Latest News

The 2017 Game Developers Conference is going to be here before you know it, and today organizers want to quickly let you know about a cool UX/UI design talk taking place at the show.

Electronic Arts' Paul Rybicki is a veteran game maker, and at GDC next year he'll be sharing some critical design wisdom in his UX Summit talk on "UX Methodologies for Holistic Product Design."

This talk will focus on best practice methods for creating design deliverables which are readily digestible to other disciplines, thereby increasing product development velocity. If you attend you'll learn how to make your UX designs more holistic and repeatedly referenced, so you can spend more time iterating and revising in each sprint, while still keeping stakeholders from engineering, product or game design well informed of the current design direction and the game's design as a whole.

We're just months away from the 2017 Game Developers Conference, and a group of developers who want to ride the rails from Chicago to California in February to attend the conference in San Francisco -- and make a game along the way -- have signed on to do so as part of the fourth annual Train Jam game jam.

Created and organized by game developer Adriel Wallick, Train Jam has become a valuable opportunity for developers to collaborate in close proximity with the promise (and the pressure) of knowing their work will be part of a unique showcase on the GDC show floor.

Next year's Train Jam will again last a little over two days (52 hours, to be exact) and take place entirely within an Amtrak train. Participants have from when the train departs Chicago's Union Station on Wednesday, February 22nd until it arrives in Emeryville on Saturday, February 25th to make the greatest game they can with whatever tools they bring, build, or borrow.

After they arrive their work will be playable in a special interactive space on the GDC show floor, so don't miss your chance to stop by and check it out while you're attending the conference!

Heads up, GDC attendees: The 2017 Game Developers Conference is just a few months away, and that means now is a great time for all passholders and exhibitors to set up onsite meetings with each other using GDC's professional Business Matchmaking website.

This popular online tool allows GDC attendees to identify, contact, and request and receive meetings with GDC exhibitors of all kinds, either in exhibitor booths or the special GDC Connect Lounge.

Once you've registered for GDC, your profile will be automatically created. Simply login, update your profile and start searching for meeting opportunities immediately. This personalized, easy-to-use tool allows you to search for connections by their job and company focus, and geographic location. Send meeting requests to create an on-site schedule that fits your objectives, and connect with potential partners!

As the year winds down around us, the 2017 Independent Games Festival is entering its jurying phase -- the period in which discipline-specific experts play, evaluate and discuss the 650+ games entered in the 2017 Festival Competition, which together continue to push the boundaries of video game development and design.

Of course, an excellent group of game development notables are evaluating IGF 2017's most promising entries. After first-round IGF judging from hundreds of evaluators, these expert juries will ultimately determine the finalists and winners of the various IGF 2017 awards at the 2017 Game Developers Conference.

In recognition of their service, today we'd like to celebrate those who have volunteered their time and talent to take part in judging the Excellence in Design Award, the Excellence in Audio Award, and the Excellence in Narrative Award.

Also, we should point out that every IGF award juror will have a say in who wins the festival's top honor, the Seumas McNally Grand Prize!

Organizers of the 2017 Game Developers Conference would like to quickly highlight one of the great taking place at the show next year that aims to offer developers a lot of high-level lessons about nailing the visual aesthetic for indie games.

In his talk on "Fast, Cheap and Flashy: An Indie Art Direction Adventure", Chickadee Games' art director Adam DeGrandis will share important lessons learned in his career as a game artist, such as how slowing down to think is sometimes the most efficient use of time, and how to tell when something's "good enough".

In illustrating these points, DeGrandis will also walk attenees through proven pipelines for visual development and 2d art production. For example, Chickadee contributed to the art design of Tooth & Tail (pictured), Pocketwatch Games' follow-up to Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine.

Game Developers Conference 2017 officials are excited to announce that an educational game industry veteran is coming to the big show next year to deconstruct the development of one of the most influential educational games ever made.

Don Rawitsch, the lifelong educational software developer best known in the game industry for being a leading force in several educational software companies, including the influential Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation, will be delivering a Classic Game Postmortem of the groundbreaking game The Oregon Trail at GDC 2017!

Rawitsch had a hand in creating the earliest version of The Oregon Trail in 1971, over a decade before he helped bring it to classrooms around the world by co-developing it at MECC. In his talk at GDC next year, Rawitsch will discuss the serendipitous invention of the game, its simulation model, how it maintained popularity for a period of over 20 years, and its influence on other educational software.

As the game industry prepares for the 2017 Game Developers Conference, show organizers thought it would be a good idea to offer a preview of all the cool interactive spaces and exhibits attendees will have access to during next year's big event.

These spaces are a perennially popular part of GDC, and they're curated to introduce you to a smorgasbord of the most intriguing work being done by game developers around the industry. The interactive spaces at GDC 2017 will include everything from the world's leading lineup of alternative controller games, to game jam prototypes created on a train during the pre-GDC Train Jam, to an expert selection of tabletop games.

So as you're planning out your GDC 2017 schedule, don't forget to set some time aside to check out the variety of lounges, exhibits, and other events that will be happening across GDC throughout the week. Highlights include: