COVID Central: GDC will Livestream Show Without Audience

Covid-19, otherwise known as the coronavirus, hasn’t miraculously vanished yet, as our very smart president once suggested may happen, which means we continue to need to deal with it. As news (and the virus) spreads further, it’s looking increasingly likely that we’re in this for the long haul – which is to say, it’ll be a year, at least, until the world regains some normalcy. That mean’s GDC – which was supposed to happen next week – original plan of “postponing” their conference may not cut it anymore, and to their credit, the GDC has acknowledged this, and have announced that they’re going to instead take an alternate approach to the conference this year.

From their most recent blog post:
 

Thanks to submissions from many of the original speakers who had talks accepted for GDC 2020, organizers will be streaming speaker-recorded versions of the talks they would have given in person, for free all week (from 9am to 5pm PT) from March 16th through 20th.

The Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards ceremonies will also stream virtually starting at 5pm PT (8pm ET) on Wednesday, March 18th for free on GDC's Twitch channel.

The virtual awards ceremony will feature the same hosts (Trent Kusters for the IGF and Kim Swift for the Game Developers Choice Awards) and identical awards categories planned for the original physical event -- with the exception of the alt.ctrl.GDC award, which will not be awarded this year.

So yeah, a remote presentation. That increasingly seems to bet the way of things both inside and outside the gaming industry, which I think we can all agree is for the best. The real question is if these measures will be extended to the biggest trade show of them all: E3, which has yet to announce any plans regarding this outbreak.

But if I had to guess…