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The Game Developers Conference will be fully digital for the second year in a row, manager Katie Stern announced Thursday.
GDC 2021 will feature a familiar lineup of developer educational and business presentations, the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival awards ceremonies, as well as new attractions. Rather than having the event run for a single week, the conference organizers are planning content that will run throughout the year.
The GDC Masterclass (March 4-5), launched last fall, is a series of one or two day workshops that provide hands-on training on the challenges of the games industry, as opposed to the more hands-on presentations .
The GDC Showcase (March 15-19) will be a free digital event, featuring lectures, Ask-Me-Anything sessions with developers, interactive panels, podcasts, and more.
In addition to all the new material, GDC 2021, including the familiar series of event-exclusive talks on game development and business, will take place July 19-23.
Additional GDC-branded events are also scheduled for later in 2021, with Stern promising more information in the future. Conference organizers still plan to release their annual State of the Gaming Industry Survey, which provides data on employment, technology and business trends in the industry, as well as measures of diversity and accessibility.
The Game Developers Conference (along with PAX East) was one of the first game industry events in 2020 to feel the effects of COVID-19 shutdowns. With big companies like Sony, Microsoft, Epic Games, and others pulling out over security concerns, the 2020 event has finally been postponed and converted to a fully digital event. The event remains one of the largest gatherings of workers in the industry, attracting more than 29,000 people in 2019.
Conference organizers also released a report following the cancellation of last year’s event, detailing how workers in the industry felt the COVID-19 pandemic had impacted their work. The report found that one in three developers have delayed their game due to the pandemic.
Joseph Knoop is a crying writer / producer / guy every GDC for IGN.
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