The Game Developers Conference has revealed details of its rebranding: “GDC Games Festival“”, after a month of almost entirely negative speculation following the brand's announcement in September. The show returns to San Francisco from March 9 to 13 next year.
The new show is still industry-only, with no consumer access, and is based around sessions, an exhibition space (now called Festival Hall) and networking at its permanent home at the Moscone Center. These are accessed using the new Festival Pass, which costs almost half the price of the previous Full Access (but no longer provides access to GDC Storage archive). A number of additional features are offered by the new, more expensive “Game Changers” pass, aimed at higher-profile individuals and those attending the expo to promote games.
The Game Changers Pass provides access to the new three-day executive-focused Luminaries performance series at the Blue Shield of California Theater at the YBCA, as well as private meeting spaces at the Yerba Buena Center and deal spot at the W Hotel, as well as a networking platform GamePlan is an invitation-only, “accompanied one-on-one meeting with high intentions” that can be booked before the show. Game Changers ticket holders also get access to premium seating and lounge chairs, as well as “fast track access to performances, concerts and awards.”
The show retains a digital pass that offers online-only networking and access to the GDC Vault, as well as a limited number of Early Stage Indie and Startup passes aimed at smaller companies and academia. These passes are available to companies incorporated after January 1, 2021, have fewer than 50 full-time employees, and are not “owned by a larger corporation or operating as an agency, consultant, law firm, venture capital firm, or accelerator.”
The Festival Pass is $1,199, discounted to $649 through February 20th. The Game Changer ticket is $2,499, discounted to $1,699 through February 20th. The online-only Digital Pass is $799, and the Early Stage Indie and Start-Up is $649 (reduced to $449). Details are provided at State House of Culture website.
Other changes include
- The Expo Hall is now the Festival Hall, which is open from Wednesday to Friday and is divided into five areas: Game Development, Future Technologies, Indie and Education, International, Monetization and Player Engagement. Each one features demos, micro-sessions and “places to sit and talk.”
- An expanded and more varied content program, possibly with the return of main sessions and the addition of new formats, with content previously grouped into Monday and Tuesday summits now spread across the entire week.
- A week-long series of evening events branded GDC Nights, including a social party on Monday night, an Austin Wintory developer concert on Tuesday night, and the separating IGF and GDC Awards ceremonies on Wednesday and Thursday nights, respectively.
The rebranding was described as “additional” by Mark DeLura, GDC executive director of innovation and growth, who emphasized that it is not an attempt to introduce a consumer audience or prevent the ad hoc networking and deal-making that has always happened around, rather than within, the venue. “There are a few dedicated spaces that we're going to take over, but I think all the spaces that were there in previous years will remain the same,” he said in an interview.
“The festival part of the GDC Festival is that we're expanding the scope of the conference, but not into the consumer space. It's still made by developers for developers and focused on developers. I think what's different about it will be that we're going to cover the city in a different way than before.”
“We're going to spread out and try to have a presence in the hotels as well. We're going to do events at Yerba Buena, we'll have pods at Yerba Buena for game changers. We'll have rooms at the W so executives can have meetings, NDA type rooms if they need them. There's actually some really cool stuff in the works that I hope will come out, and they'll be in others buildings nearby. But the idea is to make it a celebration and think of it as a celebration of development rather than going into a building and sitting in rooms and that's all we do.”
Luminary's new speaker series will feature talks designed to help “studio executives, studio vice presidents or technical directors, production directors,” DeLura says. “People who work on the game, but they also work on how the game is made, how the game is communicated, how they finance it.”
“I think of it as speakers talking to executives. So the speakers can be executives, but they can also be analysts, investors.” He points to the lineup of speakers at DICE as a source of inspiration. “The ones that really stood out to me were the outliers from other industries that maybe use gaming technology, but it's not about gaming technology, it's about creativity or good ways to invest in building your teams. Learning from each other, learning from other industries, I think that's really exciting. We're really getting into all of that now.”
DeLura describes GamePlan as “the first attempt at a curated network,” citing the success of network systems at other events run by GDC parent company Informa. “We haven't fully defined it all yet… If there are people who really have targeted needs this week and we can help them with some kind of curation, we should try it. Let's try it, see if we can make a success of it and help people optimize their time. Especially for people who are very limited in time, or executives who are looking for the best indie games. Maybe we can help introduce them to indie games they wouldn't otherwise encounter. Networking is a big part of what we do. bulking up this year to try and help.”
It argues that the cheaper Festival Pass is accessible to a wider audience while still offering largely the same range of content that previously required full access. “The more people interact with more people at the show, the better for all of us. So we want those people to be able to come and experience the conference itself. Reducing the price of the main festival by 45% and then extending it for a whole week is essentially the previous year's All Access pass without the GDC Vault. It's like an all-you-can-eat all we're doing at show, and it's almost like half price.
The traditional content of the sessions is also subject to changes. “We have the same amount of content as before, but we're trying to break the mold. Traditionally, GDC talks have been panel discussions, micro-treaties or lectures, perhaps a few roundtables, and there is a wider world than that.”
“We can do fireside chats. We're looking into how we can do keynotes again, we've talked about doing debates, which we've never done, but other shows are doing well and we're looking into that. Just let's try something this year and see what people like.”
Our full interview with Mark DeLura will be published soon. Details about the show are listed. on the State House of Culture website.
