The Game Developers Conference will be fully digital for the second consecutive year, manager Katie Stern announced Thursday.
GDC 2021 offers a well-known range of educational and business-oriented offers from developers, the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival awards events, plus some new attractions. Instead of the event taking place over a single week, conference organizers plan content that will last through the year.
Launched last fall, the GDC Masterclass (4 – 5 March) is a series of one- or two-day workshops that offer hands-on training on challenges in the gaming industry, as opposed to the more practical offerings.
The GDC Showcase (March 15 – 19) will attend a free digital event, featuring lectures, Ask-Me-Anything sessions with developers, interactive panels, podcasts, and more.
In addition to all the new material, the actual GDC 2021, including the well-known series of event-exclusive lectures on game development and business, will take place from 19 – 23 July.
Additional GDC brands are also planned for later in 2021, with Stern promising more information in the future. The organizers of the conference are also still planning to publish their annual State of the Game Industry survey, which provides information on employment, technology and business trends in the industry, as well as diversity and accessibility measures.
The Game Developers Conference (along with PAX East) was one of the first events in the gaming industry during 2020 that experienced the effects of COVID-19 shutdowns. With big companies like Sony, Microsoft, Epic Games and others pulling out due to security concerns, the 2020 event has finally been postponed and transformed into a fully digital event. The event remains one of the largest gatherings of workers in the industry and will draw more than 29,000 people in 2019.
The organizers of the conference also published a report following the cancellation of the event last year, which sets out how industry workers feel the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their work. The report found that one in three developers delayed their game due to the pandemic.
Joseph Knoop is a writer / producer / man who cries at every GDC for IGN.