on Monday, VRDC talks were moved to larger rooms by Tuesday, the second day of the summit. During the VRDC, Sony announced its $399 price point of the PlayStation VR headset. A constellation of well-attended VR-focused after-hours events also took place on Monday and Tuesday, including by Oculus, Razer and VR collectives.

It seemed like it might be difficult to play host to a conference when one wing of the Moscone South building is being thoroughly renovated. GDC organizers moved the GDC Play into the North Hall, with the hiring booths and Independent Games Festival Pavilion, plus a healthy networking area that doubled as a lunch area around midday. The South Hall took on a look more akin to E3, with double-decker booths and large, splashy spaces. However, in GDC tradition, the expo area is generally more about the tools and platforms and not the finished product, so companies like Unity, NVIDIA, Oculus, Facebook, Google, Epic Games, Microsoft, Sony and Amazon, dominated the front and center of South Hall.

Throughout the conference areas, other areas were hosted that showcased games featured at other events, such as GDC Train Jam and Day of the Devs. A little Inception-y? Maybe, but it lent to the diversity of games and ideas shown throughout the conference.

GDC Interactive Spaces

From a GDC press release:

In addition to the expo floors, GDC hosted a variety of Interactive Spaces throughout the week. Independent developers and some of the latest indie games were featured in the GDC Train Jam, alt.ctrl.GDC and Mild Rumpus areas, a special edition of Double Fine’s Day of the Devs and the Indie MEGABOOTH showcase. The GDC VR Lounge featured a range of VR and AR demos across all the upcoming VR platforms. For fans of tabletop board games, “Shut Up and Sit Down” hosted a selection of the best board games of the year for all attendees to enjoy. iam8bit returned to GDC this year with a 1980s living room, where attendees could pose for pictures and pay homage to the very first Game Developers Conference, which was held in the living room of GDC founder and developer Chris Crawford’s house in the 1980s.

In terms of awards, it was a very good year for “Her Story“, created by developer Sam Barlow. Arguably the star of the show, this deep, complex FMV detective story won the IGF Seumas McNally Grand Prize award of $30,000, as well as the IGF award for Excellence in Narrative as well as the Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA) for for Innovation, Best Narrative and Best Handheld/Mobile Game. The GDCA Game of the Year went to CD Projekt Red for their game, “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.” The full list of IGF 2016 award winners are here, while the full Game Developers Choice Awards list is here.

While a conference is generally focused on products and services that help attendees look to the future, it’s sometimes just as important to remember the past. As GDC reaches its 30th birthday, retrospectives and looks back were part of the conversation, too.

30 Years of GDC

GDC 2016 marked the 30th edition of the event, and to celebrate the history and legacy of the conference, the organizers hosted a comprehensive retrospective talk on the history of GDC.

From a press release:

On Wednesday, March 16, the main conference opened with the “Flash Backward: 30 Years of Making Games,” a session that brought together industry luminaries from GDC’s history. From conference founder Chris Crawford’s talk on the first GDC hosted at his house, to Lori Cole’s experiences crafting pioneering PC adventure games, to speakers including Phil Harrison, Ken Lobb, Tim Schafer, Palmer Luckey and others, the session covered insights into the history of game consoles, the birth of digital game distribution and the promising future of VR.

GDC San Francisco

Adding to the sense of the 30th anniversary GDC looking both forward and backward, Meggan Scavio, general manager of the Game Developers Conference said in a press release:

“This year’s GDC, paired with the inaugural VRDC, allows us to look both backwards at the legacy and lessons of previous years and forward to the future of games and VR experiences. Even in its 30th edition, GDC continues to evolve and grow to encompass all of the key lessons, advancements and artistic strides that the industry makes. Once again, the staff, volunteers, speakers, students and attendees have made GDC 2016 an amazing, fun and safe show all around.

“As technologies mature and tastes in games change, we’re happy to have a place for all of our friends, colleagues and soon-to-be-friends to meet, learn about and discuss the games and VR experiences that we love. Games are becoming the most popular form of entertainment in the modern world, so it’s only appropriate that GDC carry with it the same spirit of fun, adventure and discovery as the games themselves, just as it has since its beginning.”

Both GDC and VRDC will return to San Francisco and the Moscone Center in San Francisco, from Monday, February 27 to Friday, March 1, 2017. Expect an announcement for call for speaking submissions to open for both conferences this summer.

Gadget Live Show 2016 Will Host Clash of YouTubers

The Gadget Live Show 2016 will host the Clash of YouTubers. This showdown will gather top FIFA YouTube talent as they take part in challenges to acquire the most points. On April 3, Oakelfish, Reev, Aj3 and JMX will face off against NepentheZ, Bateson87, TobiaasGaming and Fangs.

The challenges will include Mr & Mrs Q&A with lie-detector-style punishments if you get an answer wrong, a Guinness World Record attempt, a race around the arena featuring the latest transport tech and gadgets from the show, and a 4 v 4 FIFA showdown using a virtual-reality headset turned the wrong way around.

Chris Parnell, CEO and co-founder of Kairos Talent, made the following comments about this challenge:

“We represent some of the largest and most engaging YouTube talent of this generation.”

“We’re pround to be able to bring you such an amazing line-up of personalities, and we’re really excited to see which team will come out on top.”

Sally Bent, event director of the Gadget Show Live, added this comment:

“Gadget Show Live has supported YouTube gamers for years, shining a light on newbies and welcoming back famous faces time and again. Our visitors love meeting them and watching them play, and we know they’ll go mad for this year’s totally unmissable Clash of the YouTubers, which is the finale to four days of wall-to-wall tech heaven for all the family.”

For more information on this event you visit the Gadget Show Live’s Clash of YouTubers page.

The Gadget Live Show 2016 will take place on March 31-April 3, 2016, at the National Exhibition Center in Birmingham, England.

Events for Gamers at GDC 2016

If you are going to the Game Developers Conference (GDC) this year, where might you find the E4G crew? Aside from being at many of the talks, expo floor, networking haunts and parties, there are select events at GDC we are partnered with and participating directly in. These four events, a networking dinner, an off-site panel, a party and a GDC roundtable, you will find briefly and helpfully summed up here for your scheduling pleasure, in chronological order:

5th Annual GDC Kickoff Dinner!

Sunday, March 13, 5-10PM

RSVP For Dinner Here

A tradition for many at GDC, this networking dinner was known for crowds of new and experienced game developers swarming a restaurant on the night before the show kicked off. This year, the Kickoff dinner returns at a new venue, with buffet-style Chinese food which is pre-paid with the ticket, to keep the focus on the joys of networking and dining versus waiting and other logistics. Odds are, you might run into one of us there in the thick of things during the evening.

Organized by previous Kickoff dinner organizer, Andrew Alcott, the dinner is partnered with Events for Gamers and 800 Birds.

 

Secrets of Chinese Mobile Game Piracy & Copycatting

Wednesday, March 16, 3:30-5PM

Event link

The Chinese mobile gaming market is huge and growing quickly, but what about issues of piracy and copycatting? Numerous stories have emerged from market about developers and publishers losing control of their app and its code in the Chinese market. This panel will address the topic head-on and suggest strategies to make an impact against pirates and copycatters. Events for Gamers will be moderating this off-site-from-GDC panel, at the ever-popular event venue, Minna Gallery.

 

F2P Forum Presents: GDC Mixer 2016

Wednesday, March 16, 5-8PM

Event link

Free-to-play games, a huge piece of the pie within the games market, get their own spotlight at a GDC party (continuing at Minna Gallery). I should say “again”, because the F2P Forum event is, impressively, heading into its ninth year in 2016. If you’re attending, expect a full house, a wide range of beverage options and appetizers. Game business people and developers alike are welcomed.

Events for Gamers is on board as a media partner, joining sponsors Superstar Games, Skillz, Narvalous, Amplitude, Tenjin.io, ZVKY Design, AppSolid and PacketZoom.

 

IGDA Community Management SIG Roundtable

Thursday, March 17, 4-5PM

Event link

Mathew Anderson, who is the Chair of the IGDA Community Management SIG and is also the founder and editor-in-chief of this humble website, is hosting a roundtable on-site at GDC, for game community leaders. Among the topics covered, at least with an events focus, includes how to evangelize the SIG at industry events, coming up with and submitting talks for events, and even how to run an event booth at a show.

We hope to see you at these events and many others at GDC 2016!

Sweden Game Arena Prepares Presence at GC, GDC 2016

The following is a press release from Sweden Game Arena.

Skövde, March 10, 2016 – Sweden Game Arena is present at Game Connection (March 14-16) and Game Developers Conference (March 16-18) in San Francisco, with a party consisting of almost 40 game developers, lecturers, researchers and business developers. Book a meeting with us at Game Connection under the Game Hub Scandinavia umbrella, or visit us at GDC in the South Hall, booth 212.

Our Sweden Game Arena ambassadors at GDC are the University of Skövde, The Game Incubator and nine of our member studios LandFall Games, Ludosity, Guru Games, Lone Hero Studios, Coffee Stain Studios, PocApp Studios, Stunlock Studios, Pieces Interactive and Tarhead Studio. Together we will be showcasing over 30 playable titles for PC and tablets, in one single booth.

– Don´t miss out on two of the most recently announced games, “Battlerite,” a cooperation between Coffee Stain and Stunlock, and “Kill to Collect” by Pieces Interactive, says Magnus Ling, spokesperson Sweden Game Arena.

The University of Skövde will showcase its extensive game education and research programs and other offerings. We are also joined by the representatives of the Swedish Games Industry organization at our booth.

Sweden Game Arena focus at GDC16 is to find speakers, exhibitors and sponsors for Sweden Game Conference spawning over two business days on October 20-21, followed by two extra Festival days in our home city, Skövde. Our four day event includes business matchmaking, two main speaker tracks, three workshop tracks, Expo, cosplay competition, Open game Jam, eSports challenge as well as several parties.

– We also seek new international members willing to start a new game studio within our Game Incubator, open up branches within our Science Parks in Skövde or Göteborg, or start research and development projects with the University of Skövde, says Magnus Ling.

10 Developers to Compete for Best Game Pitch at GDC 2016

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The 2016 Game Developers Conference is fast approaching, and the organizers of the event have announced 10 developers who will compete in a GDC pitch event at GDC Play. The GDC Play will show emerging and independent developers and their games. Developers will exhibit their pitching skills in front of a panel of expert judges as well as a live audience. The GDC pitch will be Wednesday and Thursday, March 16 and March 17, 2016. Jason Della Rocca, with investment platform Execution Labs, will host the event. The 10 developers will go through pitch prep and training and then get five minutes to pitch their ideas. After the five minutes, the judges will ask them questions, give advice and provide feedback. The judges will then announce a “Best Pitch” on each day and then award each pitch a pass to GDC 2017. Here is the list of developers for each day:

Wednesday, March 16 – 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.

  • COFA Games (“Awakening of Heroes”)
  • Zing Games (“Zombie Rollerz”)
  • CtrlMovie (“Late Shift – Your Decisions Are You”)
  • Agens Game (“Skate Lines”)
  • Apelab (“Sequenced”)

Thursday, March 17 – 12:45 to 1:45 p.m.

  • Phantom Compass (“Auto Age: Standoff”)
  • Hyper Games (“Redux”)
  • Alawar Entertainment (“Goliath”)
  • Rocket 5 Studios (“Kitty Disastrous”)
  • Antagonist (“Through the Woods”)

Virtual Reality Receives a New Conference

Virtual reality, a darling of the technology industry, has become the subject of many a conference, summit and track. Now, this technology space is about to be gifted a new conference, the Develop:VR, a one-day B2B conference and expo dedicated to both VR and augmented reality.

Tandem Events, the organizers behind the well-known Develop: Brighton conference, are creating this similarly branded standalone event. Develop:VR will take place on November 24, 2016, in London to focus on the new commercial opportunities in VR and AR, and highlighting the tools and tips needed to take advantage of it. The conference will feature three tracks: two focused on VR for games and one on how to develop for VR in non-gaming sectors. Speakers brought on board the inaugural conference include hardware and software pioneers who have successfully produced VR content.

Expect to see, in the expo, the latest dizzying (hopefully not too much) array of headset manufacturers and studios showing off their VR games and apps, plus tools, platforms and other services to bring VR and AR content to fruition. To top it off, networking opportunities will be sprinkled in to the event to light up possible connections between folks involved in all aspects of these emerging technologies.

“Virtual reality has offered video games developers with some unique opportunities,” commented Andy Lane, managing director of Tandem Events. “The potential for developers within the games industry is apparent, but virtual reality also opens doors to other industries. We’ve curated Develop:VR to help developers harness these prospects, provide a platform for learning and to showcase their talent.”

VR is an industry on the rise, which is why it’s become a hit topic at events. Still, because the technology is in its early days, it’s also a volatile market as well. SuperData just trimmed its growth predictions for virtual reality by 30 percent this year, to $3.6 billion, which is still nothing to sneeze at. The downward adjustment doesn’t affect the longer-term prediction for $40 billion in market spending by 2020.

Keep an eye out for the Develop:VR website and ticket prices to be announced later this year.

SEGA Celebrates With Sonic Retrospective at SXSW

The following is an edited press release.

LOS ANGELES – SEGA, the company that brought us Sonic The Hedgehog, is celebrating the blue blur’s 25th anniversary with a panel at this year’s SXSW. Taking place during the Interactive portion of the conference, the panel will be held at the Geek Stage on Saturday, March 19, 2016, beginning at 3:30 p.m. The “Sonic The Hedgehog: 25 Year Anniversary” panel will take a look at the history of the world’s fastest mascot with the original creators, developers and voice actors who will offer their insights and anecdotes about the generation-spanning character. Moderated by the man behind the @Sonic_Hedgehog Twitter account, the SXSW panel will be an engaging discussion and a must-attend event for any fan of the iconic franchise.

After racing to the scene in 1991 on the “SEGA Genesis,” the blue blur has seen it all: the great evolution of gaming – including the rise of online and mobile – international expansion, multiple TV series, and an ascension that’s made him an icon beyond gaming.

At SXSW, SEGA will present an in-depth look at Sonic’s rich history across gaming, TV, merchandise and more, giving fans an inside glimpse directly from key figures in Sonic’s history. The panel will celebrate the past and look to the future with breaking news and an inside glimpse at what fans can expect in 2016.

The “Sonic The Hedgehog: 25 Year Anniversary” panel presented by SEGA is free and open to the public. It will also be available via livestream on Twitch.tv.

WHO: Aaron Webber – Sonic Social Media Manager

Takashi Iizuka – Head of Sonic Team

Yuji Naka – Sonic Original Creator

Austin Keys – Director, Product Development

Roger Craig Smith – Voice of Sonic The Hedgehog

Mike Pollock – Voice of Dr. Eggman

WHAT: Sonic The Hedgehog: 25 Year Anniversary

WHEN: Saturday, March 19, 2016 from 3:30PM – 4:15PM

WHERE: Austin Convention Center on the SXSW Geek Stage (Ballroom C – 531 E 4th Street)

Visit the SXSW website for more information on SEGA’s “Sonic The Hedgehog: 25 Year Anniversary” panel.

March 2016 Game Industry Events Calendar

To help you plan attendance for this month’s game industry conferences, conventions, festivals and other events, we post a consolidated list of events each month. View the complete March event list below!

March 2016 Game Industry Events Calendar:

Click here for the main calendar view.

March 3: MCV Awards (London, UK)
March 3-5: SaltCon (Layton, USA)
5-6: PC Gamer Weekender (London, UK)
10-12: Train Jam (Chicago, USA)
11-13: AndoCon (Atlanta, USA)
11-13: Rockage San Jose (San Jose, USA)
11-20: SXSW Gaming (Austin, USA)
13: Conference on Game James, Hackathons, and Game Creation (Berkeley, USA)
14: Media Indie Exchange (MIX) (San Francisco, USA)
14-16: Game Connection America (San Francisco, USA)
14-18: GDC (San Francisco, USA)
14-18: CeBIT (Hannover, Germany)
15: Playphone After Hours Party (GDC) (San Francisco, USA)
15-16: Augmented Reality and VR (London, UK)
18-20: rAge Cape Town (Cape Town, South Africa)
22: GMIC Tel-Aviv (Tel Aviv, Israel)
22: Mobile Games Forum Icons Seoul (Seoul, South Korea)
23-26: Copenhagen Games (Copenhagen, Denmark)
25-27: Sakua-Con (Seattle, USA)
25-27: WonderCon (Los Angeles, USA)
25-28: Revision (Saarbrucken, Germany)
25-28: Insomnia (Birmingham, UK)
28-02: Norwich Gaming Festival (Norwich, UK)
31: Hamburg Game Conference (Hamburg, Germany)
31-03: The Gadget Show Live (West Midlands, UK)

The calendar moving into the year really begins to build up the event count!

This list is obtained from the main calendar. Did we miss an event? Let us know!

Will We See NVIDIA Pascal GP100 at GDC 2016?

We didn’t see the NVIDIA Pascal GP100 at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2016), so now the question is whether or not we are going to see it at GDC 2016 taking place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on March 16-18, 2016. According to several reports, NVIDIA does plan on releasing the NVIDIA Pascal GP100 this year, but it has not been seen in action. Here is an official statement made by WCCFTech.com:

“NVIDIA announced that this 250W automotive compute box is powered by two Terga chips and two Pascal GPUs. Yet the Drive PX2 board NVIDIA’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang held on stage carried two Maxwell based GTX 980 MXM modules instead.”

NVIDIA already announced its activities for GDC 2016, and the NVIDIA Pascal isn’t on the list, so maybe NVIDIA will surprise the public at GDC. Then again, NVIDIA’s own GPU Technology Conference held a few weeks later may be another opportunity for the visual computing giant to spring its Pascal reveal.

Here is the three-day activity list for NVIDIA at GDC:

Wednesday, March 16

  • Give life to your 3D art with MDL and NVIDIA Iray in Substance Painter
  • High-performance, Low-Overhead Rendering with OpenGL and Vulkan
  • Advanced Rendering with DirectX
  • Advanced Geometrically Correct Shadows for Modern Game Engines
  • Fast, Flexible, Physically-Based Volumetric Light Scattering
  • Advanced Ambient Occlusion Methods for Modern Games

Thursday, March 17

  • From the Lab Bench: Real-Time Rendering Advances from NVIDIA Research
  • Raise your Game with NVIDIA® GeForce® Tools
  • Rendering Faster and Better With NVIDIA GameWorksTM VR in UE4
  • Vulkan and NVIDIA – The Essentials
  • Designing a VR renderer and engine for modern CPU/GPUs using MaxPlay’s Game Development Suite (GDS) sponsored by NVIDIA
  • Android TV Gaming: Designing (and Programming) for Success on Marshmallow
  • Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel on Android – AAA porting with NVIDIA CodeWorks

Friday, March 18

  • Streaming Games from the Cloud with GeForce NOWTM
  • Indie Guide to Leveraging Industry Partnerships
  • Magical Realism: The Art of Creating Everest in Your Living Room with VR

Audience Award Voting for Awards at GDC 2016 Now Open

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It’s 2016, and in the United States the honored tradition of deciding between colorful and interesting candidates has already begun. Oh, you might have been thinking I was going on about political voting? Not at all.

We’re talking about helping to reward some of the best game developers in the business, by voting in the Audience Awards for both the 2016 Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA) and the 2016 Independent Games Festival Awards (IGF Awards), for the upcoming 30th anniversary edition of the Game Developers Conference. Voting is live until 11:59 p.m. PT February 19, 2016. Voting should be a snap. Visit the link, vote for your game of choice and submit an email, then boom, you’re done.

To find out who the winners are, you can discover firsthand during award ceremonies at GDC 2016 on March 16 or follow along live online via Twitch (here: http://www.twitch.tv/gdca) at 6:30 p.m. March 16, beginning with the IGF Awards and followed by the Choice Awards.

The Game Developer Choice Awards event celebrates peer-based game developers and publisher, while the long-running IGF Awards honor the creative and technical work of indie developers. GDC 2016 will take place March 14-18. Want to see more from last year, as a teaser of what’s coming up? Images from last year’s IGF and GDCA ceremonies can be found on the official GDC Flickr account.

Twitch’s eSports, Events and Viewers in 2015

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Last year was a good year for Twitch. It was the first year of TwitchCon, and by some estimates, the service draws over 100 million unique viewers per month and 1.7 million broadcasters. But there’s much more data to share, thanks to Twitch itself.

Twitch published, as has become tradition, a list of its achievements, a Retrospective in one spiffy infographic-style Web page. There’s plenty of numbers to call out, but for the sake of our focus, we’re going to look closely at eSports and events, and the impact Twitch has had in their engagements.

TwitchCon:

TwitchCon attracted 20,000 attendees in its first outing in 2015 in San Francisco. That’s just several thousand shy of GDC attendance numbers in recent years — and all packed into just one Moscone Convention Center hall. About 1.9 million followed along, watching online, likely a metric measuring Twitch viewership.

Zombie MMO game H1Z1 and Twitch were paired for an invitational tournament, with a $170,000 purse, during the con, too. That event within an event drew 2,000 attendees at the theater on-site, and like a tip of the iceberg, was only a fraction of the 190,000 who watched the tournament unfold online.

Events:

Twitch has become an increasingly frequent means by which conference and convention organizers stream content from their show. However, few segments of live events are as ready for the level of excitement a livestream benefits from as eSports tournaments. Twitch included several examples at the ready to demonstrate how extensive its reach has become.

The ESL One – CS:GO (Counter-Strike: Global Offensive) tournament, in Cologne and Katowice, attracted 27 million viewers overall on Twitch, logging 34 million hours (about 3,879 years), peaking at 1.3 million concurrent viewers online. Plenty of hype in that one event by itself, but there’s more. Twitch spotlighted the eSports tournament highlights from BlizzCon, EVO, The International 5 and League of Legends tournament.

Last, but certainly not least, Twitch has worked with different organizations and events, raising about $17.4 million in 2015 for over 55 charities in 2015. Among them is the Games Done Quick event, which prominently features its partnership with Twitch. Alone, the GDQ events raised over $2.8 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation and Doctors Without Borders charities.

All in all, it’s an understandably satisfying year for Twitch, just going by the numbers. We’ll keep you posted on Twitch’s work with upcoming conferences, events and, of course, the next TwitchCon.

The Best Games at PAX South 2016

Eric Van Allen over at paste magazine has a great article on The Best Games at PAX South 2016. Check it out! Here is a snippet:

This year marked the second PAX South, and the sophomore showing of the Lone Star State’s new gaming convention was bigger and better in every way. With more booths, more games, more panels, and more attendance than the year prior, both out-of-towners and Texas natives found a lot to love about the show.

We took the time to tour the floor and demo as many games as possible, and, in no particular order, here are some of the best up-and-coming games to keep your eye on in the coming year.

Visit paste magazine’s official website at: http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/02/the-best-games-at-pax-south-2016.html

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