Don't skip these cutting-edge sponsored talks at GDC 2019's Dev Days

As you're gearing up for the 2019 Game Developers Conference next month, organizers would like to quickly let you know about some of the great day-long sponsored Developer Days you can enjoy during the show!

All Developer Day sessions take place during the first two days of GDC (Monday and Tuesday, March 18th and 19th) and offer cutting-edge insight and opportunities to learn from some of the top companies in the industry.

Here's a sample of what's in store for you during the GDC 2019 Developer Days, served up in an easy-to-read list format. A number of companies are presenting Dev Day sessions this year, and today we're excited to highlight offerings from

Amazon

Day 1

Keynote – Video Games as Punk Rock: A History of Innovation: Join industry veteran Rich Hilleman (Madden NFL, Tiger Woods Golf, +200 others) for a punk rock-infused look at the past, present, and future of innovation in the video game industry. 

Building Computationally-Ridiculous Games in the Cloud: No matter the size or budget of your studio, the cloud is providing opportunities that weren't possible even five years ago. Hear from industry veterans John Smedley (Everquest, H1Z1), Louis Castle (Command & Conquer, Boom Blox), Patrick Gilmore (Medal of Honor, The Lion King), and Rich Hilleman (Need for Speed, Madden) to learn how the AWS Cloud can help you build fast and stay ahead.

Making Big Decisions with Big Data: Game development is all about making choices. But without the right data, how do you know what's worth the development effort and cost? Learn how analytics solutions from Amazon can help you build (and refine) content that players truly enjoy.

Don't Break the Internet: How to Quickly Scale to Meet Player Demand: Hear from the AWS teams who support studios that push the limits of scale like Epic Games, King, Rovio, and Ubisoft and how you can keep your game up and running.

Grow Your Game with Twitch: Using Twitch to reach customers is a given, but now you can break through in all new ways. In this session, learn how to empower your streamers to win you customers through tournament creation tools, in-Twitch game invites, and much more.

"Alexa, Give Your Game a Voice":: Explore how to use voice-first games with Alexa, reaching customers through tens of millions of Alexa devices. Learn about tools you can use to create engaging voice games and hear how other developers like you are pushing boundaries.

Day 2

Twitch for Games Playbook: This session dives in to explore best practices and easy ways to integrate Twitch into your game regardless of where you are at in your development lifecycle.

Creating Player Engagement Through Content, Competition, and Conversation: By using smarter AI, intelligent conversations, and dynamic content, you can help create engagement. Learn new ways to leverage this technology to drive in-game real world prizing, easy to set up tournaments, influence marketing, and even Alexa--all available today from Amazon Game Tech.

Getting Started with Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence: We're finally at the point when ML and AI are accessible to all kinds of game developers. Learn how AWS can help you engage and retain players by identifying trends, A/B testing, and even spotting abnormal player behavior in real-time. 

Creating Customized Game Events with Machine Learning: Learn how Yokozuna Data, a Keywords studio and AWS customer, is helping game developers like you take preventive actions aimed at maximizing player engagement to create optimal and personalized game experiences.

Multiplayer Made Easy: How to Deliver Fast, Fluid, and Friction-less Experiences: Whether it's co-op or last player standing, multiplayer games depend on reliable infrastructure and engagement strategies to keep players playing. Join experts from Amazon to learn how to connect and engage players from all over the world.

Global Operations: How Zynga Scales Its Databases to Support Millions of Players: Join Wilson Gee, Zynga Principal Software Engineer and Sailesh Krishnamurthy, General Manager of Amazon Aurora, as they share how Zynga achieves global scale and high availability using Amazon Aurora, a MySQL-compatible relational database from AWS.

Facebook Gaming

Welcome and Looking Ahead: Facebook Gaming in 2019: Leo Olebe, Facebook's Global Director of Games Partnerships, will welcome developers, partners, and peers to Developer Day and provide a Developer Day session overview and outline of key activities for the week. Vivek Sharma, Director of Product Management and Bre Miller, Manager of Product Design for Facebook Gaming will talk how we build for success and all the gaming business solutions we'll have in the market for 2019.

Monetization Strategies that Drive Revenue & A Publisher's Journey to Success: We’ll discuss how to successfully integrate engaging ads as revenue source, ad formats that complement the game journey, and implementation best practices.  We’ll follow with a fireside chat with a top Publisher to discuss how they grew their business by introducing ad monetization within an In-app purchase ecosystem, as well as diversifying their business model.

Instant Games Finding Instant Success: Discussions with Zynga, Knock-Knock, Moonfrog, and SundayToz: Join us for a panel discussion with some of the most successful Instant Game developers to hear about key learnings on the platform and how that translates to best practices for Instant Games. The panel will be followed by a presentation from partner engineer Chris Hawkins, who will discuss technical implementations for some of the best practices.

Instant Games Monetization with Publisher SOFTGAMES + Data Insights for Success: Learn how to integrate and optimize monetization solutions from the product team and SOFTGAMES, one of the most successful developers on the Instant Games platform. Then, learn more about data derived insights on the best ways to build Instant Games for the platform from two of Facebook Gaming’s Data Scientists.

Mobile Games: Launch Strategies and What's New in Mobile Creative: Hear from industry experts on best practices for Mobile Game Launches, including how to develop your creative strategy, how to leverage optimization solutions, and formulate your measurement strategy. Then, learn about the consumer shift to ephemeral content and how to effectively implement Stories and Playable ads into your mobile advertising creative strategy.

How Gaming Communities Drive Downloads, Play, and Monetization:  How powerful is the concept of community in influencing game discovery, engagement and in-game purchase decisions? Discover the power of connecting with gaming communities to unlock next-level engagement with your game.

Using the Power of Games to Improve Global Communities: Discuss the importance of diversity and inclusivity in the games industry while talking about how people can and have used the power of games to improve their communities. Learn directly from panelists, including a recipient of the prestigious Global Gaming Citizen Award (from the Game Awards) about how they used games to overcome obstacles, inspire peace, and help others. Participate in this enlightening panel led by Facebook’s global head of gaming partnerships, Leo Olebe.

Unity Techologies

Creating Instant Games with DOTS – Project Tiny: Are you developing instant games? Come meet members of the Project Tiny team, who will give you a quick walk through of our new Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS) and its strengths for creating instant games. At the end of this session, you'll have a good understanding of DOTS' Entity Component System (ECS) and how to structure your project with this new architecture.

Follow the DOTS – Presenting the 2019 Roadmap: Join Martin Gram, the Product Manager for our Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS), and guests as they spotlight the latest DOTS features. They will also unveil some exciting high-level systems coming your way in 2019.

Introducing the New Animation Rigging Features: A team of Unity technical animators and artists will show you how to use predefined constraints to procedurally control character deformations, simulate physic-based secondary motion, and correct overall animations to significantly improve quality in your game. You will also learn how to build setups that can be dynamically triggered/blended at runtime to control final animation throughput.

Viveport

Developer Day Keynote: Platform Strategy for 2019

Developer Success in the Era of New Competing Digital Platforms

Getting Started, Publishing and Beyond: Viveport SDKs + Vive Input Utility

Building for the Standalone Ecosystem: WAVE Platform SDKs

Creating More Immersive Experiences: 3DSP Audio SDK + Hand Tracking SDK

The Future of XR Development: SRWorks SDK + SRanipal SDK

For more details on these promising sponsored sessions and the many other great talks taking place at the show, head over to the GDC 2019 Session Scheduler! There you can begin to lay out your GDC 2019, which takes place March 18th through the 22nd at the (newly renovated!) Moscone Center in San Francisco. 

Bring your team to GDC! Register a group of 10 or more and save 10 percent on conference passes. Learn more here.

For more details on GDC 2019 visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.

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