GDC's Free Online Talks Begin Later Today

The Game Developers Conference was slated to take place earlier this month in San Francisco, but was cancelled in light of the coronavirus epidemic around the world. Later today though, GDC's virtual talks are kicking off through the organization's Twitch channel.

Although GDC itself was cancelled, there'll still be a series of talks taking place through the magic of the internet. The best part? They're all entirely free, and start later today on Monday, March 16. You can check out the complete schedule in full over on GDC's official website.

It might not be quite the same as in a theatre in San Francisco, but the talks will still be enjoyable and informative in equal measures. The first talk is from Gwen Frey, lead developer of the musical game Kine, breaking the game down in a big postmortem.

From there the talks vary hugely in scale and scope. For example there's a talk BioWare's audio lead on the sound design of Anthem, an accessibility talk about design in Borderlands 3, a case study of two games depicting LGBT+ people, and many more talks from there.

The 2020 Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards will also still take place in the virtual sphere. Starting at 5:00 p.m. PT, hosts Trent Kusters and Kim Swift will honor projects in both the independent game development scene and the industry at large.

GDC's online talks all take place through their Twitch channel, starting at approximately 9 a.m. PT from today, until Friday, March 20. The schedule each day wraps up at around 5 p.m. PT, with the only exception being on Friday, when the day finishes a bit earlier at 11 a.m. PT.

If you happen to miss any of the talks and want to catch up, all talks will be posted at a later today to the Vault portion of GDC's website. Additionally, a select number of talks will be steadily uploaded to GDC's YouTube channel over the next few months.