Game Developers Conference (GDC) is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Stay up to date on everything happening with the Game Developers Conference, the Independent Games Festival, the Game Developers Choice Awards, and more through our online blog. To get GDC updates sent straight to your mailbox, subscribe to our GDC Newsletter.

New XRDC Innovation Report reveals Vive is still devs' top target, but AR is rising

Today the UBM Game Network, organizer of the Game Developers Conference and XRDC, is proud to present the third annual XRDC VR/AR Innovation Report!

This year the report is jam-packed with interesting insights gleaned from a survey of over 600 industry professionals involved in the development of virtual/augmented/mixed reality experiences. It's completely free to download and gives you an exclusive look inside the AR/VR/MR industry -- from devs' platform preferences to market challenges, platform availability, funding and much more!

For more information and to download the report, download it for free here!

A lot has happened in the AR/VR/MR market over the past few years, and as these cutting-edge technologies mature and flourish UBM Game Network continues its work of providing industry professionals with opportunities to learn from each other and maintain their place on that cutting edge.

Stanford will share insight into mixed reality's medical uses at XRDC

Dr. Brian Hargreaves teaches courses in mixed reality and magnetic resonance imaging at Stanford, serves as co-director of the university's Incubator for Medical Mixed and Extended Reality, and this October he'll be sharing what he's learned at XRDC!

The AR/MR/VR innovation is just a few months away, and organizers want to make sure this cutting-edge talk doesn't slip under your radar. Dr. Hargreaves' session, titled "Mixed Reality Guidance for Medical Procedures," will show you the needs, challenges and potential solutions for several applications where mixed reality devices can realistically play a role in medical procedures in the next five years.

GDC 2019 is looking for great Programming talks -- pitch yours today!

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 2019, now is the time to submit it!

That's because GDC 2019 organizers are now accepting submissions to present lectures, roundtables, panels, posters and tutorials through Thursday, August 16th.

This will be the 33rd edition of GDC, the world's largest and longest-running event serving professionals dedicated to the art and science of making games.

Next year the show will take place March 18-22 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California, and will again play host to thousands of game developers from all around the world for a week of learning, networking and inspiration.

As always, organizers are looking for submissions of expert talks that would be a great fit for the show! To best serve the audience of programmers and coding enthusiasts who attend GDC every year, the GDC 2019 Programming track once again seeks lectures focused on new techniques in programming, especially:

The 2019 Independent Games Festival submissions are now open!

UBM Tech Game Network, organizers of the 2019 Game Developers Conference (GDC), is now accepting submissions for the 21st annual Independent Games Festival (IGF), the longest running festival, summit and showcase of independent games.

The IGF is part of the Game Developers Conference 2019, which will take place from March 18th through March 22nd at San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center. Entries for all of the IGF categories will be accepted now through October 1, 2018, with finalists announced in early January 2019.

Finalists will compete for over  $50,000 in prizes and their games will be playable at the packed IGF Pavilion on the GDC 2019 Expo Floor. The award categories include Excellence in Visual Art, Audio, Design and Narrative, each of which will have six finalists, with the winner in each category receiving $3,000. Additional awards include the Best Student Game award ($3,000 prize) which will recognize student developers, the special Nuovo Award ($3,000, eight finalists) which honors the title that 'makes the jurors think differently about games as a medium', and the IGF Audience Award ($3,000 prize) which will be decided by a public vote from all of the competition finalists. Finally, six finalists will be selected for the $30,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize.

Now's the time to pitch your great Visual Arts talks for GDC 2019!

Hey game makers, if you have a great idea for a session that would be a great fit for the Visual Arts track of talks at Game Developers Conference 2019, now is the time to submit it! Show organizers are now accepting submissions to present lectures, roundtables, panels, posters and tutorials through Thursday, August 16th.

This will be the 33nd edition of GDC, the world's largest and longest-running event serving professionals dedicated to the art and science of making games.  Next year the show will take place March 18-22 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California, and will again play host to thousands of game developers from all around the world for a week of learning, networking and inspiration.

Organizers are looking for submissions of expert talks that would be a great fit for the show! In particular, they're seeking submissions for the GDC 2019 Visual Arts track of talks. Here's what they're looking for, in their own words:

See a rocket scientist apply learnings from the space program to AR dev at XRDC!

AR/VR/MR innovation extravaganza XRDC is just a few months away, and organizers want to make sure you don't overlook a particularly exciting talk that you'll have access to when the show kicks off in San Francisco this October.

Titled "Risk Assessment in XR Design: Stolen from the Space Program", this XRDC Innovation track talk by game designer and former rocket scientist Jim Toepel aims to show you how the failure-mitigation techniques of the aerospace industry can be applied to individual AR products and the industry as a whole.

This promises to be fascinating, as Toepel will introduce the concept of failure modes and effects analysis in the context of manned spaceflight. After sharing those learnings, Jim will apply them to the broad challenges facing AR platforms and products as well as provide examples on how FMEA guided the design process of Mindshow and his other early AR design efforts with Kinect. It's a one-of-a-kind talk you won't want to miss!

Heads up, devs: XRDC 2018's Session Scheduler is now live!

This October San Francisco will host XRDC, the premier event for AR/VR/MR innovation, and today organizers are excited to announce that the free XRDC 2018 Session Scheduler is now online and ready for you to use!

It's an intuitive, easy-to-use tool that lets you keep tabs on all the cutting-edge content you'll find at XRDC this year. More importantly, you can use it now to plan out your week at the show in an intuitive, easy-to-navigate fashion.

(If you haven't signed up to attend XRDC yet, you should! Registration is open now, so you'll want to look over XRDC passes and prices and register early to get the best deal!)

GDC 2019 welcomes five new members to the Advisory Board!

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2019 is proud to share five key additions to the Advisory Board of the upcoming conference, which will further bolster its Programming, Business & Marketing, Design, and Production & Team Management Tracks.

The new additions to its Main Conference Advisory Board span creators & contributors to titles such as the Ratchet & Clank franchise, Slime Rancher, The Sims franchise, Don’t Starve & many more. Andreas Fredriksson, Carolin Krenzer, Nick Popovich, Jamie Cheng and Caryl Shaw are the fresh Board recruits for GDC 2019, which takes place March 18 - 22 at San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center.

The current Advisory Board, which includes such game industry luminaries as Mark Cerny, Rob Pardo, Amy Hennig and others, will be welcoming these new members to help provide their insights into topics that range from the technical (Programming Track, Production & Team Management Track) to the creative (Design Track) and the financial (Business & Marketing Track). Here’s more detail on the new Advisory Board members and their considerable contributions to the world of game development:

From BMW to American football, study VR's use as a training tool at XRDC

This week organizers of XRDC, the premier AR/VR/MR innovation event, want to make sure you don't overlook a promising session taking place at the October conference that aims to help devs design better VR training experience.

As part of XRDC's Enterprise Training & Education track of talks, STRIVR's Ginny Willis and Rosstin Murphy will showcase four real and diverse use-cases for training in VR: American pro football quarterback training, BMW factory floor mistakes, nursing interactions, and soft skills empathy training.

To help devs see what works and what doesn't, the pair of VR experts will rate VR training techniques such as hidden objects and choose-your-own-adventure on effectiveness in various situations, compare spherical video and CG as mediums, and discuss lessons learned from working with big clients.

Learn how Osmo found success with mixed-reality educational games at XRDC

In their continuing efforts to make XRDC the premier AR/VR/MR innovation event, organizers are excited to reveal that some of the experts at Osmo will be speaking at XRDC in October about how they found success with their educational mixed-reality games platform.

As part of XRDC's Games & Entertainment track of talks, Osmo staff designer Tony Aube will be presenting a promising session on "Design Beyond the Screen: Mixed Reality at Osmo" that aims to offer something of a postmortem look at the company's failures and successes.

At XRDC, see how the Brass Tactics devs reinvented the RTS for VR!

Organizers of XRDC, the premier AR/VR/MR innovation event, are proud to announce that some of the Brass Tactics devs are coming to the show in San Francisco this October to show you how they revamped the real-time strategy game for virtual reality and Oculus Touch.

The XRDC Games & Entertainment track talk, titled "Brass Tactics: Reinventing the RTS for VR", will see Hidden Path Entertainment lead designer Patrick Lipo will give you a rare look at the design process behind several of the interactions which are core to the immersive RTS, and showcase prototypes both terrible and triumphant.

Come out to XRDC and see how museums are using mixed-reality tech

As XRDC draws closer, we're excited today to announce another fascinating talk for this premier AR/VR/MR innovation event that's all about the process of using cutting-edge tech to bring people into museums and other cultural institutions in new and meaningful ways.

Titled "Mixed Reality and Magritte: Bringing An Immersive Space to SFMOMA", this XRDC Innovation track talk presented by Frog Design's Charles Yust will showcase how museums can use technology to both deepen appreciation of art in existing audiences and spark it in new ones.

Accordin to Yust, Frog and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art aim to achieve this with "The Interpretative Gallery" -- a mixed-reality space in the René Magritte exhibition SFMOMA is hosting from May through October.

Designed and developed by Frog, the immersive environment uses stereo cameras and computer vision algorithms to invite visitor participation in a uniquely Magrittian "augmented reality." Thus, Yust's talk will dive deep into how mixed reality is used to elevate art exhibitions in museums and beyond.

Attend XRDC for cutting-edge insight into AR data visualization!

We're another week closer to XRDC in San Francisco, and that means organizers of this premier AR/VR/MR innovation event are excited to announce another excellent talk you'll be able to take in at the show that's all about the future of data visualization.

As part of XRDC's cutting-edge Innovation track of talks, IBM's Reena Ganga and Jenna Goldberg (senior UX designer and senior visual designer, respectively, for AR) will be sharing a ton of useful insight in their session on "Immersive Data Visualization: Design Challenges in AR".

Their talk will focus on IBM Immersive Insights, an augmented reality tool that gives data scientists the ability to analyze data and present their findings in 3D.

Together, they'll share lessons learned in their work and showcase how a supplemental AR tool like Immersive Insights can have great implications for data analysis across business industries all over the world.

Come to XRDC for expert advice on launching cross-platform AR games!

As XRDC draws closer, organizers of this premier event for AR/VR/MR innovation are pleased to announce a new talk for the October conference that's all about how to succeed in the mobile augmented reality market.

As part of XRDC's vibrant Games & Entertainment track of talks, 8th Wall's Iman Mostafavi will be giving a promising talk on "Cracking the Mobile AR Code: A Cross Platform Case Study."

As a product manager at the cross-platform (iOS/Android) mobile AR experience development platform provider, Mostafavi will describe lessons learned both from the developer and platform perspective when bringing an augmented reality game to market on multiple mobile platforms.

To illustrate his learnings he'll share a case study of how 'Zombie Gunship Revenant AR' (pictured), one of the first ARKit enabled games and one of the most downloaded augmented reality apps to date on the Apple App Store, overcame a slow start (due to the limited number of ARCore enabled devices available at launch) on Android. Don't miss it!

Connecting the Global Game Development Community