GDC's Festival of Gamers 2026

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Game Developers Conference: This time, it’s for Gamers. It appears this year, after nearly a half-decade of industry layoffs, studio closures, and increased travel risk for foreigners, gdc’s primary sponsor for 2026, Informa, is pushing to open the event up to a more general audience of gamers.

the writing was definitely on the wall for a while that this event was just not going to fill seats any more. gdc has usually been able to get away with the exorbitant pricing because they were selling passes largely to folks from studios who could afford to send out their teams and write it off as a business expense. with those guests backing out it seems that the event will have to expand towards a consumer audience as well. my only read so far is that they are expanding for events outside of the main expo hall, and introducing some single-pass situation. there will probably still be paid elements on top of that as ‘addons’ or something, if you want to get access to the talks or other summits going on

for indies its always kind of been a semi-inaccessible event, there is usually <1 actual expo ticket per indie dev actually in attendance - a large majority just hang out around the Yerba Buena park outside and go to afterparties that dont require badges. there are a couple of actual expo elements that are noteworthy, mainly the IGF awards, the recently-rebooted experimental games workshop talk, and certain showfloor areas like the ctrl-alt-gdc section.

it’s hosted in SF every year, because that’s where it’s investors are, and there’s probably no changing that. indies always campaign to move it elsewhere, if not for the travel situation in the states, then for the cost of travel and lodge for the area. nobody really has the resources to arrange for an alternative, or have gotten enough cultural influence gathered together to decide to co-opt some other event in the states as the indie gathering point, so Yerba Buena remains

thats what i make of gdc! itll be an interesting one this year. still kind of wondering if its worth it because:
a- never have actually been, and if i figure out domestic flight i could probably go
b- seems like a glorious trainwreck moment for the event
c- what if this is the last one

i have so little to show these days but maybe it would be nice to walk around handing out cards that say ‘forums are the only good type of website’

anyways, lets watch the news as it rolls in i guess!

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Honest question, is there any value in this type of thing? I guess it might benefit professionals as a networking event, but I don’t think I’ve ever come across a game design talk that was worth listening to. That may just be because I am intractably stubborn, though.

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Over the years there are talks I found very helpful. Mostly about specific technical stuff, but i liked some design-oriented ones too, and any most-portem talks are always fascinating. Watched most of them on youtube for free though, even though I have access to the pay-walled videos through the company I work for

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I would say the talks are not all that necessary to come to in person, just given they end up on youtube (mostly, eventually. some i think stay exclusive to their “vault”). and yeah like ptrV mentions, they tend to be a bit on the lower-level side, either for technical topics or biz-dev topics. your mileage will definitely vary the more indie your perspective is.

This is definitely the real answer. The most reason I’ve known anyone to be going for is largely just to network and go to the afterparties each night. You do tend to walk away with a bag full of other indie dev’s business cards. GDC and PAX are kind of the only events in the US most folks can universally agree on showing up to so it does become kind of the default time and place to organize any bigger events outside your local city’s group

I think the pandemic is starting to highlight how weird it was that game development was such a ‘party scene’ in those ways, and how the explosion of newer devs who got into the field mid-pandemic or later might not have gotten to adjust to that culture.

The other big deal GDC is for is because it’s so centralized, it can also be a place to schedule/organize pitches with publishers, who generally do have reps coming out to the event to try and consolidate a bunch of meetings into a single week. It’s really only a possibility if your game is involved with any actual booth/showcase at the event, but there (at least used to be) some opportunity to grab a quick meeting if you had any contacts or someone reaches out. Honestly i’m not sure how often this happens nowadays unless you literally do already have a relationship with someone from a publisher