GDC 2022 Conference Program (Back to the Future)

Expo

March 21 - 25, 2022 GDCAs

Back to the Future Talks

CONFERENCE PROGRAM

Sessions

IGF Press

The Game Developers Conference has returned to San Francisco for a week filled with expert-led education on key game development topics, including the future of gaming and a blast to the past.

TABLE OF CONTENTS GDC Overview

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Session Schedule

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GDC Awards

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Independent Games Festival

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OUR SPONSORS

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GDC Overview GDC is the game industry’s premier professional event, championing game developers and the advancement of their craft.

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) brings the game development community together to exchange ideas, solve problems, and shape the future of the industry across five days of education, inspiration, and networking. Attendees include programmers, artists, producers, game designers, audio professionals, and business leaders. Some key features of GDC include: • •

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The market-defining conference has a comprehensive selection of lectures, panels, and roundtable discussions.

The GDC Expo showcases the latest game development tools and services from leading technology companies such as Amazon, Epic, Google, Intel, Nvidia, Oculus, and Sony.

Dedicated community spaces where GDC attendees can take a break from all of the learning to relax and meet new people in themed areas for playable indie games, retro games, alternative controllers, and more.

Connecting the Global GDC Community

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GDC also hosts two awards ceremonies, recognizing the creativity, artistry, and technical genius of the finest developers and games: •

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The Game Developers Choice Awards is the leading peer-based video game awards show celebrating the industry’s top games and developers.

The Game Developers Choice Awards are one of the premier accolades for peer-recognition in the video game industry, celebrating creativity, artistry and technological genius. Industry professionals from around the world nominate for the awards, free of charge, ensuring that the recipients reflect the community’s opinions.

Awards will be given at the ceremony produced by the Game Developers Conference (GDC) and supported by Gamasutra.com.

The Independent Games Festival honors the most innovative and exemplary projects in indie game development.

GDC Sessions GDC Conference features a variety of sessions ranging from live discussions, keynotes, and more, with content focused on some of the most pressing issues in the game development industry.

Topics range from Advocacy to Visual Arts and will incorporate classic sessions from the past and never before seen content to give you a sample of what to expect from upcoming GDC events.

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GDC Sessions Mon, March 21st Ask Me Anything: Brian Fleming talks ‘Ghost of Tsushima’

Brian Fleming is one of the original co-founders of Sucker Punch Productions and a producer on Ghost of Tsushima.

Time: 12:25 - 12:55pm Track: Design Format: Live Session

In this live GDC Showcase AMA session, Sucker Punch Productions co-founder and producer Brian Fleming will be answering your questions about the development of the PlayStation hit game Ghost of Tsushima. Fleming can also shed light on leadership and production practices acquired from over two decades of game industry experience.

Next-Generation Game Development on NVIDIA RTX GPUs Learn how to harness the power NVIDIA RTX GPUs with a suite of SDKs and tools custom built for the job. NVIDA’s John Spitzer will provide insight into how to get the most out of real-time ray tracing through technologies like Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), NVIDIA Real-time Denoisers (NRD), RTX Global Illumination (RTXGI), and RTX Direct Illumination (RTXDI).

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John Spitzer is the VP of Developer and Performance Technology at NVIDIA. Time: 1:00 - 1:30pm Track: Programming Format: Partner Session

Tue, March 22nd Making Magic: A Business Model for Divergent Thinkers

Guha Bala (left) and Karthik Bala (right) are the co-founders of Velan Studios, formed in 2016 Time: 10:05 - 10:35am Track: Business and Marketing, Production and Team Management Format: Discussion

Divergent thinking sometimes demands divergent go-tomarket pathways. In this talk, Guha and Karthik Bala will discuss what is needed to create a studio environment where big innovation can thrive.

Topics include the pitfalls and challenges to innovation in a studio setting; a development environment to discover big ideas; the importance of team investment at all levels of the organization; the development stages of an idea; how to avoid falling into innovation decline; and approaches to idea experimentation, production, profit, and reinvestment.

GDC Podcast Live! Hosted

by Gamasutra feat.

‘Spelunky’ Dev Derek Yu Derek Yu of Mossmouth is the creator of the legendary roguelike Spelunky and its brilliant sequel. He’ll join Gamasutra’s Kris Graft and Alissa McAloon to chat about roguelike design, what it’s like to follow up a legend, and modern day indie game development.

Derek Yu is a visual artist, game designer, and sometimes writer, best known for creating the Spelunky series of games.

Time: 1:35 - 2:35pm Track: Design, Visual Arts Format: Live Session

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Wed, March 23rd Making Marketing Mistakes There are so many successful indie game marketing stories.

We’re all used to hearing about the hits and try to mimic their success... but what about the campaigns that flopped?

What about all the things we pretend didn’t happen? In this talk full of desolate contests, misspelled tweets, and forgetfulness, Victoria Tran will explore how: 1) mistakes will or should happen 2) there is a way to “correctly” fail and 3) the best lessons come from failure.

Victoria Tran is the Community Director at Innersloth, creators of Among Us and The Henry Stickmin Collection.

Time: 10:05 - 10:35pm Track: Business and Marketing Format: Discussion

Squad Up! - Social and Multiplayer in VR with POPULATION: ONE (Presented by Facebook)

Chia Chin Lee (left) and Gabe Brown (right) are the co-founders of Bigbox VR, focused on multiplayer experiences.

Time: 2:40 - 3:10pm Track: Business and Marketing Format: Partner Session

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After just a few months, BigBox’s POPULATION: ONE has surpassed $10M in Quest revenue, with ongoing updates and events to bring their community closer together.

Join BigBox VR co-founders Chia Chin Lee and Gabe Brown for a conversation with Oculus Games Producer, Omid Yazdanshenas, that explores multiplayer social games in VR and how they architected the success of their VR mega-hit, POPULATION: ONE.

Thurs, March 24th Billions of Gamers. Thousands of Needs. Millions of Opportunities. (Presented by Intel) The PC offers among the largest and most wide-spread and varied audience of game players in the world. Intel has spent years conducting research with PC users about the ways in which computers enrich their lives. In this tour of the world, Intel will share some learnings from players we met, and how user-research-based innovation shapes our efforts to work with partners to drive platforms and technologies forward. We’ll share insights into understanding usage and technology trends to help you better reach players.

Roger Chandler is the VP & GM of Client XPU Products and Solutions at Intel.

Time: 9:00 - 10:00am Track: Business and Marketing Format: Partner Session

GDC Podcast Live! Hosted

by Gamasutra feat. Chris Zukowski

Chris Zukowski has helped Games-as-aService companies, Indie Publishers, and single-person teams as a marketing consultant.

Time: 1:35pm - 2:35pm Track: Business and Marketing Format: Live Session

Chris Zukowski is a game marketing consultant and multiple-time GDC speaker.

He’ll join Gamasutra’s Kris Graft and Alissa McAloon to chat about practical ways to market your games in a crowded market, selling games on Steam, and how people shop for games today.

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Fri, March 25th Tools Live Longer Than Games Do: What I Learned About Tools Development From Games Industry Legends

David Lightbown is the User Experience Director for the Technology Group at Ubisoft.

Time: 10:05 - 10:35am Track: Programming Format: Discussion

Post-mortems of classic games have been well received at GDC, but there have been very few stories about classic game tools. In an effort to preserve their history, David Lightbown has spent the last few years interviewing people who were instrumental in the development of classic game tools, such as John Romero, Tim Sweeney, and others. This presentation summarizes the high-level take-aways from the interviews with these legends, and how tools developers can benefit from their experience.

Ask Me Anything: Brian Horton, Creative Director on Insomniac Games’ Marvel’s SpiderMan: Miles Morales In this live GDC Conference AMA session, Insomniac Games creative director Brian Horton will be answering your questions about the development of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales.

Find out Horton’s thoughts on the game’s core pillars, celebrating diversity and representation in games, his career journey and more!

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Brian Horton is the creative director at Insomniac Games.

Time: 12:25 - 12:55pm Track: Design Format: Live Session

Takes place during

Back to the Future

Join this year’s IGF celebration to recognize the best independent game developers!

Awards Ceremony: March 21st, 2022 Pavilion: March 21st - 23rd, 2022 Go to igf.com for more.

22nd Annual GDCAs Wednesday, March 23rd, 2022 - 6PM The Game Developers Choice Awards are the premier accolades for peer recognition in the digital games industry. Each year, the Choice Awards recognize and celebrate the creativity, artistry and technical genius of the finest developers and games created in the last year.

Watch live on twitch.tv/gdc

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