The postponed Game Developers Conference will take place in 2020 after all, albeit over a shorter time period.
GDC 2020 was initially scheduled to take place this month, but the fast spread of coronavirus, officially known as COVID-19, forced organizer Informa Tech to cancel plans. The rescheduled GDC Summer event will serve as a replacement this August, provided that the coronavirus is no longer a factor.
“Safety remains the GDC organizers’ paramount concern, and the GDC team will continue to monitor the latest information from health officials to ensure a safe and compelling event for everyone at GDC Summer, GDC 2021, and beyond,” Informa Tech said in an announcement.
Running from August 4 through 6 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, GDC Summer will consist of several “microtalks” and fireside chats for developers to discuss their games, connect with other creators, and dive into technical content. The March GDC event was set to run for five days rather than three, so the new version will be shorter. It will still have a two-day expo show floor component on August 5 and 6.
A shorter show is to be expected, as many companies are already moving forward with the announcements and talks they phad lanned for GDC. Microsoft and Sony each held presentations this week on their upcoming consoles, the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, respectively.
The show will also have a new community partnership program that lets organizations apply for meeting and gathering space. Board meetings, podcast recordings, and portfolio reviews all typically take place during the annual conference and would qualify. The program is designed to let smaller organizations participate in GDC that otherwise wouldn’t be able to.
San Francisco has at least 70 confirmed coronavirus cases thus far, up more than double from the beginning of the week.
Organizers will also host a Virtual GDC. Running through Friday, March 20, the event features streamed talks from a variety of game developers to discuss their projects and the challenges they face. Recorded presentations are available on the official GDC Twitch channel, and Friday’s presentations include developers from Microsoft, Netease, and Unbound Creations.
The coronavirus already forced the Entertainment Software Association to cancel E3 2020 last week, even though the massive event was slated months out in June. Several game publishers, including Microsoft, Square Enix, and Ubisoft, already announced they will have replacement digital events to show off upcoming games.
Now gamers and the rest of the industry look to Gamescom 2020, which is currently scheduled for August. Gamescom has not been canceled, but the Germany-based conference sees hundreds of thousands of attendees each year, dwarfing both GDC and E3. With the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 globally, a cancellation of Gamescom wouldn’t be surprising.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.