GDC survey takes dev temperature on studio toxicity unions, blockchain, more

gamesindustry.biz:

Brendan Sinclair

Managing Editor

Thursday 20th January 2022

Every year, the Game Developers Conference runs a State of the Industry Survey, asking developers their thoughts on a variety of industry topics, from the timeless to the topical.

In advance of this year's show (set for March 21-25 in San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center), GDC organizer and Informa VP of media and entertainment markets Katie Stern talks with GamesIndustry.biz about some of the results, as well as the third straight year the event has been re-shaped by the pandemic.

In 2020, GDC was postponed from its usual March window as COVID-19 ramped up and reached pandemic status, replaced by a smaller virtual event that August. Last year GDC was planned to be a hybrid event but went online only during a resurgence of the pandemic.

For 2022, the plan is to have a hybrid event with 15,000 to 17,000 attendees expected on site, down from around 28,000 or 29,000 attendees in pre-COVID GDC years. And while the Omicron variant of COVID-19 has spread far and wide in recent weeks, it doesn't sound like there's much appetite for yet another exclusively virtual GDC.

"We're really feeling from the community -- both on the sponsor and attendee side -- there's just this desire to move forward and get together..."

"We're really feeling from the community -- both on the sponsor and attendee side -- there's just this desire to move forward and get together, and there's only so much you can do over a screen," Stern says, adding, "And obviously keeping that in mind, in the context of the world, we're really putting a strong focus on the health and safety element of the event."

She mentions the city of San Francisco's "conservative" public safety regulations, the Moscone