GDC 2016 opens for registration, debuts first talks

Good news, game developers: Game Developers Conference 2016 is now open for registration!

This will be the 30th edition of GDC, the largest and longest-running worldwide event for game developers, and you can register right now by visiting the official GDC 2016 website.

Early Bird pricing, with discounts up to 30 percent, will remain in effect for a limited time and some passes, including the Indie Games Summit and new GDC Education Summit pass, have limited amounts -- so if you’re interested, you should register soon!

The 2016 GDC runs from March 14-18th, 2016 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA, and will host the Virtual Reality Developers Conference (think of it as a sister event), eight high-quality Summits, tutorials and bootcamps, plus Main Conference tracks spanning all major facets of game development - from in-depth business strategy to hardcore design and programming sessions.

GDC organizers will be announcing more details on these talks in the coming months, and today we're proud to debut a pair of design and production talks from experts at Activision and Insomniac Games.

Activision senior systems designer Josh Menke will be digging into state-of-the-art skill determination systems in games in his GDC 2016 Design track talk "Matchmaking, and Ranking Systems Design." Menke has design credits on everything from Diablo III to Halo: The Master Chief Collection, and at GDC next year he'll discuss how skill can be properly used for matchmaking and point out potential pitfalls of mixing ranking with matchmaking.

Elsewhere during the conference, Insomniac engine director Mike Acton will offer programmer management tips in his "Great Management of Technical Leads" Production track talk. Leadership is hard, but Acton hopes to provide direction for those in lead roles and offer advice on setting clear expectations, defining the most important values for your team, and effectively describing (and dealing) with problems.

Alongside these expert talks, the GDC Expo at the show will showcase all of the most relevant game development tools, platforms and services helping to drive the industry forward, alongside a raft of country-specific pavilions, playable games in the GDC Play area, and beyond.

The conference also features the eighteenth annual Independent Games Festival, the longest-running and largest festival relating to independent games worldwide, where original games compete for the attention of the publishing community, and the sixteenth annual Game Developers Choice Awards, the premier accolades for peer-recognition in the digital games industry. Come join us!

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