As you start prepping your schedule for GDC 2023, make sure to check out all the great sponsored sessions available to you during your time at the event!
Game industry leaders are presenting several interesting talks during GDC 2023, happening March 20-24 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco—covering a variety of topics in technology, career development, and so much more.
These in-depth discussions and business guidance talks are aimed at helping game devs success on these companies' platforms. They are available for all pass levels, including Expo Pass holders.
Here's just a few of the many sponsored sessions you can attend (visit our Sponsored Sessions section of the Session Viewer for more!):
TiMi Audio Lab: Sound Design for Honor of Kings (Presented by Tencent Games)
Hongfei ZHAO (Deputy Director, Tencent Games)
Location: Room 3022, West Hall
Date: Tuesday, March 21
Time: 11:20 am - 11:50 am
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass, Summits Pass, Expo Pass, Audio Pass, Independent Games Summit Pass
Topic: Audio
Description: "TiMi Audio Lab from TiMi Studio Group, a subsidiary of Tencent Games, is a top-tier audio team who has designed the sound of many all-time favorite mobile game titles, including Honor of Kings, Call of Duty Mobile and so on. In this panel, three senior audio designers will use two game titles as examples to share about their design approach on game-as-a-service games, as well as their experience in collaborating with prominent musicians around the world."
PUBG MOBILE: Performance Optimization on Mobile Platform (Presented by LIGHTSPEED STUDIOS)
FAN ZHANG (Engine Team Lead of PUBG MOBILE, LIGHTSPEED STUDIOS, LIGHTSPEED STUDIOS)
Location: Room 3022, West Hall
Date: Tuesday, March 21
Time: 1:20 pm - 1:50 pm
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass, Summits Pass, Expo Pass, Audio Pass, Independent Games Summit Pass
Topic: Production & Team Leadership, Programming
Description: "PUBG MOBILE, a globally popular 100-player battle royale mobile game developed in Unreal Engine, supports a range of phone models from ten years ago to the most current models. This presents a challenge of providing satisfactory game experience to all users, regardless of their phone models. Fan Zhang, the game's engine team lead, will discuss the multi-level performance optimization strategy designed for these varied phone models, and provide an in-depth analysis of the improvements made to the game's rendering pipelines, features and engine."
How Xbox, 343i, Epic and Ubisoft are Reducing Energy & Emissions While Maintaining Gameplay Fidelity (Presented by Microsoft)
Trista Patterson (Microsoft)
Tad Swift (Microsoft)
Paula Escuadra (Microsoft)
Alex Le Boulicaut (Producer, 343 Industries)
Ben Woodhouse (Epic Games)
Iris Gardet (Ubisoft)
Location: Room 3001, West Hall
Date: Wednesday, March 22
Time: 9:00 am - 10:00 am
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass, Summits Pass, Expo Pass, Audio Pass, Independent Games Summit Pass
Topic: Advocacy
Description: "With growing environmental concerns and rising energy prices, game creators play a pivotal role in building energy-efficient game development practices into their culture. Xbox will be announcing innovative new tools, techniques, and research to help game studios achieve this at no cost to gameplay fidelity or the player experience. Join the teams at Xbox, 343 Industries, Epic, and Ubisoft, as we unveil how we're collaborating, including new tooling, data, case studies, and inspiration for what game studios of any size can do today."
Developing Marvel's Iron Man VR for Meta Quest (Presented by Meta)
Matt Walker (Director of Production, Meta (Camouflaj))
Location: Room 3022, West Hall
Date: Wednesday, March 22
Time: 11:30 am - 12:00 pm
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass, Summits Pass, Expo Pass, Audio Pass, Independent Games Summit Pass
Topic: Design
Description: "Marvel's Iron Man VR is a made-for-VR-story story that originally launched on PSVR in July of 2020, and debuted on the Meta Quest 2 and Pro last December. Iron Man is one of the most iconic Super Heroes and the game allows users to suit up in Tony's armor to take to the skies, having complete control of his suit, gear, gadget, and weapons. In this talk, Camouflaj developers will discuss adapting the title for the completely wireless Quest 2 headset and share insights on the unique challenges and opportunities they faced."
Co-creating Games on Mobile(Yahaha): A Generic Architecture for Runtime Game Editor (Presented by YAHAHA Studios)
Bowen Wang (Product manager, YAHAHA Studios)
Location: Room 3009, West Hall
Date: Wednesday, March 22
Time: 12:30 pm - 1:30 pm
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass, Summits Pass, Expo Pass, Audio Pass, Independent Games Summit Pass
Topic: Design, Visual Arts
Description: "Attractive art styles are key in drawing players to a game. That's where Yahaha comes in. Our AI technology and art-directed stylizers allow creators to effortlessly construct a variety of stylized worlds. Imagine having an AI assistant by your side, suggesting the ideal assets for your world's current art style. For example, constructing a realistic house with the perfect finishing touches. And, with our AI NPC system, you can add characters with distinct personalities, voices, and behaviors for players to interact with."
Modernizing multiplayer services for "God of War: Ascension" (PS3) (Presented by Amazon Web Services)
Eric Gottesman (Sr. Staff DevOps Engineer, Santa Monica Studio)
Location: GDC Partner Stage, Expo Floor, North Hall
Date: Wednesday, March 22
Time: 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass, Summits Pass, Expo Pass, Audio Pass, Independent Games Summit Pass
Description: "In 2013, Santa Monica Studio released 'God of War: Ascension' on the PlayStation 3, a game unique to the franchise with its inclusion of multiplayer modes. When AWS announced the shutdown of EC2-Classic in 2022, the multiplayer environment for the game was set to be impacted, and the team had to lead, architect, and deploy a new solution in a time frame of about two weeks. This session covers the transition from a set of static, unmanaged Amazon EC2 hosts to a fully containerized, Terraform-managed Amazon ECS on AWS Fargate cluster and the unexpected challenges that were faced. Learn about the value of maintaining servers for older games, best practices, and the challenges we're all likely to encounter in the future as more games depend on third-party services."
Poison Seeps: How Toxicity Erodes Trust, Degrades Player Experience, and Hurts The Bottom Line (presented by Modulate)
Daniel Kelley (Director, Strategy and Operations, Center for Technology and Society, Anti-Defamation League)
Eve Crevoshay (Executive Director, Take This)
Mike Pappas (CEO, Modulate)
Location: Room 2011, West Hall
Date: Thursday, March 23
Time: 3:00 pm - 3:30 pm
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass, Summits Pass, Expo Pass, Audio Pass, Independent Games Summit Pass
Topic: Business & Marketing
Description: "We all know that toxicity is a major problem in video games. Some titles and franchises have become notorious for their toxic communities. The ADL's most recent industry report states that more than five out of six adults experience harassment in online games — and the problem is getting worse, not better. Toxicity erodes trust in studios and damages player sentiment. It's clear that game studios have to do something about the problem — both for the good of the industry and for their own bottom lines. How does this pervasive toxicity actually impact game revenue and and to what degree?"
There’s even more to see in the full list of Sponsored Sessions—give them a look and start planning your schedule for the upcoming show! Of course, the only way to experience them all is to sign up today.
Register for GDC 2023 Here
GDC returns to San Francisco this March 20-24, 2023, and registration is now open! For more information, be sure to visit our website and follow the #GDC23 hashtag on social media.
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