GDC 2017 (Photo: swissnex San Francisco)

The world’s largest game industry event is taking place this March in San Francisco. The GDC Game Developers Conference 2018 is being held at the Moscone Centre from 21-23 March. This important gathering is the place to be if you work in the computer games industry or have a strong interest in these games. The game Developers Conference (GDC) has been held for many years, and focuses on learning, inspiration and networking. It’s fame and popularity has been growing yearly, concentrating as the event does, on game-related topics, including programming, design, business management, game production and visual arts.

Moscone Center (Photo: torbakhopper)

History of the GDC

The GDC dates back to April 1988, when the first conference was organized by Chris Crawford in his San Jose, California, living room. This humble beginning nevertheless attracted 27 designers. A second conference was held the same year, this time at the Holiday Inn in Milpitas, and 125 developers from the games industry took part. The GDC has continued growing ever since and larger venues have been used to accommodate the growing number of attendees and exhibitors. In 2008, 18,000 attendees came to the event.

Speaking of accommodation, booking an hotel by the hour at DayBreakHotels.com is a great idea for this conference and others. This is because, very often attendees, speakers and presenters, may well only be coming along for a day, and hotels offering day rooms provide a useful place for relaxing in between meetings and individual events at a conference, and private space you can use to freshen up in and get ready in. Another use could be as a place to put your presentation materials together, or simply somewhere to store any travel baggage you have brought with you and anything you may have acquired at the event.

GDC at-a-Glance this year

At a GDC Conference (Photo: swissnex San Francisco)

So what does this year’s GDC offer its attendees? Well, for a start there are as many as 500+ talks on a very wide range of games industry topics, and just as many companies taking part in this Expo. There will be tutorials covering a host of different subjects, including Advanced Graphics Techniques, Animation, Game Design Workshops, Math for Game Programmers and Visual Effects.

There will also be Choice Awards, a Game Career Seminar and Interactive Spaces. There will be roundtable discussions that seek to define innovation in the games industry, as well as looking into the future of gaming. One of the most important attractions will be the game industry experts who will be on hand to offer their advice drawing from years of experience as professionals in the world of games. Some of the speakers will be academics who have worked studying the games industry, others will be games designers, heads of gaming companies, and experts on animation and visual arts.

Registration for groups of 10 or more people offers a savings of 10%, but as a single attendee or with a group the GDC is definitely the games expo to be at this year.