Following the cancellation of GDC 2020, organisers have lined-up a week of talks and sessions to be live-streamed on Twitch, starting today.
This year’s GDC was set to host hundreds of panels, talks, and roundtables. With the conference ‘postponed’ due to COVID-19, organisers are instead broadcasting a selection of self-recorded developer sessions on Twitch.
Nearly 40 talks will be streamed, as well as the Game Developers Choice and Independent Games Festival awards. Highlights include a look at storytelling and narrative from Capybara Games, an exploration of Borderland 3‘s accessibility features, and a post-mortem on Adam Robinson-Yu’s wonderful game, A Short Hike.
Double Fine and iam8bit will also highlight a range of upcoming indie games in a special digital version of Day of the Devs. Microsoft will broadcast its GDC sessions via the Game Stack Live digital event.
Finally, it’s also worth reminding our readers of the various initiatives supporting independent developers affected by GDC’s cancellation. You can read our report here.
Here’s the full lineup of GDC 2020 virtual talks with PT start times. You can watch each one on the GDC Twitch channel.
GDC 2020 Virtual Talks schedule
Monday, March 16
- 9:00am – The ‘Kine’ Postmortem
Gwen Frey (President, Chump Squad) - 10:00am – Storytelling with Verbs: Integrating Gameplay and Narrative
Kaitlin Tremblay (Writer & Narrative Designer, Capybara Games) - 11:00am – Intrinsically Motivated Teams: The Manager’s Toolbox
Alexandre Moufarek (Product Manager, DeepMind) - 12:00pm – From ‘Assassin’s Creed’ to ‘The Dark Eye’: The Importance of Themes
Winifred Phillips (Composer, Generations Productions LLC) - 1:00pm – Representing LGBT+ Characters in Games: Two Case Studies
Tori Schafer (Writer & Designer, Proletariat) - 2:00pm – The Sound of Anthem
Cody Behiel (Audio Lead, Electronic Arts BioWare), Eric Vervaet (Director of Audio, Electronic Arts BioWare) - 3:00pm – Is Your Game Cross-Platform Ready?
Raymond Arifianto (VP of Tech, AccelByte) - 4:00pm – Forgiveness Mechanics: Reading Minds for Responsive Gameplay
Seth Coster (CEO & Game Programmer, Butterscotch Shenanigans, Inc) - 4:30pm – Experimental AI Lightning Talk: Hyper Realistic Artificial Voices for Games
Zeena Qureshi (Co-Founder & CEO, Sonantic)
Tuesday, March 17
- 9:00am – What to Write So People Buy: Selling Your Game Without Feeling Sleazy
Chris Zukowski (Founder, Return To Adventure Mountain) - 9:50am – Failure Workshop: FutureGrind: How To Make A 6-Month Game In Only 4.5 Years
Owen Goss (Co-Founder, Milkbag Games) - 10:00am – Stress-Free Game Development: Powering Up Your Studio With DevOps
Seth Coster (CEO & Game Programmer, Butterscotch Shenanigans, Inc) - 11:00am – Baked in Accessibility: How Features Were Approached in ‘Borderlands 3’
Andrew Bair (Lead UI Programmer, Gearbox Software) - 12:00pm – Matchmaking for Engagement: Lessons from ‘Halo 5’
Josh Menke (Lead Engagement Designer, 343 Industries) - 1:00pm – Forget CPI: Dynamic Mobile Marketing
Heather Gainer (Marketing Manager User Acquisition, Kongregate) - 2:00pm – Integrating Sound Healing Methodologies Into Your Workflow
Matt Levine (Uncle Vector’s Audio Lab LLC) - 3:00pm – From 0-1000: A Test Driven Approach to Tools Development
David Paris (Senior Engineer, Playground Games) - 4:00pm – Overcoming Creative Block on ‘Super Crush KO’
Gabby DaRienzo (Senior Artist, Drinkbox Studios) - 4:30pm – When Film, Games, and Theatre Collide
Sarah Scialli (Game Director & Mocap Engineer, Tinted Stardust & DreamWorks)
Wednesday, March 18
- 9:00am – Bringing Replays to ‘World of Tanks: Mercenaries’
Andrew Glover (Lead Software Engineer, Wargaming Sydney) - 10:00am – Developing and Running Neural Audio in Constrained Environments
Carter Huffman (Co-Founder & CTO, Modulate.ai), Brendan Kelly (Research Engineer, Modulate.ai) - 11:00am – Mental Health State of the Industry: Past, Present & Future
Eve Crevoshay (Executive Director, Take This) - 12:00pm – Empathizing with Steam: How People Shop for Your Game
Chris Zukowski (Game Designer & Marketing Consultant, Return To Adventure Mountain LLC) - 1:00pm – Scaling to 10 Concurrent Users: Online Infrastructure as an Indie
Andrew Erridge (Software Engineer & Cofounder, Gamebreaking Studios) - 2:00pm – Crafting A Tiny Open World: ‘A Short Hike’ Postmortem
Adam Robinson-Yu (Developer, Independent) - 2:30pm – Indie Soapbox: UI design is fun!
Nathalie Lawhead (Independent Game Designer, Alienmelon) - 3:00pm – Don’t Ship a Product, Ship Value: Start Your Minimum Viable Product With a Solution
Janessa Olson (Product Manager, Data & Tools, Kongregate) - 4:00pm – Day of the Devs: GDC Edition Direct
Presented by: Double Fine & iam8bit - 5:00pm – Independent Games Festival & Game Developers Choice Awards
Hosted by: Trent Kusters (IGF) and Kim Swift (GDCA)
Thursday, March 19
- 9:00am – Machine Learning for Optimal Matchmaking
Josh Menke (Lead Engagement Designer, 343 Industries) - 10:00am – Skill Progression, Visual Attention, and Efficiently Getting Good at Esports
Dr. Anders Frank (Game Experience Researcher, Tobii) - 11:00am – Making Your Game Influencer Ready: A Marketing Wishlist for Developers
David Ortiz Lapaz (Communications Director, ICO Partners) - 12:00pm – How to Run Your Own Career Fair on a Tiny Budget
Chris DeLeon (Independent Educator & Game Developer, Gamkedo LLC), Dru Erridge (Software Engineer & Cofounder, Gamebreaking Studios), David Mullich (Adjunct Professor, ArtCenter College of Design), Tiffany Otto (Director of Partnership & Sponsorship, IndieCade) - 1:00pm – Making a Healthy Social Impact in Commercial Games
Jennifer Estaris (Game Director, Sybo Games) - 2:00pm – ‘Forza’ Monthly: Live Streaming a Franchise
Shay Goldenberg (Producer, Turn 10 Studios / Microsoft) - 3:00pm – Aesthetic Driven Development: Choosing Your Art Before Making a Game
Vladimir Slav (Owner & Director, Coldwild Games) - 4:00pm – Reading the Rules of ‘Baba Is You’
Arvi Teikari (Game Developer, Hempuli Oy)
Friday, March 20
- 9:00am – Beyond Games as a Service with Live Ops
Crystin Cox (Director of Live Operations, Microsoft) - 10:00am – Kill the Hero, Save the (Narrative) World
Hannah Nicklin (Studio Lead, Narrative Designer & Writer, Die Gute Fabrik)
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