eSports Summit and Community Management Summit Join Six Returning Summits Focused on Emerging and Evolving Sectors of the Game Industry
SAN FRANCISCO – Sept. 8, 2014 – The call for submissions to present lectures and panels for the specialized Summits at the 2015 Game Developers Conference® (GDC) is now open through Friday, October 3 at 11:59pm PT. The GDC Summits take place on the first two days of GDC, signaling the start of the five-day conference.
Covering a variety of topics from business models and platforms to industry trends and specific design elements within game development, the summits aspire to foster community building, expand the scope of games to incorporate new players, define market innovations and provide valuable insight into the future of gaming. Organized by the UBM Tech Game Network, GDC 2015 takes place March 2-6 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California.
New to the GDC Summit lineup this year are the eSports and Community Management Summits. Taking place on Monday, the Community Management Summit will cover every corner of this quickly evolving, crucial facet of video games. Summit content will focus on how to inspire, build, and maintain player loyalty and enthusiasm through the ups and downs of community opinion and adoption. It will discuss how to manage your community’s needs and interests to align with your company’s goals. The goal of the summit is to arm attendees with best practices and learnings from industry experts who will share case studies and postmortems on cutting edge community management strategies.
Taking place on Tuesday, the eSports Summit will be a one day summit focused on all things eSports. The Summit will strive to bring together the most influential people in eSports to share their knowledge and expertise; from players to game developers, event organizers, casters, journalists, and streamers. Session content will share best practices for how to design, grow, develop, sustain and communicate within the competitive games industry.
The Summits also welcome several new members to their advisory boards: In the eSports Summit, advisors include Rod Breslau (LiveOnThree), Frank Lantz (Area/Code, NYU), Lil Chen (TED/The New Meta), and Patrick Miller (Riot Games). New Community Management Summit advisors include Saralyn Smith (Blizzard Entertainment), Donna Prior (Independent), and Troy Hewitt (Motiga). In addition, advisors added to pre-existing GDC Summits include Akira Thompson of RainBros, joining the Independent Games Summit board, and Katherine Isbister of NYU Game Center’s Game Innovation Lab, joining the GDC Education Summit.
The 2015 GDC Summits are:
- AI Summit
- Community Management Summit
- eSports Summit
- Free to Play Summit
- Game Narrative Summit
- GDC Education Summit
- Independent Games Summit
- Smartphones & Tablet Games Summit
For more information regarding the submission process and guidelines for the GDC summits, please visitwww.gdconf.com/conference/c4p/summits.html.
“The GDC Summits play an integral role for the Games Developers Conference, they set the stage for the types of indispensable knowledge developers and the video game community expect.” said Meggan Scavio, General Manager of all Game Developers Conference events. “We strive to bring compelling content each year. It’s deeply rewarding to help ignite these engaging and thought-provoking discussions within the community that broaden our understanding of the space and open up the industry to more audiences.”
For more information about the Summits at GDC 2015 and advisory board members, please visit www.gdconf.com.
