The Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2025 Core Concepts Call for Submissions will be open July 9 through August 8, 2024 at 11:59pm PT. Please contact Kysa (Ludviksen) Korosi with questions related to Core Concepts. Core Concepts sessions take place Wednesday (March 19) through Friday (March 21) of GDC week (March 17-21, 2025).
GDC Summits and Game Career Seminar Call for Submissions will be open August 22 through September 26, 2024 at 11:59pm PT. Please contact Sam Warnke with questions related to Summits and Kysa (Ludviksen) Korosi for GCS. GDC Summit sessions take place Monday (March 17) and Tuesday (March 18) and Game Career Seminar takes place on Friday only (March 21) of GDC week (March 17-21, 2025)
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Welcome from the GDC Advisory Board
The GDC Advisory Board works to build a diverse, high-quality conference program, choosing talks representative of interesting and current work happening in game development. While GDC is respected for the quality of its conference program, the Board strives to continually improve the quality and breadth of talks every year.
GDC requests more comprehensive submissions than other events. This helps the Board better understand what will be presented and help ensure that a great session title and abstract develops into a great talk. This can be challenging for submitters because it requires content to be prepared well ahead of GDC. The Board tries to strike a balance between improving the process for submitters and improving the quality of talks.
GDC relies on grading history for past speakers, while actively seeking new voices that represent diverse perspectives.
Those interested in submitting are welcome to first visit our Submissions FAQ page—which features helpful tips, answers to frequently asked questions, and suggestions on how to make a submission stand out. More detailed instructions are available below. The Board recommends perusing all guidelines before submitting.
Good luck with your submissions for GDC!
Thank you,
Submission Guidelines
If you would like to submit, please take note of the following:
Diversity and Representation
GDC aims to achieve diversity of voice, experience, and perspective. Please take this goal into consideration when considering who would be best to speak on behalf of your company or department and/or when submitting panelists.
Vendor-Specific Proposals
GDC does not accept product or vendor-related submissions. If your talk is a thinly veiled advertisement for a new product, technology or service your company is offering, please do not submit. If you would like to publicize a product, please visit the become a sponsor page for more information on sponsored sessions.
Original Authors
GDC only accepts submissions by original authors of the presentations. PR firms, speaking relation firms, and all other parties who are not direct authors of submitted presentations are discouraged from submitting a proposal on behalf of their clients/speakers. GDC requires direct contact with presenters to expedite questions during the submission review process. Submissions created using generative AI (ChatGPT, Bard, Bing, etc.) will not be accepted for consideration.
GDC Summits and Game Career Seminar
If you are interested in submitting to the GDC Summits or Game Career Seminar the call for submissions will be open August 22 through September 26, 2024 at 11:59pm PT.
Proposals submitted to the GDC Summits call for submissions will be considered and reviewed by GDC's Summit Advisors. Each program has its own advisors and submissions will be graded separately. There is no penalty for submitting a proposal to both the Core Concepts and Summits/GCS call for submissions. However, if your proposal is accepted or progresses to Phase 2 of the Core Concepts program, please let Kysa (Ludviksen) Korosi know if you submitted to another program ASAP upon acceptance. You may need to select one program to speak in.
Contact Sam Warnke with questions about the GDC Summits and Kysa (Ludviksen) Korosi for Game Career Seminar call for submissions.
Phases
Phase I: Prepare & Submit Session Proposal
- Speaker Contact Information
- Session Title: Provide a session title in fewer than 10 words. Please try to include keywords, topics, and game titles covered by your talk.
- Track: Advocacy, Audio, Business & Marketing, Design, Production & Team Leadership, Programming, or Visual Arts.
- Format: 30-Min Lecture, 60-Min Lecture, 60-Min Panel or 60-Min Roundtable (see the Presentation Formats grid at the bottom of this page for details)
- Presentation Outline Details (This will NOT be published on GDC website. For Advisor review only): You have approximately 500 words to outline and thoroughly describe to the GDC Advisory Board what your talk will be about, and why it will be interesting to GDC attendees. This is NOT the abstract for your talk on the GDC website or published event agenda. This section will NOT be published. It is for you to describe concretely and succinctly what is compelling about your talk, provide supporting data, and outline your presentation in detail to the Advisory Board. Submissions with thin presentation outline details (e.g. less than 400 words) will most likely be declined by advisors due to lack of information required to evaluate the presentation and its impact. Do not tease with something like, "My lecture will reveal amazing findings about how people play puzzle platformers," instead say, "We have found 90% of people only play puzzle platformers while eating pepperoni pizza," or whatever your amazing finding actually is. If you need more than 500 words to describe your lecture in this way, you can upload supplemental materials (.doc, .pdf, .txt) to your submission.
- Speaker Biography, Game Credits, Speaker History and X username (Biography and X will be published on GDC website)
- Session Description (This will be published on GDC website): In 100-150-words, provide a concise description of your session. This is the abstract of your talk that will be published on the GDC website. If your company requires PR approval prior to publishing, please note that this section will be made public upon official acceptance. Write in 3rd person, present tense.
- Attendee Takeaway (This will be published on GDC website): In 50-words or less, tell us what attendees will gain from this presentation. Be specific by giving concrete examples and remember that GDC attendees are experts in their field. This will be published on the GDC website. If your company requires PR approval prior to publishing, please note that this section will be made public upon official acceptance. Do not use bullet points, write in 3rd person present tense.
- Intended Audience (This will be published on GDC website): In 50-words or less, describe your target audience and who will benefit from your presentation. Is prerequisite knowledge necessary for understanding the content of the session? If so, what are the prerequisites? This will be published on the GDC website. If your company requires PR approval prior to publishing, please note that this section will be made public upon official acceptance. Do not use bullet points, write in 3rd person present tense.
- Supporting material (This will NOT be published on GDC website. For Advisor review only): It is optional to submit supplemental information that supports your session proposal. Additional materials may include white papers, code, demos, videos, images, proof of concept, etc. Supporting materials will NOT be published on the GDC website and are solely for the GDC Advisory Board during submission review.
- Company and PR Approval: If company or PR approval is required to present the content in the proposal, submitters MUST receive the necessary approvals prior to submitting. GDC will publish the fields noted above on the GDC website upon official acceptance.
Phase II: Session Proposal Review, Selection & Notification
- Advisory Board reviews submissions August through September.
- Submitters are notified of their status mid-September: Phase 2 Conditionally Accepted, Declined, or Accepted
- The majority of submissions selected to move forward enter into Phase 2 and are connected with a GDC Advisor. Phase 2 submitters will be required to prepare the presentation or make revisions for review by the advisory board.
- Phase 2 submissions are due early October.
- GDC Advisory Board reviews Phase 2 revisions October through mid-December. Additional feedback from your GDC Advisor may be provided during this time (see Phase III below).
*Note: You are not a confirmed speaker until your Phase 2 presentation is reviewed and approved by the advisory board. Most GDC talks are Phase 2 conditionally accepted prior to official acceptance. In Phase 2, submitters will receive feedback from a GDC Advisor, whose aim is to maximize takeaway for the audience, align content with the editorial goals of the topic or summit they advise (see track descriptions and topics of interest below), and ultimately help prepare you for a successful talk. All GDC Advisors are game industry and GDC veterans with extensive experience in their respective disciplines.
Phase III: Final Review & Confirmations
- Advisory Board reviews Phase 2 revisions in October through mid-December. Additional feedback for official acceptance may be provided during this time.
- Final decisions (Accepted or Declined) are determined and speakers are notified between November – through mid-December.
- Submitters who miss the Phase 2 deadline to submit their presentation plans for review are subject to an automatic decline; exceptions are made for extenuating circumstances only and must be approved by Conference Management. Please contact Kysa (Ludviksen) Korosi if you are in danger of missing the Phase 2 deadline..
Please note that your GDC Advisor may ask to connect post-acceptance to further prepare for your live presentation at the conference.
Selection Criteria
The GDC Advisory Board will review and rate submissions based on the following criteria:
- Concept: This is the basic idea of your submission. Is it interesting? Is it relevant? Will it be beneficial for game developers to hear? There is plenty of room for innovative ideas and also the tried and true.
- Depth: Is the basic idea well considered and thought out? To what extent will the audience gain insight? The more in-depth, the better.
- Organization: Are your ideas conducive to present in front of an audience? Will the Advisory Board understand what you are trying to say? Organization helps.
- Credentials: How do your credentials qualify you to speak on the topic you have proposed?
- Takeaway: Is the attendee going to leave this session knowing something they didn't know when they walked in? Are they learning or being inspired? This is the most important aspect of every GDC session. The submissions will be rated on a one to five scale by each of the reviewers and the resulting scores are averaged. Submissions in each category with the highest scores are considered first. If there is too much topic overlap across the submissions received, a lesser scoring submission may be selected to keep variety in the program.
Speaker Expectations
GDC attendees are very intelligent. They are looking for material that is not obvious and expect excellence from GDC speakers. After your presentation, they will evaluate it based on delivery, knowledge of the topic and the visuals presented. Preparation is one of the most important factors in delivering a successful talk at GDC. Please keep the following in mind when you propose to speak:
- The proposed outline you submit now must match the talk you actually present at GDC. Consider the talk's duration and submit content accordingly.
- Plan to commit AT LEAST 25 hours to prepare for your session
- Rehearse the delivery of your session to be more effective; preferably in front of your peers and/or record yourself speaking and then review it. Both are great ways to practice pacing and timing.
- Your presentation materials must be completed and reviewed by the GDC Advisory Board prior to GDC.
- All Core Concepts sessions are scheduled between Wednesday and Friday. When planning your travel to the conference, ensure you are available to present on any of these days.
- The GDC Advisory Board and content team are here to help. If you have ANY additional speaking questions you’d like GDC to cover, please email Kysa (Ludviksen) Korosi.
Speaker Support
Every year, the Game Developers Conference accepts over 800 speakers for its non-sponsored program. The conference organizers have implemented a Speaker Support Program aimed at providing financial and/or hotel assistance to as many speakers as possible who may need financial aid to attend the conference.
Speakers will be able to apply for speaker support upon notification of acceptance or Phase 2 conditional acceptance into the GDC program. Applying for speaker support does not have any impact on final decisions for official acceptance into the program.
Core Concepts Descriptions and Track Topics
Click on one of the GDC Core Concepts listed below to view descriptions of the topics solicited by the Advisory Board.
The Game Developers Conference is a large and globally diverse forum, and as such, an ideal opportunity to address new and existing challenges facing the game industry. Topics relevant for the advocacy track range from diversity and inclusion, to public and government perception, to quality of life, as well as utilizing games and game designs for other purposes. Advocacy track sessions offer an environment for discussion and a forum for envisioning positive change. For 2025, we're particularly interested in seeing topics addressing the impact of the layoffs and studio closures, the ethics and implications of leveraging AI, and more perspectives from underrepresented developers from around the world, although other topics will be welcomed.
The Audio track is soliciting submissions that cover the following topics:
Innovative, creative, technical, inspirational, practical - we feature talks on every aspect of the art, science, and business of game audio. We want submissions from composers, sound designers, audio directors, and programmers, and all game developers with unique perspectives and experiences with game audio; in-housers, freelancers, academics; indies to AAA; mobile, PC, console, virtual/augmented reality, and other form factors. We strongly favor talks that focus on the unique challenges of interactive audio over those which could equally be applicable to linear media.
Examples of evergreen topics include:
The creative process, perspective and challenges of making unique sound design and music experiences for games
Your finest analysis, project postmortems, tips & tricks, innovations, and technology
Platform challenges - opportunities afforded by new hardware, new user interfaces, and creatively overcoming limitations/restrictions
"Post-production" - real-time mixing, DSP, their aesthetics and impact on the player experience
Development - career, culture, teams, management, direction, tools, pipelines, audio QA, audio localization
Business - contracts, copyright, licensing, freelance operations
Voice/Dialogue - aesthetics, pipeline, casting and recording, asset acquisition and integration, performance, and direction
This year we'd also love to see submissions addressing these hot topics:
Technical Sound Design and Music Design
Practical workflow and technique deep-dives - it’s always insightful to see how others work!
Career development, from getting started to expanding, adapting, and reinventing
Diversity of backgrounds, experiences, and skills
Cross-disciplinary audio: when sound assists or interacts with gameplay in novel ways
Real-time synthesis and procedural/generative/AI-utilizing audio - music, sound, and speech
Novel audio system implementations and programming best practices
Truly interactive, non-repetitive, and just-in-time musical scoring
Sound and music for immersive and interactive virtual/augmented reality experiences
The modern remote workspace: how sound ideas are communicated, made, iterated, and integrated in a time of decentralized studios and socially distanced game production
The Business & Marketing track is soliciting submissions that cover the following topics:
Key Platforms of Today & Tomorrow
Platform analyses and cases studies including real data
Development and marketing budget planning for new platforms
VR and AR/VR platform analyses with real data
AR / Mixed Reality platform opportunities
Marketing & User Acquisition
Innovative marketing strategies including social, influencer, search & discovery optimization
Community management, customer service, and open development
User acquisition techniques, including real data
Impact of marketing, live ops and on-going development on the wider business
Marketing and public relations design post mortems
Actual use of GenAI in marketing with results
Financing
Crowdfunding, presales and traditional options like VC, project financing, and publisher financing
The best financing options in the current environment
Company Values, Maintaining Alignment
Building culture, setting goals, developing talent
OKR, Annual Goals or other ways to keep you teams on track
Remote Working, Distributed Corporations
Best practice and solutions for corporate issues arising from remote working
Streaming
Working with streamers, and building games for streaming
Data on streamers impact on revenue, retention
How to monetize streaming of your game
Esports
Building a game for esports, or developing your esports scene
Revenue opportunities in esports
AI
Tips & tricks for using AI to improve production
Risks of using AI for games
The advisory board welcomes submissions across all areas of game design, with particular interest in high quality, deep, and insightful talks presented at an advanced level for experienced professional game designers.
The most successful talks, regardless of topic, often include clear, practical takeaways that designers can use in their own work. The key is to show that you have deep and non-intuitive insights into your topic, forged through hands-on experience working on relevant games.
Topics of particular interest include:
Systems Design (economy management, resource balancing, character ability tuning, user interface design, etc)
Design Practices (ID&E-centered, playtesting for procedural content, etc)
Experiential Design (how to create spaces or rulesets that evoke specific emotions, how vision manifests through design, etc)
Narrative Design (treating "narrative" in the broadest sense, including environment or even user interface)
Cutting Edge (how new technology and business models are impacting design and the industry)
Project Postmortems (design stories about how a recent launch evolved and changed during development)
The Production & Team Leadership track is looking for experienced producers and team leaders who have shipped games to share their best techniques or experiences which helps them produce better games or build better teams. We are financing/genre/platform/business model agnostic - we are looking for case studies from everyone! Huge, tiny, startup, established, AAA console developers, Indie developers, Mobile teams, Cross-platform teams, Service teams, etc. A few project case topics the Production & Team Management Track is looking for, but certainly not limited to, are:
Production Case Studies or day in the life of...
Making games for new platforms
Producing AR/VR
Challenges of shipping on multiple platforms simultaneously
Building and running a service
How to reduce scope
Managing communities
Managing licenses
Managing teams across time zones
Managing hybrid teams successfully
Managing project scope throughout development
Studios & Teams
Habits and culture of successful teams
Building a new team: Start- up, new teams, mature team
Communication methods for your team and from your team across the organization
Managing creative people through difficult transitions
Maintaining productivity and alignment with a fully or partially remote workforce
Managing team growth, studio changes, acquisitions, layoffs, and more.
Production Roles
Producing with multiple types of production process
Setting games as a service up for success at launch or managing very mature GaaS titles
Working as/with external publisher production
Doing production when not a producer (very applicable for small/indie teams)
Transitioning into a producer role from another discipline
Training and career progression of producers
Producing multiple projects
Working with a Product Management or Business team
Working with or producing your QA group
Producing games being developed by multiple studios
Use of AI in reporting and managing large projects
Leadership
Growing leads at your studio
Bringing on new leaders
Being a director on a AAA title
Defining or building studio culture
Mentoring and coaching of individuals
Balancing production and leadership responsibilities
Maintaining alignment with game vision and product goals throughout the project lifecycle
The Programming track is soliciting lectures focused on innovative techniques and case studies in games programming, specifically in the areas of:
Core engine – multithreading approaches, asset streaming, scaling up data sets, asset counts.
World simulation – new computational approaches for higher fidelity world simulation.
AI/NPC behavior – increasing believable, meaningful interaction with characters, integrating authored and procedural/generative content.
Character Animation – improvementsin animation visual fidelity, layering, blending, and runtime target interaction (IK or physically simulated).
Online worlds – persistent universes, scalable cloud services, security/authority, and networking models.
Rendering – physically-based and non-photoreal rendering, as well as sharing graphics compute machinery with other compute-intensive tasks in an engine.
Game-defining systems – signature gameplay features, object/component systems, innovative scripting systems, and user interfaces.
A great example is Christopher Dragert’s “Census: The Systemic Backbone of Play-As-Anyone in Watch Dogs: Legion” from GDC 2021
Tools and pipeline – code and asset builds, hot reloading, and content iteration.
A great example is Rémi Quenin's "Fast Iteration for Far Cry 4 - Optimizing Key Parts of the Dunia Pipeline" from GDC 2015
Development accelerators – automated testing, performance analysis, service scaling, resilience, or other workflow accelerators.
A great example is Jan van Valburg's "Automated Testing and Profiling for Call of Duty" from GDC 2018
Machine Learning – content generation, automated testing, cheat detection, moderation, and analytics.
Success of the GDC Visual Arts track has grown over the past few years and we want you to help us build on that momentum. We want disruptive, inspirational and amazing artists, art directors, and art managers to speak this year. We're looking for people who are willing to share their skills and techniques with us. We want to hear from directors and managers who can teach us how to build great art teams, and create outstanding visuals on tight budgets and schedules. And we're seeking out top notch technical artists to show us new insights in look development and tool creation.
Inspirational Art Direction Talks: Continuing with our 'coffee table book' art direction sessions from last year we're looking for art directors who are willing to not only talk about the evolution of their game's style but to show us that evolution. Whether you're a AAA big budget developer or a small 2-person indie team, pull back the curtain and reveal the sketches, concepts, prototypes and in-development shots/videos that led you to the final look of your product.
Techniques and Demos: Visual artists are just that, visual. We want to see what you know, not just hear about it. We want artists to teach us new techniques, new tools and new styles. Can't talk and draw at the same time? No problem, we'll even let you have two presenters - one to talk and one to demonstrate. Show off your 3D modeling techniques, concept art drawing, and animation work to the best audience in the world - your peers.
Next Gen Art Techniques: Innovation and efficiency have never been more critical in visual development. Help set the agenda for the next generation of visuals by sharing your cutting-edge procedural art generation, material, and lighting techniques and plans.
Art Management and Production Talks: Did you develop an interesting strategy that saved you art development time and/or money? Did an in-house or 3rd party tool help alleviate your production pipeline woes? How do you manage to keep your artists from seeing the trees instead of the forest? We'd love to hear about your solutions to these problems and more!
Art Culture: What core values are you looking for when you hire artists? How do you manage critiques within your organization? What have you done to adapt to remote work requirements in the COVID-19 pandemic? Share your successes (and failures) in this with us so we can create better collaborative environments at our studios.
Animation: What sets your game's animation apart from everyone else in the industry? What went right in your latest game's motion capture sessions? What went wrong? What have you learned from studying animation techniques used in other entertainment industries? Share your lessons with other animators as we want to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly regarding animation trials and tribulations.
2D Art Production Pipeline Talks: Games with vibrant 2D art continue to thrive in the market. How can developers better solve the pipeline problems that come with this art style? We want to hear from someone who can talk about an interesting 2D art production pipeline.
Character Design Talks: We'd like to see a character talk that speaks to the DESIGN of the characters, not just how to sculpt high-frequency detail in Zbrush or do pretty rendering in Photoshop so the character design can pass a publisher focus test.
Show us your tech, TAs: You're the glue that holds art production together, TAs. What new ideas in tools and pipelines have you developed this past year? What new shader techniques are you investigating for next-gen? Is there look development work you've done that would enlighten us? Come show us and inspire us!
Generative AI Art in the Pipeline: As AI continues to revolutionize the art world, it brings both excitement and skepticism. We are eager to learn from studios that have incorporated AI into their art production pipelines, but we also want to acknowledge the concerns that many in the industry are feeling. What has worked? What hasn't? What challenges have you faced, and what benefits have you reaped? Share your insights on integrating AI tools into traditional workflows, and help us understand the potential pitfalls and ethical considerations. Whether you're a large studio or an indie team, your experiences—both positive and negative—can guide and inspire others in navigating this cutting-edge but contentious frontier.
Presentation Formats
| Format | Duration | Description |
| Lectures | 30 or 60 Minutes | Lectures are issue-oriented, provide concrete examples, and contain both practical and theoretical information. GDC generally prefers only one speaker but we may accept two if you can demonstrate the second person is necessary. Postmortems and case studies are included in this category. |
| Panels | 60 Minutes | Panels take many different viewpoints on a topic or issue and combine them in one debate session with a moderator. Debate among panelists (with very different opinions) is welcome and audience Q&A time should be accounted for. We prefer 60 minutes for this format and no more than 5 people with diverse representation. Include all of the panelists you have confirmed in the proposal. A very limited number of panels will be accepted. |
| Roundtables | 60 Minutes | Roundtables are small peer discussion groups led by one or two moderators. Moderators should facilitate conversation and keep the flow of discussion inspired and moving. They do not lecture or dictate. Constructive controversy and debate are very welcome in roundtables. Topics that are open-ended in nature and promote an exchange of ideas from people likely to have different viewpoints generally work best in this format. Roundtables can run up to three times, once a day during GDC Conference days, Wednesday-Friday. |
| Summits | 1 or 2 Days | GDC Summits are curated deep dives into specific pre-determined topics, covering a comprehensive range of game development disciplines that take place on Monday and Tuesday of GDC. Summits are programmed with unique advisory boards. The 2025 GDC Summits Call for Submissions will be open from 8/22 to 9/26 2024 at 11:59pm PT. |
NOTE: GDC does NOT supply any hardware (e.g. laptops) for attendees. If you need attendees to bring anything, this must be CLEARLY stated in your proposal.
