Name: Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2025
Start: 2025-03-17T15:00Z
End: 2025-03-22T00:00Z
Location: Moscone Center

AI postmortems of Assassin's Creed III, XCOM, AI rant planned for GDC 2013

March 11, 2013

GDC 2013 organizers are highlighting several notable Artificial Intelligence Summit lectures for its March conference, including AI postmortems of Assassin's Creed III, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and Warframe (pictured), its annual AI dev rant, and 'The Simplest AI Trick in the Book.'
The AI Summit has been organized with the help of the AI Game Programmers Guild. The Summit promises to give attendees an inside look at key architectures and issues within successful games and provide insight into what AI can offer the next generation games.
(The AI Summit is just one of eight Summits to be held Monday-Tuesday, March 25-26 during the Game Developers Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.)
Firstly, in a collection of three 'AI Postmortems,' developers will dive right into the most challenging AI issues they faced and how they overcame them.
Ubisoft's Richard Dumas and Aleissia Laidacker will discuss improving climbing and running mechanics in Assassin's Creed III, Firaxis' Alex Cheng will share approaches to movement and ability usage for the various aliens in XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and Digital Extremes' Daniel Brewer will cover creating tactical and behavioral AI in procedurally generated levels of Warframe.

GDC 2013 to feature last ever Game Design Challenge, Warren Spector on narrative

March 8, 2013

GDC 2013 organizers spotlight special sessions, including Warren Spector on narrative in games, a 10-speaker microtalk on the state of play, and the Game Design Challenge Final Championships.
These talks are part of the Design Track and Game Narrative Summit for Game Developers Conference 2013, which will take place Monday-Friday, March 25-29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.
In the main conference's Design Track, the 10th and final Game Design Challenge will bring together winners from the past to design 'Humanity's Last Game.' Speakers will present what should be the last game humanity ever plays, with moderator Eric Zimmerman again polling the audience for the winner.
Returning champions will include Playdom's Steve Meretzky (Leather Goddesses of Phobos), thatgamecompany's Jenova Chen (Journey), University of Southern California visiting associate professor (and former Uncharted lead) Richard Lemarchand, Ivy Games' Erin Robinson (Puzzlebots), independent designer Jason Rohrer (Between), Arkane Studios' Harvey Smith (Dishonored), and Stupid Fun Club's Will Wright (The Sims).
Elsewhere, in 'GDC Microtalks: One Hour, Ten Talks, A Bazillion Design Ideas,' presenters will have 20 slides and 5 minutes each to share their ideas about the past, present and future of play.

'Road to the IGF' Pt. 2: more stories behind this year's top indie games

March 7, 2013

Gamasutra's Road to the IGF continues to highlight every 2013 Independent Games Festival finalist - and here's the second batch of interviews, including Little Inferno, FTL, Inrusion 2 and Spaceteam.
All finalists will be playable at an expanded IGF Pavilion on the Game Developers Conference 2013 Expo floor from March 27-29, 2013, at San Francisco's Moscone Center.
This year's 'Road to the IGF' series continues with interviews on games such as the "spaceship simulation roguelike-like" FTL by Subset Games, the one-step-a-day VESPER.5 by Michael Brough, and the multi-generational family history game 7 Grand Steps by Mousechief.
This second helping of highlights from this year's finalists are as follows:
- Spaceteam creator Henry Smith discusses the various influences he drew inspiration from, and what he plans to do next with the space genre.
- Mousechief's Keith Nemitz talks multi-generational family history game 7 Grand Steps, and how history helps us understand humanity.

GDC 2013 adds localization talks on Diablo III, Resistance franchise

March 7, 2013

GDC 2013 organizers are highlighting sessions on real time localization tools for Diablo III, Sony's expanded localization database for Resistance: Burning Skies, Yodo1 on Western games succeeding in China, and rapid-fire microtalks on bringing games to international markets.
GDC has partnered with the IGDA Game Localization SIG for the Localization Summit, which aims to help professionals understand how to plan and execute game localization and culturalization as a part of the development cycle. This Summit will take place on Tuesday, March 26 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.
Using Diablo III as the example, 'Implementing Blizzard's Localization Vision in Real Time' will showcase outdated methods the company has shed in favor of more collaborative practices. Blizzard speakers William Barnes, Arthur Flew, Ines Rubio, and Jason Walker will also share the tools used to implement these practices.
Elsewhere, Sony PlayStation's proprietary Localisation Management System (LAMS) project lead and programmer Chris Burgess will present a 'Return on Investing in a Robust Localization Database.' He will show how changes changes on Sony's LAMS database from Infamous 2 to Resistance: Burning Skies improved productivity and freed time for creativity.
In Yodo1 CEO Henry Fong's 'The Western Games That Conquered China,' developers will learn about localizing, distributing, and monetizing their mobile games in China and about leveraging China's local social media, while protecting their IP rights.

Dragon's Dogma, La-Mulana, Tokyo Jungle, Virtue's Last Reward talks added to GDC 2013

March 6, 2013

GDC 2013 organizers are highlighting design lectures on recent hits from Japan, including Dragon's Dogma, La-Mulana, Tokyo Jungle, Rune Factory 4, Puzzle & Dragons and Zero: Escape: Virtue's Last Reward.
These design lectures on acclaimed Japanese games, simultaneously translated by the notable game industry translators 8-4, will take place during GDC's main conference on Wednesday-Friday, March 27-29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.
In the 'Behind the Scenes of Dragon's Dogma,' lecture, director Hideaki Itsuno will discuss Capcom's open-world action RPG through "untold development stories, humor and inspiring ideas" and touch on "marketing and post-release product support strategy."
Next, Takumi Naramura will discuss how his team at Nigoro used feedback from its audience before and after La-Mulana's release in 'Commun-indies: Making the Most of Your Indie Community.' Their support spans from before the game's initial 2005 release to beyond its 2011 WiiWare, 2012 PC remake release, and its 2013 successful Steam Greenlight campaign.
In 'RPG Development: Inspiration and Perspiration,' Marvelous AQL's Yoshifumi Hashimoto will draw on his experience helping to produce RPGs such as Rune Factory, Harvest Moon, and Muramasa: The Demon Blade to discuss "best practices for developing and innovating in the genre."

GDC 2013 highlights developer days from Google, Unity, Intel, more

March 5, 2013

GDC 2013 organizers are highlighting more day-long sessions for the March conference, including those on the Google Cloud platform, Unity Technologies, Intel's next-generation GPUs, along with Digital River's multiple monetization sessions.
These developer days all take place during the first two days of GDC's March conference on Monday-Tuesday, March 25-26 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA. In addition, Digital River's sponsored monetization track will take place on Wednesday, March 27.
Google will provide a full day on game development with its cloud platform, including lectures on how to connect mobile apps to Google Cloud and how to run large, scalable games. Joining Google specialists will be Staq Inc. founder Luca Martinetti on understanding players with near real-time data analytics, and EA's Yanick Belanger on how EA builds mobile game servers on the Google App engine.
In the developer day presented by Unity Technologies, Allegorithmic and Mixamo will present alongside Unity's internal teams on topics such as the Unity rendering pipeline, standing out in the Unity Asset Store, and the company's Mecanim animation technology. Additionally, Allegorithmic will present tools that help keep games below 50MB.
Elsewhere, Intel will present its second dev day with training and hands-on activities in 'Ultrabook - Graphics, Power, and Human Interfaces.' Sessions will include a lab on adding touch and sensor technologies to new PC games while allowing for backward compatibility with other PCs, a secret-spilling session on Intel's next generation of GPUs, and a free-form Q&A with third-party game developers.

'iOS games in a day', animation, producer bootcamps detailed for GDC 2013

March 4, 2013

GDC 2013 organizers are highlighting more day-long sessions for the March conference, with industry-driving animation and cross-platform production bootcamps and an iOS crash course that will cover API and popular engine implementations.
The tutorials and bootcamps all take place during the first two days of GDC's March conference on Monday-Tuesday, March 25-26 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.
The first bootcamp is simply called 'iOS games in a day'. It will include lessons on Cocos2D, openGL and Unity3D, lectures on popular and essential iOS APIs for games, and "a deep-dive on game architecture selection and best practices."
Speakers at this iOS crash course include Mike Daley (Co-Founder, 71Squared Ltd), Gareth Jenkins (Founder & Lead Developer, 36peas), Matt Rix (Founder, Magicule), Mike Schramm (Editor, TUAW/Joystiq), Keith Shepherd (Co-Founder, ImangiStudios), Rod Strougo (iOS Developer & Instructor, Big Nerd Ranch & Prop Group), Ray Wenderlich (Founder, Razeware LLC), and David Whatley (CEO, Critical Thought Games, LLC).
In the day-long 'Animation Bootcamp', animators from across the industry will first focus on the believability, body mechanics, and facial animation needed in today's games. From these lectures will come practical discussions, including Hitman: Absolution animation director Simon Unger on how to get the most from motion capture, Ubisoft's Jonathan Cooper on animating the "3rd Assassin," and Battlefield 3 and Killzone 2 animator Ryan Duffin on how to give purpose to first-person animation.

GDC Play 2013 'Best in Play' game winners announced

March 1, 2013

Organizers of the 2013 Game Developers Conference are announcing the eight winners of its new award program - 'Best in Play' - for exhibitors in the three-day GDC Play 2013 event, which allows emerging developers to show their games in a specially designed kiosk.
The winners, picked from more than 70 exhibitors currently at GDC Play, include the beautifully landscaped, mech-based first-person shooter Hawken by Meteor Entertainment for PC and the extremely physical and collaborative micro challenge game Spin the Bottle by KnapNok Games for Wii U.
For the new Best in Play award program, all GDC Play exhibitors were judged on their in-development or complete games by a panel of veteran GDC organizers and Gamasutra editors. All Best in Play winners receive 2 All Access Passes to the 2014 Game Developers Conference.
Winners for Best in Play will also receive special designations for their kiosks at GDC 2013, where their games will be playable by all GDC attendees. GDC All-Access Pass holders can contact all GDC Play exhibitors via the currently operating GDC Play Matchmaking Software.
The Best in Play winners are as follows:

GDC 2013 highlights new PlayStation 4, Oculus Rift, Project SHIELD vendor sessions

March 1, 2013

GDC 2013 organizers are highlighting major new vendor sessions, including Sony on PlayStation 4 development and design, Mozilla on 'fast and awesome' HTML5 games, NVIDIA on its Project SHIELD handheld device, and Oculus VR on diving into virtual reality with Oculus Rift.
These sessions all take place during GDC's Main Conference to be held Wednesday-Friday, March 27-29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.
A month after announcing the PlayStation 4, Sony Computer Entertainment America will present at GDC 2013 an 'Overview of PS4 for Developers.' Attendees can expect to hear about "the technology from a development standpoint as well as from the design side" for this next-generation console releasing later this year.
Oculus VR will present 'Running the VR Gauntlet -- VR Ready, Are You?' with chief software architect Michael Antonov and co-founder Nate Mitchell. They will share what they have learned from building their new VR game platform, what developers need to know about supporting it, and how to overcome VR technical challenges.
In 'NVIDIA Project SHIELD and Tegra 4: Redefining AFK,' senior software engineers Andrew Edelsten and Paul Hodgson will share tips and tricks for targeting the Project SHIELD handheld device, a run down of the latest NVIDIA development tools, and Tegra 4's relevant new GPU features.
Finally, in 'Fast and Awesome HTML5 Games' presented by Mozilla, senior researcher Alon Zakai and engineering director Vladimir Vukicevic will talk about techniques for quick JavaScript execution and easy porting of existing titles. The two will also show what HTML5 currently offers for graphics, multithreading, networking, and audio in games.

Double Fine, Journey sand tech, Capy/17-Bit talks added to GDC 2013

February 28, 2013

GDC 2013 organizers are highlighting multiple new talks for the March conference, including Double Fine on 'optimizing for human performance,' a panel on building indie studio culture, and Journey's refined sand technology.
The talks are part of the Visual Arts, Business, Programming, and Production tracks -- four of seven Main Conference tracks to be held Wednesday-Friday, March 27-29 during the Game Developers Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.
For 'Sand Rendering In Journey,' lead engineer John Edwards will cover thatgamecompany's approach to graphics and will review three years' worth of lessons learned refining the sand rendering technology. This will include "surprising non-physical techniques, such as an 'ocean' specular effect and a 'phenomenological' diffuse lighting model."
Elsewhere, Double Fine studio technical director Nathan Martz will discuss how to build software and grow teams that are fast and flexible in 'Ideas per Second: How Double Fine Optimizes for Human Performance.' Martz's talk is "tailored for producers, technical directors, lead programmers, studio heads, and anyone else interested in cultivating software and the people who create it."
Finally, XBLA portfolio director Chris Charla will head a panel of independent studios in 'Building a Great Studio Culture on a Budget.' Nathan Vella of Capy Games (Sword & Sworcery EP), Jake Kazdal of 17-Bit (Skulls Of The Shogun), and Mike Mika of Other Ocean (Monsters Love Candy) will spill their culture building secrets, including "what $250 investment can bring a studio together better than anything else on earth."

GDC State of the Industry research exposes major trends ahead of March show

February 28, 2013

In order to paint a picture of the games business as it looks right before GDC 2013, the Game Developers Conference has polled more than 2,500 North American game developers who attended the conference in 2012 or plan to attend GDC 2013 in March about their development practices, revealing several notable trends with regards to platforms, money, team sizes and more.
The GDC intends to field a similar survey each winter, in advance of the conference in San Francisco.
Organized by the UBM Tech Game Network, GDC 2013 will take place March 25-29 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California.
The Rise Of The Indie
A key finding of the GDC 2013 State Of The Industry survey is that independent game development and smaller teams are on the rise like never before. In fact, 53% of the respondents identified themselves as 'indie developers,' and of those, 51% have been indie developers for less than two years.
In addition, 46% of the survey's respondents work within companies of ten people or less. Further proving the move to indie, only 24% of those surveyed worked with a publisher on their last game, while an even smaller 20% are doing so on their current projects.

GDC 2013 details DirectX 11, Intel gestural tech, Facebook dev days

February 27, 2013

GDC 2013 organizers are highlighting new details for the March show's Developer Days, including a multi-company DirectX 11 rundown, and sponsored Dev Days from Intel on gestural technology, and Facebook on its ecosystem.
Taking place on the first two days (Monday, March 25th and Tuesday, March 26th) of the San Francisco show, these full-day events offer GDC attendees a chance to learn about key development tools and platforms directly from the companies that make them.
In the multi-company presented 'Advanced Visual Effects with DirectX 11,' companies including NVIDIA, AMD, Crytek, and Crystal Dynamics will convene the day-long tutorial on the Direct3D technologies used in DirectX 11 and 11.1 and the ways they can be applied to cutting-edge graphics.
Along with hearing from tech experts at NVIDIA and AMD, Crystal Dynamics will offer a session on Tomb Raider on DirectX 11, and Crytek will speak about the rendering technologies of Crysis 3 with regard to Microsoft's technology.
Elsewhere, Intel's sponsored Dev Day will offer a full day of learning how to use its Perceptual Computing SDK for 'Natural, Intuitive, and Immersive Gaming', with the goal of taking game interaction beyond the mouse and keyboard, and toward gestures, finger and hand tracking, and face recognition.

GDC 2013 adds design talks on The Walking Dead, Short's Versu, The Witcher franchise

February 26, 2013

GDC 2013 organizers have added more design talks to its March conference, including Telltale on using empathy, character, and choice to involve the player; Linden Labs on its new storytelling app, Versu; and CD Projekt RED on techniques to go from great ideas to game features.
The Design Track is just one of seven Main Conference tracks to be held Wednesday-Friday, March 27-29 during the Game Developers Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.
Telltale Games' Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman will discuss how to go against the apocalyptic zombie video game grain in 'Saving Doug: Empathy, Character, and Choice in The Walking Dead.' The two will share how they elicited in players emotions and experiences not often found in the mass market while creating a commercially and critically successful episodic game.
Elsewhere, creative director of Linden Labs (Second Life) Emily Short will dissect the studio's recently released storytelling app in 'Turning Comedy of Manners into Gameplay: Versu Postmortem.' Short, who has created over 2 dozen text games herself, will discuss the iOS App, focusing on "creating a game focused on social interaction as its primary mechanic, the UI issues in building interactive text for experienced readers," and more.
Finally, lead gameplay designer of CD Projekt RED (The Witcher franchise) Maciej Szczesnik will offer several creativity boosting methods to get 'From Great Ideas to Game Features.' Also included will be "feature assessment tools, backlog optimization and prioritization tools, and a structured approach to transforming ideas into optimal production plans that maximize the effect."

GDC 2013 adds key smartphone and tablet talks on virality, scalable cloud tech

February 25, 2013

GDC 2013 organizers are showcasing multiple new Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit talks for its March conference, including Applifier on making players your biggest advocates, bitHeads on building scalable cloud tech, and Capy on making it as a paid app in the F2P era.
The Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit is just one of eight Summits to be held Monday-Tuesday, March 25-26 during the Game Developers Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.
In 'Supercharging Word of Mouth: Best Practices in Virality,' Jussi Laakkonen, founder and CEO of Applifier and creator of replay share tool Everyplay, will provide insights on how to encourage players to be the biggest advocates of your game. He will also analyze how and what players want to share most, such as achievements, high scores, screenshots, and video replays.
With 'Building Scalable Cloud Tech for Mobile and Social Games,' bitHeads' Paul Winterhalder will discuss what features to push into the cloud, what pitfalls to avoid, and how to have it all ready for the publisher pitch. Winterhalder will tap into his expertise as chief development officer of bitHeads (which provided back-end solutions for Trade Nations on Facebook) and Playbrains (Sideway: New York on PS3 and Steam).
Finally, 'Still Kicking: The Viability of Paid Apps in the Era of F2P' will see Nathan Vella, president of Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP & Critter Crunch creator Capy, discuss the risks of free-to-play as a small studio and how to leverage the opportunities in the paid app space.

GDC 2013, Wild Rumpus debuting 'Rumpus Royale' indie game world champs

February 22, 2013

GDC organizers have announced the next in its series of new onsite events at GDC 2013, in the form of 'Rumpus Royale MMXIII'.
This week-long 'indie game world championships' is created in a partnership with raucous UK multiplayer indie party organizers Wild Rumpus.
The event will span the entire week of GDC, March 25th-29th, will be located on the Street Level in the West Hall of the Moscone Center, and will provide an all-day "training arcade" and daily tournaments to all GDC attendees.
The Wild Rumpus exists to bring together the best of indie multiplayer games for live events. Members behind the organization include Honeyslug co-founder and Hohokum developer Ricky Haggett, artist and designer Richard Hogg, whose work includes Poto & Cabenga and Frobisher Says, Die Gute Fabrik's George Buckenham and Penguin Books digital producer Marie Foulston.
Wild Rumpus' GDC event invites attendees to "come take on the gaming titans" in this event, with guest commentators and surprises to be announced in the near future.

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