Latest News

If you've got a great idea for a session that should take place as part of the Programming track of talks at Game Developers Conference 2017, now is the time to submit it! GDC 2017 organizeres are now accepting submissions to present lectures, roundtables, panels, posters and tutorials through Thursday, August 18th.

This will be the 31st edition of GDC, which continues to be the world's largest and longest-running event serving professionals dedicated to the art and science of making games.

The big event will take place Monday, February 27 to Friday, March 3, 2017 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California, and will once again host thousands of game developers from all around the world for a week of learning, networking and inspiration.

The first standalone Virtual Reality Developers Conference is coming together fast, and today organizers would like to quickly remind you about an expert talk on VR game design that attendees of the November conference in San Francisco can check out.

Ubisoft Montreal's Olivier Palmieri will be sharing lessons learned from his work designing the remarkable VR flight game Eagle Flight in "Full Speed Flying in VR! The R&D Behind Eagle Flight."

The game was the result of an R&D project aimed at finding a way to allow comfortable high speed motion in VR, so Olivier will describe this research (e.g. effects of motion in peripheral vision), and solutions he and his team found (e.g. dynamic peripheral vision blinders).

He'll also run down how he and his compatriots sought to create VR flight game controls that would not only be comfortable, but also very intuitive and precise. The results surpassed their expectations, in some surprising ways!

It's the first day of August, and that means we're just weeks away from the big GDC Europe 2016 conference in Germany. For attendees looking to sharpen their design skills, conference organizers are pleased to announce an expert roundtable on big-budget game combat design.

In "Creating Conflict: Combat Design for AAA Action Games, Michael Barclay (Lead Level Designer, Cloud Imperium Games), Sam Howels (Principal Designer, Deep Silver Dambuster Studios) and Pete Ellis (Level Designer, Guerrilla Cambridge) will discuss what it takes to create combat scenarios for AAA action games.

The panelists, each of whom has some experience with the challenge, will take audience members through the various steps and considerations when creating action-packed scenarios for first- and third-person action games.

Hello and welcome to the 19th annual Independent Games Festival Letter From The Chairperson!

I wanted to take a moment to thank the IGF staff, developers, judges and jury members who were supportive and active in my first year as IGF Chairman! It was great to work through the process from start to finish and I appreciate all the feedback, conversations and suggestions that came along from everyone throughout the year.

Also, a big congrats again to all the teams who were nominated, received honorable mentions or won awards last year!  It was an amazing selection of games that I feel not only echo the voices of our community, but also reflect how far we’ve all come as an industry. I’m really looking forward to discover what this new year has in store!

Based on the experiences of last year, (and since there’s always room for improvement) we’ve decided on some changes to this upcoming IGF. I’ll outline the more notable items below in more detail.

Later this year San Francisco will play host the first standalone Virtual Reality Developers Conference, and among the great sessions organizers are lining up for the show is an expert talk on how VR devs can create mixed-reality trailers.

Delivered by game trailer wizard Kert Gartner, the "Behind the Scenes: Making Mixed Reality Trailers" session at VRDC 2016 promises a cutting-edge look at some of the best techniques and technologies for creating mixed-reality video of your augmented- or virtual-reality experiences.

This is something he know something about, having collaborated on the great mixed-reality trailer for Northway's Fantastic Contraption VR.

It's important because explaining VR experiences to people who haven't tried them is proving exceedingly difficult, and mixed-reality trailers can help you overcome that challenge by effectively conveying what it's like to be inside a VR experience.

With GDC Europe 2016 just weeks away, know that conference organizers have lined up a great session from Playfab's Mark Val about all the ways you can creatively improve your games' backend ecosystems.

In his talk, "Expanding Your Creativity Within the Backend Services Ecosystem," Val will take you on a tour of the leaders of the backend services ecosystem and how they can help you make better games.

From multiplayer, game design, monetization, analytics, support tools and more, attendees of his talk will learn new ways to expand their backend services and use them to be more creative when making games.

It promises to be a useful talk for anyone who helps make games, from indie devs to big-time publishers. Don't miss it!

Good news, game makers: UBM Tech Game Network, the organizers of the Game Developers Conference 2017, are now accepting submissions to present lectures, roundtables, panels, posters and tutorials through Thursday, August 18th.

This will be the 31st edition of GDC, which continues to be the world's largest and longest-running event serving professionals dedicated to the art and science of making games.

GDC 2017 will take place Monday, February 27 to Friday, March 3, 2017 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California, and will once again host thousands of game developers from all around the world for a week of learning, networking and inspiration.

For the main conference, the GDC Advisory Board is considering session submissions for seven tracks: Audio, Design, Production, Programming, Visual Arts, and the Business, Marketing & Management track, as well as the track on Advocacy, which covers social issues from diversity to quality of life. Proposals can be submitted via the official GDC website.