GDC 2015: a major news digest. 2nd of March

Right now in California is one of the largest and oldest conferences on game development. GDC has been held since 1988 and traditionally includes an exhibition, lectures, workshops and round tables, where industry professionals discuss issues related to programming, design, music, management, and other burning topics.

For those who did not get to the sunny city of San Francisco, we prepared a digest of the most interesting releases, speeches and events that occurred on the first day of the conference.

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news

- Unreal Engine 4 has become free for everyone . Previously, it was distributed by subscription: all users who paid the money will receive compensation. Tim Swinney, founder of Epic Games, considers this a good business step, because the main user agreement remains in force. If a game created with the Unreal Engine 4 generates income of more than $ 3,000 per quarter, the developer must pay 5% of total revenue.



- Autodesk introduced the Stringray game engine , which will support direct integration with 3D content creation tools. The technical preview of the engine will be available on Wednesday, but for now the site can be found with short information, see the trailer and subscribe to the beta.
- Khronos announced Vulkan , the next-generation graphical API.
- Tapjoy launched a new tool that will help mobile developers with marketing, analytics and monetization.



- AdMob announced several updates that will help mobile developers with application monetization.
- Audiokinetic and Steinberg combine Wwise and Nuendo 7 audio tools.
- Developers can now sell and buy apps in the Gear VR store.
- Google announced an analytics tool, as well as a new Nearby Connections API , which will allow developers to connect Android mobile devices to Android TV. Now phones and tablets can be used as controllers, while the game itself will be launched on Android TV.



- Couchbase announced a new version of the Couchbase Mobile tool for Unity developers.
- Tool to animate IKinema will be integrated into the Unreal Engine 4.
- Autodesk told that the new will be in Maya LT 2016. The release is scheduled for March 26.
- The SpriteBuilder tool will now be available by subscription.

Interesting reports

- Alain Ladavak at the Independent Games Summit talked about how the developers of Serious Sam created The Talos Principle.
- Meg Jayans, the main scriptwriter of 80 Days adventure, told how the Inkle team created a non-linear and cool storyline for the game.
- Sher Wang from HTC during the report mentioned that the company was working with Half-Life . True, did not specify exactly which part.
- Sven Winky in his report spoke about the creation of Divinity: Original Sin and how this game saved the studio from complete collapse.



- Mike Rows compared the sales of games on different platforms.
- Ethan Levy talked about how to build a business model and what else needs to be done before starting the development of the game.
- Specialists MacNeil, Max Geiger, Ben Kane and others discussed the possibilities that are opening up for indie developers with the advent of VR.
- Rough Koster, Gordon Walton and Rich Vogel talked about how to reach an understanding in the online game community and minimize conflicts between players.
- Interesting programming reports: Mesh Cutting in Farming Simulator 15 , Math for Game Programmers: Inverse Kinematics Revisited .
- Zoe Quinn told how to make the game fun and make the players smile.

Demo

- At the exhibition, you can play the demo version of the game Heart Forth, Alicia , which will be released on PlayStation 4 and Vita in 2016.
- The Swedes Paradox Interactive brought to the exhibition a demo version of the game Magicka 2 - a cooperative Action RPG. For developers, this will be the first console release.

Not without scandals: a new wave of Gamer Gate

Mark Kern, one of the main developers of World of Warcraft, Firefall, Diablo II, Starcraft and founder of Mek Entertainment, started a real Twitter war against corruption and deceit in the gaming press.

Mark Kern blamed the major gaming portals of Kotaku, Polygon, and vg247.com for inciting conflict after the episode of the TV series “Law and Order” dedicated to video games. The developer created a petition in which he asked for publications to stop writing about scandals and start a series of publications about gaming ethics, women in the industry and the positive aspects of video games.

In response, Patrick Garrath from the portal vg247.com wrote an article in which he ridiculed Kern's requirements and advised the developers not to sign the petition. At the same time, his tone was ... slightly threatening.



Nathan Grayson, a Kotaku portal journalist who had previously been implicated in the scandal involving Zoe Quinn, joined the discussion. Actually, it was this scandal that initiated the GamerGate phenomenon.

Polygon's Ben Kucera posted a tweet in which he wrote that everyone who supported GamerGate and the petition should stop reading its materials.



And then - even more fun: Ben Kucera was one of the participants of GameJournoPros - a group of journalists from large publications who put the developers on the general blacklist, put pressure on their colleagues and manipulated public opinion. Their postal correspondence was published in September, and caused a lot of negativity.

All these events resulted in a new wave of GamerGate at GDC 2015. Journalists, players and developers have created thousands of tweets (already about 70,000) with the text “I’m gonna be a free and unbiased gaming press.”









Will the conflict be further developed - we find out tonight.

Several gaming trailers and a whole ton of interesting photos from GDC can be found on this blog.

Also, the GameStop portal organized a live stream with developers , where you can watch interesting gaming news and listen to the stories of representatives of gaming companies.

Despite the huge number of reports and new information, on the first day of the conference we did not receive so loud announcements or releases. However, the situation may change today, as we are waiting for presentations from NVIDIA, Unity, Valve and Amazon.