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🎮 GDC 2025: Game Tools Developer Guide

At GDC 2025, you’ll have access to an expansive lineup of 730+ sessions, tutorials, and events. With 340 of them containing “tool” or similar terms, finding the most relevant ones can be overwhelming.

To help you navigate, I’ve curated a list of sessions specifically tailored for Game Tools Developers.

This guide is your compass through GDC 2025’s vast offerings. Whether attending in person or watching via the GDC Vault, this selection ensures you engage with the most valuable content for your work.

Note: Some highlighted presentations may not be exclusively tool-focused, but they provide valuable insights and fresh perspectives. Understanding how our tools’ users operate is crucial for creating effective and successful tools.

🛠 Must-See Sessions

Short on time? Want only Game Dev Tool-focused sessions?
Don’t miss the Tools Summit, Tools Roundtables, and Tools Design Roundtables.

These sessions, organized by Geoff Evans, David Lightbown, and Robin-Yann Storm bring you the best tool-centered discussions from industry experts.

Sessions marked with the Toolsmiths icon are highly recommended for Tools Developers—you’re guaranteed to gain valuable insights.

🔍 Finding Relevant Sessions

To make navigation easier, sessions are tagged with key roles and topics. Use your browser’s Find (Ctrl+F / Cmd+F) feature to search for specific keywords.

🎯 Key Roles

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer
Pipeline Dev
ML Dev
Build Dev
Tool Lead
Dev Support/Integration Engineer
Tools QA

Role Glossary

DCC Tool Dev – Develops digital content creation tools for artists, designers, and developers.
Tool UX/UI Designer – Specializes in UX/UI for game development tools and workflows.
Tools QA – Ensures development tools are reliable, identifying and refining bug reports.
Pipeline Dev – Optimizes data transformation and workflows between tools and the game.
ML Dev – Focuses on machine learning-powered applications for game development.
Build Dev – Manages CI/CD processes, game packaging, DevOps, and infrastructure.
Dev Support/Integration Engineer – Improves studio-wide tools & workflows, unblocking content creators.
Tool Lead – Oversees tool and pipeline development, ensuring efficient workflows.

🔑 Searchable Keywords

Programming
UX
Workflows
Pipeline
VFX
Visual Arts
Production

Design
AI
Procedural
Machine Learning
Visual Arts

📌 How to Use This Guide

Attending GDC? Follow the session links below to build your personal schedule or double-check for must-see sessions.
Not attending? No worries! You can still watch many of these sessions later via the GDC Vault.

🎬 No matter your focus, you’re sure to find a session that will inspire you to create something great!

Tools Summit
Tools Roundtables
Technical Art Roundtables
Automated Testing Roundtables
Universal Scene Description Roundtable
Machine Learning Roundtable
Programming
Pipeline
Technical Art
Version Control & Files
Rendering
AI/ML in Testing
Automation, Automated Testing, and QA
Machine Learning
Open Source
Procedural
AI
Audio
Visual Arts
Other Roundtables
Commercial Game Engines
Design
Postmortem
Production & Leadership
Sponsored Sessions
Third-party DCC Tools

Tools Summit

Tools Summit: Unlocking Hidden Value: UX Behind the Final Product, the CDPR Way
i
In game development, the focus of user experience often centers on the player experience, but the journey of creating it is just as crucial. Before a game reaches players, designers, developers, and artists must navigate tools and workflows that directly influence the quality of the final product. This talk explores the often-overlooked importance of internal UX in game creation, with insights drawn from the processes at CD PROJEKT RED.
Using examples of custom tools, such as Asset Hive, Anna demonstrates how optimizing tools and workflows at CD PROJEKT RED saves time, enhances collaboration, and fosters creativity. Participants will gain an understanding of the difference between merely unblocking issues and achieving true optimization. They will leave with actionable insights to immediately apply UX strategies to their own game development workflows, driving measurable improvements and supporting the excellence of their designs.

UX
Tools Summit
Programming
Workflows

Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

Tools Summit: Nodes and Native Code: DECIMA's Visual Programming for Every Discipline
i
All games contain scripted logic, yet not every developer has an affinity for code. A visual programming framework can unlock a world of productivity for a wide range of developers, if the user experience is smooth enough. It can be used by multiple engine systems and doesn't have to come at the cost of performance.

In this session, Bryan Keiren, Principal Game Tech Programmer at Guerrilla, will tell you about how a visual programming framework for audio scripting became a blueprint for visual programming in other subsystems of Guerrilla's DECIMA engine such as animation, game logic, and shaders. The audience will be guided through which features helped to achieve fast creation and iteration times, how it enables content creators to independently debug their content, how the framework has scaled to multiple engine systems, and how it supports developers of all disciplines to code without writing code.

Tools Summit
Programming

Tool UX/UI Designer
DCC Tool Dev

Tools Summit: A Series of Microtalks About Spreadsheets
i
Spreadsheets! They're the most versatile tool in a game designer's palette, offering unmatched possibilities. In these microtalks, spreadsheet nerds will showcase their creations, sharing insights on their origins, workflow, design choices, and discoveries.

Lauren Scott shipped economy and progression systems for Psychonauts 2. She'll present the spreadsheet used to bring diverse levels to life under a shared progression scheme.

Guillaume Pierre created an economy spreadsheet for Cityscapes: Sim Builder, simulating time, space, money, and progression to balance landmark effects.

Nathan Harling used a spreadsheet to generate thousands of words of player-facing text, reducing errors and editing costs.

Tyler Coleman's team built game content in spreadsheets for Merchant Guilds, using Apps Scripts for direct deployment, making it a trusted source for live game content.

Russ Fan developed a level design tool within spreadsheets for Full Bloom, enabling quick iteration on hundreds of levels.

Tomo Moriwaki explored storytelling complexity with Epic Tavern, managing thousands of encounters and over 600 quests.

UX
Tools Summit
Programming
Workflows

Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

Tools Summit: Mission Kontrol: Revolutionizing Combat Testing for 'Mortal Kombat 1'
i
A presentation from NetherRealm studios telling the development story of Mission Kontrol – an Unreal Engine plugin for testing fighting game combat scenarios that has become an essential tool for hundreds of artists, engineers, QA testers, and designers. This is a high-level retrospective on the full process of problem identification, framework design, implementation, feedback, and live iteration alongside an evolving game project.

Every game studio discipline has a unique workflow and toolbox, but they all contribute to the same shared product. Ensuring the stability and quality of that product is a shared responsibility, so everybody needs to be able to test their work locally before submitting to a shared build. Especially when fixing bugs. This can be a significant challenge in a game with intricate controls, or for a hybrid remote workforce. Learn how NetherRealm addressed this problem with in-engine tooling, dramatically reducing bug-fixing and iteration times.

Tools Summit
QA
UX
Workflows
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
Dev Support/Production Engineer

Tools Summit: Designing Extensibility for EA's Submission Tool CheckMate
i
At Electronic Arts before users submit content to Perforce they must run a pre-submission tool called CheckMate. This tool is used at almost every studio at EA and provides a consistent experience for everyone. The challenge being that no one studio or team works in the same way. In this presentation, we will go over the technical architecture of CheckMate and how it supported extensibility and leveraged inner-sourcing.

Tools Summit
Programming

Build
DCC Tool Dev
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
Tools QA
Dev Support/Production Engineer

Tools Roundtables

Tools Roundtable Day 1: Engineering
i
These roundtable sessions focus on discussion of best practices, novel techniques, and technical trade-offs for building game development tools and services. Game development tools are constantly evolving, so come to share what works (and what doesn't) at your studio, and listen to others' take on how to keep their creative teams producing awesome games.

Wednesday: 'Engineering', focuses on tools programming, testing, deployment, frameworks, scripting, automation, extensibility, and telemetry.

Thursday: 'Assets' focuses on export/import, interchange, persistence, collaboration, search and organization, development models (branching and/or trunking), revision control, and outsourcing.

Friday: 'Build' focuses on processing assets through to the game in all its forms: build systems, caching, distribution, scalability, optimization, disc mastering and patching.

Programming
Pipeline
QA

Build
DCC Tool Dev
Tools QA
Pipeline Dev
Dev Support/Production Engineer

Tools Roundtable Day 2: Assets
i
These roundtable sessions focus on discussion of best practices, novel techniques, and technical trade-offs for building game development tools and services. Game development tools are constantly evolving, so come to share what works (and what doesn't) at your studio, and listen to others' take on how to keep their creative teams producing awesome games.

Wednesday: 'Engineering', focuses on tools programming, testing, deployment, frameworks, scripting, automation, extensibility, and telemetry.

Thursday: 'Assets' focuses on export/import, interchange, persistence, collaboration, search and organization, development models (branching and/or trunking), revision control, and outsourcing.

Friday: 'Build' focuses on processing assets through to the game in all its forms: build systems, caching, distribution, scalability, optimization, disc mastering and patching.

Programming
Pipeline
QA

Build
DCC Tool Dev
Tools QA
Pipeline Dev
Dev Support/Production Engineer

Tools Roundtable Day 3: Build
i
These roundtable sessions focus on discussion of best practices, novel techniques, and technical trade-offs for building game development tools and services. Game development tools are constantly evolving, so come to share what works (and what doesn't) at your studio, and listen to others' take on how to keep their creative teams producing awesome games.

Wednesday: 'Engineering', focuses on tools programming, testing, deployment, frameworks, scripting, automation, extensibility, and telemetry.

Thursday: 'Assets' focuses on export/import, interchange, persistence, collaboration, search and organization, development models (branching and/or trunking), revision control, and outsourcing.

Friday: 'Build' focuses on processing assets through to the game in all its forms: build systems, caching, distribution, scalability, optimization, disc mastering and patching.

Programming
Pipeline
QA

Build
DCC Tool Dev
Tools QA
Pipeline Dev
Dev Support/Production Engineer

Tool Design Roundtable Day 1: Design and UX
i
This Tool Design roundtable is about the UX of in-house and external toolsets. Come and meet, discuss, and find out what everyone has been doing with Tool Design in the last year.
Examples of topics discussed in previous years are:
1. What user experience techniques have you seen best fit for your toolsets?
2. Is classical UX applicable in tools, or is it very different?
3. What differences, if any, have tool service companies seen with their tool designs?
This years' questions may be different, or similar! Feel free to join, and ask.

Design
Programming

Tools QA
Tool UX/UI Designer
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
DCC Tool Dev

Tool Design Roundtable Day 2: Production & Strategy
i
This Tool Design roundtable is about the UX of in-house and external toolsets. Come and meet, discuss, and find out what everyone has been doing with Tool Design in the last year.
Examples of topics discussed in previous years are:
1. What user experience techniques have you seen best fit for your toolsets?
2. Is classical UX applicable in tools, or is it very different?
3. What differences, if any, have tool service companies seen with their tool designs?
This years' questions may be different, or similar! Feel free to join, and ask.

Design
Programming

Tools QA
Tool UX/UI Designer
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
DCC Tool Dev

Tool Design Roundtable Day 3: User Research
i
This Tool Design roundtable is about the UX of in-house and external toolsets. Come and meet, discuss, and find out what everyone has been doing with Tool Design in the last year.
Examples of topics discussed in previous years are:
1. What user experience techniques have you seen best fit for your toolsets?
2. Is classical UX applicable in tools, or is it very different?
3. What differences, if any, have tool service companies seen with their tool designs?
This years' questions may be different, or similar! Feel free to join, and ask.

Design
Programming

Tools QA
Tool UX/UI Designer
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
DCC Tool Dev

Technical Art Roundtables

Technical Artist Roundtable Day 1
i
The role of a technical artists has grown from a clean-up artist and data wrangler to someone who is in charge of complex content creation pipelines and asset tracking systems. Increasingly, the lines between programmer and artist are blurring for technical artists. Tool creation, scripting, shader creation, working with both programmers and artists, and managing workflow are all skills required of a modern technical artist. This roundtable brings together technical artists from across the industry to share their knowledge, experiences, and tips for being the best at their jobs.

Visual Arts
Pipeline
UX
Workflows
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Technical Artist Roundtable Day 2
i
The role of a technical artists has grown from a clean-up artist and data wrangler to someone who is in charge of complex content creation pipelines and asset tracking systems. Increasingly, the lines between programmer and artist are blurring for technical artists. Tool creation, scripting, shader creation, working with both programmers and artists, and managing workflow are all skills required of a modern technical artist. This roundtable brings together technical artists from across the industry to share their knowledge, experiences, and tips for being the best at their jobs.

Visual Arts
Pipeline
UX
Workflows
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Technical Artist Roundtable Day 3
i
The role of a technical artists has grown from a clean-up artist and data wrangler to someone who is in charge of complex content creation pipelines and asset tracking systems. Increasingly, the lines between programmer and artist are blurring for technical artists. Tool creation, scripting, shader creation, working with both programmers and artists, and managing workflow are all skills required of a modern technical artist. This roundtable brings together technical artists from across the industry to share their knowledge, experiences, and tips for being the best at their jobs.

Visual Arts
Pipeline
UX
Workflows
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Automated Testing Roundtables

Automated Testing Roundtables Day 1
i
Automated testing provides a team with more stable software at an earlier point in development, allowing easier scheduling and fast iteration. Yet investing in automated testing has a bad reputation in the industry, where just-ship-it is the mantra. Maybe, as increased budgets and team sizes make stability even harder, its time has finally come.
On Day 1 we prefer to discuss the people that write the tests and the workflows used to reinforce them. How does the process work in your studio? Are the engineers responsible for automated tests, or QA? Are QA silo'd or integrated? What could be better? What doesn't work?
These roundtables bring together people of all experience levels and budgets to discuss how they currently, or would like to, use automated testing of any form. See autotestingroundtable.com for more details and to join our discord!

UX
Programming
QA
Workflows

Build
DCC Tool Dev
Tools QA
Dev Support/Production Engineer

Automated Testing Roundtables Day 2
i
Automated testing provides a team with more stable software at an earlier point in development, allowing easier scheduling and fast iteration. Yet investing in automated testing has a bad reputation in the industry, where just-ship-it is the mantra. Maybe, as increased budgets and team sizes make stability even harder, its time has finally come.

On Day 2 we prefer to talk about introducing automated testing to an organization. Do you have a culture or a codebase that doesn't currently embrace automated testing? Are you having trouble getting people on-board, or maybe it was very easy and you can share why? Grand failures are just as interesting as successes!

These roundtables bring together people of all experience levels and budgets to discuss how they currently, or would like to, use automated testing of any form. See autotestingroundtable.com for more details and to join our discord!

Programming
QA

Build
DCC Tool Dev
Tools QA
Dev Support/Production Engineer

Automated Testing Roundtables Day 3
i
Automated testing provides a team with more stable software at an earlier point in development, allowing easier scheduling and fast iteration. Yet investing in automated testing has a bad reputation in the industry, where just-ship-it is the mantra. Maybe, as increased budgets and team sizes make stability even harder, its time has finally come.

On Day 3 we prefer to discuss the many faces of automation, from locally-run functional and unit tests, to server-driven continuous integration, and even external device farms. How do you do automated testing in your team? What works well for you? More interestingly, what didn't work and why?

These roundtables bring together people of all experience levels and budgets to discuss how they currently, or would like to, use automated testing of any form. See autotestingroundtable.com for more details and to join our discord!

Programming
QA

Build
DCC Tool Dev
Tools QA
Dev Support/Production Engineer

Universal Scene Description Roundtable

The Universal Scene Description (USD) Roundtable Day 1: Workflows
i
USD stands for 'Universal Scene Description', and it is a 3D file format Pixar created over a span of many years and movies, and was released open source to the public in 2016. Although technically it is more of an API than a file format, which is an ongoing discussion into the terminology and use of USD.

In this session, attendees can gather to talk about USD. Come and meet, discuss, and find out what everyone has been doing with USD.

Questions can be submitted during the roundtable. For example, these may include topics such as:
1. What are issues you have bumped into when implementing USD into your pipeline?
2. What would be required for USD to be more widely adopted?
3. How can studios, and vendors, best share Schemas?

Questions can be oriented towards technical issues, design, and artistic workflows, with one day having a larger focus on artistic workflows, and the other having a larger focus on technical issues.

UX
Visual Arts
Pipeline
Workflows

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

The Universal Scene Description (USD) Roundtable Day 2: Tech
i
USD stands for 'Universal Scene Description', and it is a 3D file format Pixar created over a span of many years and movies, and was released open source to the public in 2016. Although technically it is more of an API than a file format, which is an ongoing discussion into the terminology and use of USD.

In this session, attendees can gather to talk about USD. Come and meet, discuss, and find out what everyone has been doing with USD.

Questions can be submitted during the roundtable. For example, these may include topics such as:
1. What are issues you have bumped into when implementing USD into your pipeline?
2. What would be required for USD to be more widely adopted?
3. How can studios, and vendors, best share Schemas?

Questions can be oriented towards technical issues, design, and artistic workflows, with one day having a larger focus on artistic workflows, and the other having a larger focus on technical issues.

UX
Visual Arts
Pipeline
Workflows

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Machine Learning Roundtable

ML Roundtable Day 1: Game Development, Deployment and Techniques
i
Machine Learning is rapidly transforming game development, offering powerful new tools and possibilities. This roundtable brings together industry experts to delve into the practical realities of integrating ML into your game pipelines. We'll move beyond theory and explore the cutting-edge techniques, workflows, and deployment strategies being used today. From enhancing creative tools to building intelligent agents and optimizing player experiences, our panelists will discuss real-world challenges and successes in applying ML across the game development lifecycle. Join us for a lively discussion and gain actionable insights to leverage the power of ML in your own projects.

Pipeline
UX
Workflows
Programming
Machine Learning

DCC Tool Dev
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
Machine Learning

Programming

Smash the Scene in 'Marvel Rivals'
i
The conception of environmental destruction in Marvel Rivals aimed to capture the scale of world-breaking combat synonymous with Super Heroes. If the Hulk cannot demolish a building, can he truly be considered the Hulk? This consensus highlighted the necessity of implementing environmental destruction. However, the transition from concept to reality presented significant challenges.

In this workshop, the game engineer at NetEase goes through some best practices to creating large scale destruction in Marvel Rivals. He walks you through the comprehensive solution, focusing on the key aspects such as destruction Hierarchy design, network physics, destruction simulation, rendering and the pipeline content.

Programming
Pipeline

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

'Apex Legends': Preventing Exploits and Shipping Risky Features Using... NavMesh??
i
Apex Legends' 26th Legend presented a significant technical challenge; one of her abilities allowed her to create portals through walls. However, in a competitive game where survival is the objective, there was zero tolerance for players getting out-of-bounds. This session delves not only into the details of how a navmesh based solution was created to solve this issue, but also how this allowed us to leverage navmesh to create a variety of systems, including an out-of-bounds exploit detection system and powerful procedural placement tools. This session then goes into the advantages of having each system use shared core tech in a slightly different way resulting in these features effectively providing testing for each other. Finally, this session discusses the novel web server based, in-game test framework we created to provide robust regression testing and automatic error reporting and how the combination of these systems allowed us to ship this Legend exploit free.

Programming
QA

DCC Tool Dev
Tools QA
Dev Support/Production Engineer

Independent Games Summit: 10 Reasons Your Port Will Fail
i
Porting your game doesn't have to feel overwhelming! In this session, we'll break down 10 common pitfalls of the porting process and give you the tools to tackle them with confidence. Whether it's dealing with tricky build scripts, debugging nightmares, or post-launch patching woes, we'll show you how to navigate these challenges. You'll leave equipped with practical tips, real-world examples, and a clear understanding of how to approach porting without fear. Let's turn porting into an opportunity for growth; not a source of stress.

Independent Games Summit
QA
UX
Workflows
Programming

Build
DCC Tool Dev
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
Tools QA
Dev Support/Production Engineer

Making Delightful Tools for Sustainable Small-Team Development
i
How you and your team spend time is key to achieving a sustainable development workflow. The time invested in developing tools pays off over the years by providing a solid foundation with a rapid iteration. Making these tools delightful to use reflects on the game quality, team culture, cohesion, and the creative energy poured into the game.

In this talk, Isadora will present nine tips for investing in development tools for your small indie team. She will cover how a data-oriented mindset helps build a modular and flexible gameplay architecture; how building tools tailored for the team's exact needs ensures scalability and simplicity; and how to balance engine development, tools development and gameplay implementation to maximize your team's sustainability and morale.

UX
Programming
Workflows

Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

Entities and Bricks: The Building Blocks of 'Hitman'
i
In the Glacier engine, almost everything is an entity! Since its inception during Hitman: Absolution's development, the entity system has evolved significantly, becoming integral to four successful AAA productions. The Brick sub-system has enabled hundreds of content updates for the Hitman trilogy, keeping the game alive for a decade with new modes, missions, and elusive targets. In this talk, Kasper Fauerby, Technical Director at IO Interactive, will explore the entity system's features and provide technical insights into its core aspects, such as memory layout, type system, and streaming. He will demonstrate how a robust entity system and a studio-wide focus on its utilization have allowed IO Interactive to implement advanced features efficiently, despite a small development team. This includes high-level visual scripting in Hitman games and the new 'CoreLogic' visual scripting language used in all current projects.

Programming

DCC Tool Dev

Heat, MaxTac and Blockades: Expanding the Police System in 'Cyberpunk 2077'
i
Take an insider look at the police chases in Cyberpunk 2077 and dive into the dynamic spawning of road blockades and MaxTac AV encounters, which add flavor to regular police chases and are designed to keep players on the edge of their seats. Discover how the CD PROJEKT RED team leveraged Night City's vast, vertical environment with graph-based lane discovery and asynchronous spawn points generation, ensuring seamless and engaging pursuits. With maximizing player's fun in mind, this talk will also explore the unique technical challenges and solutions required to make these two features work. Expect detailed visualizations and behind-the-scenes insights from the developer who brought these features to life.

Programming
Procedural

DCC Tool Dev

Rapid and Creative Gameplay Prototyping in 'ASTRO BOT'
i
Team ASOBI released ASTRO BOT in September 2024, which became a highly acclaimed 3D platformer. In this session, the team's lead gameplay programmer introduces prototyping techniques used during the development of ASTRO BOT. The game features a wide variety of power-ups, gimmicks, enemies, and interactions, each enhanced by unique animations, effects, sounds, and haptics that elevate the interactive experiences. Given the large number of unique elements and the constraints of time and resources, a strong emphasis is placed on prototyping to manage these challenges effectively. The speaker explains the specific methods and processes used to create these prototypes, and how collaboration with game designers and artists helped refine them into production-quality features, showcasing actual examples from the development process.

Programming
Programming
Design

Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Productive and Pragmatic Prototype Programming
i
There are countless talks about how to run a prototype from a design point of view, and talks aplenty about what makes good production code, but when it comes to writing code for prototypes, best practice is either 'treat it like production', or a license to be slapdash and casual.

There's more to effective prototype code than this!

Andrew Fray has a decade of experience leading prototyping code teams at Spry Fox and Roll7, and will lay out his framework for implementing and maintaining prototype code in a way that lets designers answer important questions as effectively as possible, without coders getting bogged down in spaghetti code.

Programming

Tool UX/UI Designer
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
DCC Tool Dev

'Delta Force': Performant High-Quality Terrain and Biome Technology for PC and Mobile
i
Delta Force is committed to providing an excellent gaming experience across both PC and mobile platforms. Through continuous advancements in mobile game development, Team Jade has successfully bridged the quality gap between the mobile and PC versions of the game. By leveraging a unified set of art assets, the team ensures high performance across both platforms.

This presentation will provide in-depth technical insights, focusing on critical areas such as terrain and biome rendering, dual-platform performance optimization, and efficient workflows. Attendees will gain valuable knowledge on reducing the quality gap in cross-platform projects, implementing streamlined production methods that minimize both development and maintenance costs.

UX
Programming
Workflows

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Pipeline

Moving Files and Managing Assets at Naughty Dog
i
File organization is an important part of every collaborative endeavor. In game development, file hierarchies need to change throughout production as experiments illuminate new goals and eliminate old ones. The ability to move, delete, and rename files without unpredictably breaking your game build is a key part of this process as the project scales in both manpower and content. However, we often have highly interconnected networks of files that reference other files… which reference other files… and so on. Reorganizing files in this context is not trivial and when done manually can cost significant time to do safely.

This talk discusses how Naughty Dog approaches the problem of moving and renaming source files. Our solution underscores our studio's value of experimentation throughout production and lays the foundation for a set of new asset management features that our TDs can use in their tools.

Visual Arts
Programming
Pipeline

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Technical Art

Technical Artist Summit: 'LEGO Horizon Adventures': Procedural Optimizing
i
Optimizing a game for multi-platform comes with various challenges. In this talk we will cover how procedural pipelines where build for LEGO Horizon Adventures.

With the game releasing on PlayStation 5, PC, and Nintendo Switch, it meant that everything in the game must work on those platforms. From the very beginning of development it required us to think out how geometries, shaders, and many other elements needed to work. We created a pipeline where every asset can be generated and updated at any point.

Our end result is a pipeline that can handle the creation and optimization of LEGO assets without having developers doing a lot of manual work.

Technical Artist Summit
Pipeline

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Technical Artist Summit: Practical Applications of Object Oriented Programming in Technical Art
i
In this session, we will learn about Object Oriented Programming (OOP) in a practical light, as more than just-theory, diving deeper into the concepts of Abstraction and Inheritance.
The principles of OOP will be introduced through a real world example. We will build a GUI using PyQt for a simple Maya tool twice. First, using a Functional Programming approach, followed by an Object Oriented approach. This will highlight how to practically apply principles of OOP into our code and how this approach can make our code robust and future-proof.

Technical Artist Summit
Programming

DCC Tool Dev

Technical Artist Summit: 'Dragon's Dogma 2': The Hidden World of Rigging and Cloth Simulation
i
In order to support a title with as flexible specifications as Dragon's Dogma 2, Petr will take a look at how Capcom modified the internal rigging system, and how he decided to approach rigging the human characters with a flexible character editor in mind. Petr will go over the rigging flow that a character goes through, and how it differs, when a character is subjected to the needs of a Character Editor.

An introduction of character editing into the usual mix, presents other challenges when moving cloth is in question, so he'll cover how they have improved the in-house cloth simulation system in the engine, and how the team approached setting up cloth simulation for the characters in the world of Dragon's Dogma 2.

UX
Technical Artist Summit
Workflows

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Technical Artist Summit: 'LEGO Horizon Adventures': An Approach to Cinematics
i
This session explores the ideas, the workflows and the tools behind the cinematic pipeline of the recently released LEGO Horizon Adventures.

Andrea Zanelli, Senior Technical Animator at Studio Gobo, illustrates how the development of a scalable and extendable cinematic pipeline and toolset, spanning from storyboard to final delivery, allowed a small team to iterate quickly and develop thirty minutes of high quality cinematic animation.

The presentation will use examples from the game detailing the anatomy of a cinematic sequence, the tools used for transferring data from the DCC to Unreal, the problems met and the solutions devised to overcome them during the development period.

Pipeline
UX
Workflows
Technical Artist Summit
Programming

Pipeline Dev
DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

Version Control & Files

Preserving the Past for the Future: A PlayStation Case Study
i
It is no secret that game preservation is a complex subject, but what happens if you have over 30 years worth of history to capture, record and archive? This presentation is an exploration of how PlayStation's IP & Asset Preservation team are preserving countless titles so that their legacy can be used to inspire and accelerate future work. It explores preservation methods, proprietary tools and insider success stories that studios and organizations of all sizes can learn from.

Advocacy
Programming

DCC Tool Dev

Rendering

Advanced Graphics Summit: Cooperative Vectors and Neural Rendering
i
Cooperative Vectors is a new feature being added to Direct3D and HLSL. It enables general purpose access to specialized hardware which can be used to integrate ML inferences into the traditional graphics pipeline. Use cases span anywhere there's a complex, expensive function that could be approximated by a small ML model - a pattern that crops up all over the place in 3D graphics!

Advanced Graphics Summit
Pipeline

Decoding Light: Neural Compression for Global Illumination
i
This session explores the strategic management of dynamic lighting in global illumination via machine learning. It highlights how MLP compression significantly reduces storage requirements while maintaining visual quality and mitigating light leakage. The discussion also emphasizes the efficiency of running inference on Tensor Cores with CUDA and seamlessly mapping results to textures. Furthermore, the session delves into the use of H265 compression for distant GI globalmaps, balancing minimal precision loss and optimized performance. It also addresses workflow optimization through hardware-accelerated ray tracing and adaptable training methods, which enable rapid content production and immediate previews for artists. Attendees will gain insights into how these advancements streamline game development processes and enhance visual rendering.

UX
Programming
Machine Learning
Workflows

Global Illumination in 'Once Human': A Hybrid Approach for 16km Open World
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'Once Human' was released on July 10, 2024, with a vast 16km×16km open world featuring dynamic time-of-day (TOD) cycles and real-time player-driven construction. This demanded a global illumination (GI) system capable of delivering both pre-baked cinematic quality and real-time responsiveness to dynamically built environments.
In this session, we present our hybrid GI solution:For pre-baked GI:- We introduce a neural network-driven method that achieves more than 69:1 compression ratio on 24-hour GI probe data, reducing GI storage to under 800MB for the entire 16km world.- We also showcase how we use neural network to enable probes to react dynamically to player flashlights.- A novel machine learning pipeline automates the resolution of indoor-outdoor light leaks in probes.For real-time GI, we demonstrate performance-optimized techniques that enhance visual consistency while maintaining scalability across all devices compared to previous methods.

Programming
Pipeline
Machine Learning

Rendering 'Assassin's Creed Shadows'
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Assassin's Creed Shadows is a large systemic open world game with dynamic time of day cycles, a systemic weather system, and seasons. it is the first next gen only Assassin's Creed game. It's built on the next gen iteration of the Anvil engine and is the first Assassin's Creed game to feature Ray Traced Global Illumination. Such a large world and dynamic setting poses many rendering challenges. The talk focuses on a typical frame and walks the audience through the various steps required to produce the final render, focusing on gpu driven pipeline, lighting improvements and other new developments. It concludes with optimization strategies and best practices for open world games.

Programming
Pipeline

Generalized Stylized Post-Processing Outline Scheme
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The presentation introduces a post-processing outlining solution for real-time Non-Photorealistic Rendering (NPR). This method can be applied to all game scenes based on deferred rendering, and unique outlining effects can be added through this scheme. Inspired by the low-discrepancy sequences generated after TAA jitter on top of geometric information stored in GBuffer, this method resolves potential issues that may occur during the post-processing stage of the rendering pipeline through a denoising algorithm similar to ray tracing denoising. It successfully simulates a stable and realistic hand-drawn effect to enhance the artistic expression of the game graphics.

Visual Arts
Programming
Pipeline

GPU Raytracing for Audio in Snowdrop
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The current generation of GPUs and consoles have provided us with a new opportunity - hardware accelerated raytracing. While this is already widely used for rendering, there is a vast untapped potential in leveraging this technology for audio. We have explored this by implementing a new sound propagation system in Snowdrop, showcased in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Star Wars: Outlaws, and would like to share our learnings and findings to encourage experimenting with using raytracing beyond its graphics applications in your own engine.

The talk will introduce the concept of audio raytracing in Snowdrop and give details about its implementation through the raytracing query system. It will also present how it is used for simulating sound propagation in our games and share some performance results.

Programming
Procedural

Advanced Graphics Summit: Revolutionizing Texture Pipelines: EA's Journey with Texture Sets
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Art workflows have become increasingly complex, and many areas of the production pipeline have not kept pace. Textures are a prime example, where the days of a single image applied to geometry are well over. We now have intertwined surface maps packed in various channels of multiple textures, causing headaches for all involved. EA Motive and SEED have decided to tackle this problem head-on and will present their learnings developing 'Texture Sets' for Dead Space, Iron Man, and more. Texture Sets is a modern rethink of the texture pipeline, bundling sets of related textures together into a single asset, and taking a data-driven and extensible approach to texture authoring, processing, and sampling.

UX
Advanced Graphics Summit
Pipeline
Workflows

Advanced Graphics Summit: 'Marvel Rivals': Creating a Real-Time Interactive Dr. Strange's Portal
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This talk explores the implementation of Doctor Strange's portal by customizing Unreal Engine's default deferred pipeline. An open portal typically doubles the rendering workload, presenting challenges for competitive video games. We provide a high-level overview of both CPU and GPU optimizations and many strategies used to adapt portal for other hero skills.

Players will experience realistic, freely placeable, and interactive portals. These portals allow visibility through to the other side while maintaining relative high frame rate. Our solution enables real-time scene to display on the other side, permitting characters, bullets, and other objects to pass through seamlessly, all without obstructing the player's main view.

Advanced Graphics Summit
Pipeline

AI/ML in Testing

Streamlining Bot Development in 'For Honor' with ML Automation
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In For Honor, AI bots are essential for maintaining consistent gameplay in both multiplayer and single-player modes. Traditionally, creating these bots is a labor-intensive process, taking around four weeks per hero to define unique behaviors and difficulty levels. Our challenge was to automate this process to keep up with the game's frequent updates. We utilized reinforcement learning (RL) and self-play techniques, allowing bots to train by playing against existing scripted bots and themselves. This method proved to be efficient in getting bots that are good enough to hold their own against players. To tailor difficulty, we developed an action masking system, giving designers control over the RL bots which is normally a frequent issue with this kind of tech. Additionally, we combined RL with traditional scripted logic, like behavior trees, to create hybrid bots that integrate seamlessly into all game scenarios. These bots have gone through extensive testing to make sure they are up to par with their scripted counterpart and have now shipped in the game. This presentation will share our automated bot creation process, which drastically reduced development time required to make bots. We will also cover how the For Honor production is switching over to this new system for the creation of bots for future heroes. We also aim to provide practical insights into how ML and traditional AI can be synergized to streamline game development.

UX
Programming
QA
Workflows

Automation, Automated Testing, and QA

'Avowed' Branching Narratives: Shifting from QA Testing to Analyzing
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The Quality Assurance department at Obsidian have taken great strides in shifting the perception and use case of QA Analysts on Avowed from being 'testers' who spend the majority of their work hours playing the game and reporting obvious bugs, to being 'analysts' who spend most of their time outside the game client to find, correct, and prevent defects.

This talk focuses on how QA put this philosophy into practice for Quests in Avowed. Attendees will see each step leading up to the 'Joint Analysis Sessions' that leveraged Area Designer and Quality Assurance Analysts to fix bugs before they were even reported.

QA
UX
Workflows
Production & Team Leadership
Programming

Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
Tools QA
Dev Support/Production Engineer

Machine Learning

Machine Learning Summit: Enhancing Development with LLMs and Multimodal Retrieval in 'Call of Duty'
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How are machine learning models and gen AI being used to power up Call of Duty development tools? The vast environments built for Call of Duty demand innovative solutions for managing an ever growing and extensive asset library. Multiple studios within Activision must efficiently find and retrieve 3D models, photogrammetry assets, animations, materials and more. Since traditional search methods, such as lexical string-matching, fail to capture the context of a query, handle synonyms and scale to manage an extensive asset library, Activision studios developed an AI-based semantic (multimodal) search engine that allows users to find and retrieve assets using natural language and images like concept art or reference pictures. Also, learn how large language models are incorporated into the studios' workflows to perform Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to assist developers.

Pipeline
UX
Machine Learning Summit
Workflows
Procedural
Programming
Machine Learning

Game AI Summit: No Brakes! Machine Learning Vehicles in 'Star Wars Outlaws'
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In this session, Colin and Andreas present their experience making the machine learning (ML)-based vehicle AI system in Star Wars Outlaws. They discuss why they chose an ML-based solution and the advantages it provides over alternatives. Additionally, they present their training pipeline and why making it reliable and easy-to-use was critical to making the solution work in a fast-paced production environment. They also highlight the difficulty of fine-tuning an ML solution and give examples for when it is best to adjust the ML model and when to use a non-ML solution to get the desired behavior. Finally, they detail how the models were evaluated and compared – an especially tricky issue as ML models may behave differently in new situations.

Game AI Summit
Pipeline
Machine Learning

Machine Learning Summit: SIMA: Developing General AI Agents with Video Games
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Alexandre and Piermaria present new research on SIMA (Scalable Instructable Multiworld Agent), an AI agent that follows natural-language instructions to perform tasks across diverse video game environments.

Video games are a key proving ground for artificial intelligence (AI) systems. They offer rich learning environments, mirroring real-world complexities with responsive, real-time settings and dynamic objectives. From our early work with Atari games to AlphaStar, which achieved human-grandmaster level in StarCraft II, Google DeepMind has a long history in AI and games.

SIMA represents a significant advancement, shifting focus from individual games to a general, instructable game-playing AI. This generalist agent for 3D virtual settings was trained in partnership with game developers across a diverse range of video games. This marks the first instance of an agent demonstrating comprehension of a broad spectrum of gaming worlds, executing tasks via natural-language instructions like a human player.

In this talk, Alexandre Moufarek, Google DeepMind's AI Research Group Product Manager and former Game Producer, together with Piermaria Mendolicchio, Senior Technical Program Manager and former Game Compliance Manager, will discuss the history of games and AI research, the SIMA research project's journey, including challenges, learnings, and future research directions.

Machine Learning Summit
QA
Pipeline
Machine Learning

Machine Learning Summit: 'Rainbow Six Siege': Operation Bots
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This talk delves into the development of AI Bots in Rainbow Six Siege that mimic player behavior using machine learning (ML) and statistical techniques. It explains how the Siege team gathered extensive player data and transformed it into a format usable by the game's AI, leveraging a hybrid HTN/GOAP architecture to blend ML with traditional AI systems. Key challenges included handling the complex combinations of maps, operators, and gadgets, and the need for dynamic metadata that evolves with game updates. The talk outlines specific AI components developed: gadget placement using clustering techniques, cover position prediction via neural networks, player-like pathing, realistic aiming using ML, and droning navigation. It also details the data storage pipeline in Amazon S3, extraction processes, and architecture decisions that facilitated integration and continuous R&D.

Machine Learning Summit
Pipeline
Machine Learning

Machine Learning Summit: Next-Gen Infrastructure for Scalable AI/ML
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This session delves into how Electronic Arts is innovating its AI/ML infrastructure to achieve three levels of scaling: scaling the people capable of using AI, scaling the application of AI across game development, and scaling the impact of AI on player experiences. The team will share how they are leveraging cutting-edge tools and infrastructure advancements at EA that accelerates AI adoption, reduces compute provisioning time, and streamlines deployment processes.

Machine Learning Summit
Programming
Machine Learning

Machine Learning Summit: Fitting Armor Assets in 'World of Warcraft' with Deep Learning
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This talk will introduce Deepforge, a deep neural network designed to transform armor pieces for various races in World of Warcraft (WoW). This technology drastically reduces the time required for artists to fit 3D armors from days and weeks to mere minutes. By automating the fitting process, our tool empowers artists to focus more on fine-tuning the details and enhancing the quality of their work. We will explore the model design, training, and deployment, showcasing its unique features and practical applications on mesh fitting for WoW. The primary goal for this project is to ensure high-quality mesh generation suitable for production use, from preprocessing to postprocessing, combined with a robust infrastructure for efficient and reliable model performance. Attendees will gain insights into how Deepforge enhances game asset creation, making it a valuable tool for developers.

Machine Learning Summit
Programming
Machine Learning
Procedural

Open Source

'DREDGE' and Yarn Spinner: Building Narrative with Open Source
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DREDGE surfaced in 2023 as one of the biggest indie hits of the year, and its critically-acclaimed story was powered by the open source narrative toolkit Yarn Spinner. Join Yarn Spinner's lead developer as we break down the narrative systems and implementation of the open-world fishing horror, how the DREDGE team created an accessible, localized dialogue system with deep integration into gameplay systems, how the game's various narrative delivery systems all worked together to tell a compelling story, and how you can do the same at any scale for your game.

Programming
Pipeline

Procedural

Procedural Generation with Design in Mind for 'LEGO® Horizon Adventures'
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LEGO Horizon Adventures is narrative-led with procedurally generated adventures; designers apply constraints to direct player experiences, and the procedural system explores the possibility space to strike a balance between replayable and cohesive gameplay.

Michael Boyle (Senior Engineer) will discuss the lessons Studio Gobo learned integrating traditional designer workflows with a campaign assembled from procedural components; he will discuss the benefits and pitfalls of this modular content. The talk will cover the tools for level and quest designers to generate, validate, and review their work in a variety of contexts, with suggested best practices for granular but readable feedback. It will also cover the tools used to analyze variety, 'difference' and content utilization across many generated playthroughs, and how this analysis fed into iterating the content.

UX
Programming
Procedural
Workflows

Procedural Stadium Creation for 'EA SPORTS College Football 25'
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This presentation will focus on EA's Stadium Toolkit, a suite of procedural tools that was created for the development of EA SPORTS College Football. This toolkit has dramatically reduced the time and resources required for stadium building, transforming a process that once took environment artists months into a task that now takes mere weeks. The Stadium Toolkit captures the unique architecture of each stadium, creating an authentic game day atmosphere that resonates with players. Initially, EA SPORTS FIFA – now known as FC - and Madden NFL stadiums were built by hand, a laborious process spanning 5-7 months. The creation of the Stadium Toolkit has enabled teams to construct authentic arenas efficiently and at scale. Optimized for College Football, the toolkit facilitated the construction of 155 new college stadiums in under two years, nearly matching the combined stadium count of Madden NFL 24 and FIFA 23.

UX
Visual Arts
Programming
Workflows

Enhancing 3D Building Asset Creation: Machine Learning Meets Procedural Generation
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This session explores the integration of Self-Attention Network and other neural networks with procedural generation to enhance the creation of 3D building assets in game development. Attendees will discover how this approach supports various architectural styles within a unified framework, allowing for game-ready assets with higher quality and diversity. The presentation will cover the unified procedural framework supporting various architectural styles, the system's foundational modules, and the optimization of traditional workflows. By providing detailed insights, this session aims to equip game designers and artists with advanced tools and techniques to significantly improve efficiency and creativity in their projects.

Pipeline
UX
Workflows
Procedural
Visual Arts
Programming
Programming
Machine Learning

Evolving Worlds from the Crumbling Chaos: The Art-Led Approach of 'Darkest Dungeon 2's' Procedural Generation System
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In an industry where procedural generation systems are historically programmer-led, Red Hook Studios took an unconventional approach and crafted a system that prioritized the game's art direction instead. In this presentation, Marielle Fox, artist, and Colin Towle, programmer, will discuss what it took to create the system that generates Darkest Dungeon 2's crumbling, post-apocalyptic world.
They'll explain how the symbiotic relationship between a technically-minded artist and creatively-inclined programmer allowed them to solve the difficult problems presented by the creation of a highly immersive and visually stunning world for the player to navigate through.
This presentation will go over the iterative approach that Colin and Marielle took to construct a feature that not only helped to compose the world art of the game, but also met the high bar set by Darkest Dungeon's iconic visual style. They will also show and discuss the tools created that empowered artists to use the system to its fullest potential.

Visual Arts
Programming
Procedural

Building the Natural World One Hex at a Time: The Procedural Environment Art of 'Civilization VII'
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This presentation details the artistic problem-solving process employed in creating the natural environment of Civilization 7. Dean Scott (Environment Artist) will go into detail of how he used procedural content generation in combination with more traditional game-art practices to create a tactile and lived-in world while working within a very small team. He will look at authoring art with Houdini, talk about some of the processes used to generate assets while maintaining the look and feel of the Civilization franchise, and show how prototyping procedurally enabled our team to polish the game into what it is today. He will talk about how making foliage doesn't have to be painful and work through some of the problems we faced when making art for a world that is ever-changing and emergent every time you end your turn.

Visual Arts
Programming
Pipeline
Procedural

Creating a Procedural Textile Generator in Substance Designer
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Laura Gallagher gives an in depth breakdown of how she coded Loom, a procedural textile generator using Substance Designer which has been developed specifically with game character artists in mind. Tools to create procedural textiles allow artists to fully customize the look and feel of their textiles down to the individual fibers, controlling their spin, breakup, thickness, colors and more.
The talk has two major sections, the first being a crash course in textile anatomy, defining terms like weft, warp, S or Z spin and covering some of the basic weave types like twill and satin. The second section shows how these terms translate directly to code within Substance Designer. In both sections we start from individual fibers, describe their properties and zoom out from there, covering how fibers are spun into singles, how singles spun into yarn and ultimately how yarn is woven into textile.

Visual Arts
Programming

AI

Game AI Summit: Techniques for Visualizing the Output Diversity of Generative Systems
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Content generation systems for games are common, but tuning them is notoriously hard. Designers want to ensure a level of output diversity, but getting a useful view of the full range of content producible from a system is challenging. Such systems can produce uncountably large numbers of unique artefacts, each of which has to satisfy numerous constraints and subjective aesthetic goals.

This challenge of understanding the output range of a generative system is important for game designers, but it has also been a key concern for another group for the past two decades: Game AI researchers. Researchers need to directly compare novel generative systems to prior ones, and this has led to the development of alternative methods for describing and visualizing output diversity. In this talk, we will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these techniques and how they could be used in your future development.

Game AI Summit
Procedural

Game AI Summit: Multiagent Planning for Large-Scale Narrative Content
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This session will explore the techniques used at Bitpart AI to create multiagent behavior in games, with a focus on Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) planning for multi-modal actions, including dialogue, movement, and object interactions. Attendees will learn how to structure complex behaviors between AI agents in dynamic, narrative-driven environments, allowing characters to make real-time decisions and engage in meaningful interactions with players. The talk will cover multi-modal planning, behavioral concurrency, and strategies for scaling AI systems in large, data-driven worlds. Developers will walk away with actionable insights into balancing AI complexity while ensuring immersive, responsive game worlds that feel alive and natural.

Game AI Summit

Game AI Summit: Designing Emotions in 'Star Wars Outlaws' Gamblers NPCs
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When designing the card mini-game Kessel Sabacc for Star Wars Outlaws, one of the biggest challenges was to translate the fun of playing cards on a lively table to a PvE environment. Beyond making a ruleset fun and accessible, the high ambitions in immersion required the NPCs to express their frustration or their joy, just like any other gambler would do. This session explores how emotional behaviors were built for the Sabacc players NPC and the Canto Fathier Racing spectators NPC, two mini-games of Star Wars Outlaws. Inspired by classic human-computer interaction literature on emotional agents, the approach relies on the OCC model to better categorize and design a list of emotion assets, and a simplified Belief-Desire-Intention state machine to handle the logic of each emotional behavior.

Game AI Summit

Game AI Summit: Navigating Expansive Worlds: Implementing Custom Large World Support in Unreal
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Massive worlds cause massive problems for NPC navigation. Pathfinding across large complex spaces can cause unwanted in-game stutters or blow memory budgets, while recreating navigation data and manually placing traversal annotations (such as jumps, vaults, and climbs) grinds iterating on content to a halt.
In this session, learn how Havok streamlined the creation of navigation data for massive worlds in Unreal Engine. Richard Kogelnig covers the tools and techniques used to get the most out of developer iteration time and runtime navigation performance. The talk goes into detail on how advanced navigation features, like traversal analysis, cluster graphs, and global region pruning, were integrated on top of Unreal Engine's suite of Editor tools.

UX
Game AI Summit
Programming
Workflows

Game AI Summit: The Human Cost of Generative AI
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Generative AI is rapidly gaining popularity in the games industry, but beneath the hype lies a troubling reality. This technology, often built on uncredited and stolen work, is already being used to replace creative jobs and threatening the livelihoods of countless artists and developers. Beyond that, the massive environmental costs of maintaining AI infrastructure raise serious concerns about sustainability. This session will delve into the real, human dangers posed by generative AI, from its impact on the quality of creative work to the potential loss of genuine artistry in games. It will also discuss ways to eliminate some of these issues and how we can use the technology to enhance our workflows rather than replace them.

UX
Game AI Summit
Workflows

Audio

The Synthesizer Plugins of 'COCOON'
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The music that plays throughout most of COCOON is generated using 5 FMOD plugins, based on a handful of synthesis techniques including granular, subtractive, and FM/AM synthesis. These plugins run on all last- and current-generation consoles and on Windows.

Composer / programmer Jakob Schmid will explain the structure and operation of these instruments, how they are set up in FMOD Studio, and how they react to input from the game, focusing on a few experimentally developed control methods that might prove useful for any music software developer.

The plugins were developed experimentally using prototypes created in Bitwig's Grid mode and then reimplemented as FMOD Studio plugins in C++. This approach allowed rapid prototyping and effective implementation. A high level description of a few key components of the synthesizers is given, along with an explanation of how a graphical patch structure can be easily implemented in code.

Audio
Programming
Procedural

Ambience Design and Acoustic Systems in 'Senua's Saga: Hellblade II'
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Senuas Saga: Hellblade II is Ninja Theory's latest and most ambitious endeavour in engaging, interactive storytelling, and like its 2017 predecessor, environmental audio plays a crucial role in immersing the player in Senua's world and journey. Members of the Ninja Theory Audio team explain how they tackled the challenge of rebuilding the sonic world of 10th century Iceland from a creative and technical point of view. Sound Designer Pablo Canas explains the process involved in the creation of ambience sounds for Hellblade II, from inception to implementation, while Technical Sound Designer Alessio Mellina covers the acoustic system employed to achieve realism and believability.

QA
Audio

Voice-Over Pipeline of 'Avowed' for the Weird and Wondrous Living Lands
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Avowed had a gigantic amount of dialogue, spread across hundreds of unique characters that all needed great voice-over, in a very tight timeframe. Over 6 months, we had recorded over 45,000 lines of dialogue at high quality. This required a nuanced pipeline for: casting characters, editing conversations, scheduling actors, debriefing on the story and implementing all of this VO.

This talk will step through the Voice-Over process at Obsidian on Avowed. How our narrative pipeline is structured, how it interfaces with our tools and what this all looks like for an actor stepping into the booth. We'll cover what our goals were, the challenges we encountered and how everything ended up into the final product.

Programming
Pipeline
Audio

UX
Programming
Audio
Workflows

Vehicle Audio in 'Cyberpunk 2077': All About the Players
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Iconic vehicles are one of the signature elements of Cyberpunk 2077. They come in all shapes and sizes with cars, motorbikes, flying vehicles, and even a tank! They require systems that respond to player actions that need to make driving fun and engaging and the traffic versions make Night City alive and immersive. During the development of Cyberpunk 2077's 2.0 Update and Phantom Liberty expansion, CDPR devs completely overhauled the vehicle sound system. This talk explores various approaches, technical challenges and workflows that made it possible to shift the soundscape of 100+ vehicles.
The talk will show off various vehicle systems, as well as how sounds were designed, implemented, and joined together to create the driving experience. It will discuss the complexities of flying vehicles, focusing on the impact of vehicle sounds in scenes and the complex gameplay system design.

UX
Audio
Workflows

Visual Arts

Visual Effects Summit: Redefining Physical VFX Systems
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In the early stage of game design, it is important to identify which elements belong to VFX, and which are part of the rigid body system and can interact with gameplay. This distinction determines the flexibility of gameplay, interactivity, and artistic feel.

In this session, the contiguous spectrum between these two systems to unlock more gameplay options for designers and show how this understanding can enhance existing frameworks is explored. He will introduce a system that bridges VFX system and rigid body system, a system that supports team ASOBI in achieving unprecedentedly dynamic, interactive, and immersive gameplay with their latest Astro Bot game.

QA
Visual Effects Summit

Animation Summit: 'Diablo 4': Bringing to Life the Priestess of Hatred
i
An in-depth discussion of the animation and design collaboration behind the Priestess of Hatred encounter in Diablo 4. This talk explores the innovative tools, workflows, and interdisciplinary alignment that led to the smooth production of a highly complex creature, emphasizing the value of trust, creativity, and efficient decision-making across teams.

Pipeline
UX
Workflows
Animation Summit
Programming

Animation Summit: Animating Complex Emotions: Bringing Authenticity to Character Performance
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How would you animate a character in love, in a non-cliché way?
This talk equips animators with practical tools and techniques to add depth and emotional resonance to their work, regardless of production scale.
The session delves into the intricacies of emotions, the unique challenges faced in game animation, and methods for moving beyond clichés to create genuine and unique performances. By leveraging tools like Plutchik's Wheel and Bodily Maps of Emotion, attendees will learn actionable strategies for breaking down complex emotions, blending them with character personalities, and pushing creative boundaries. Featuring interactive demonstrations and real-world examples, this talk empowers animators to embrace the complexity of emotions and infuse their work with authenticity.

Animation Summit
Programming

Surface Gradients: The New Normal in Realtime Bump Mapping Workflows
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Sean Sherwin will be combining the surface gradient bump mapping framework with new production content ideas to show what's possible with the surface gradient framework. This will straddle art disciplines and is for character and environment artists looking to achieve unprecedented level of detail in their work within a realtime engine. He will explore how to exploit the framework to have scalable content production solutions. Enabling artists to have a flexible bump mapping workflow in engine that can save them time, memory and increase quality. Artist will feel like they've been working in black and white and are now being exposed to color.

UX
Visual Arts
Pipeline
Workflows

Animation Summit: Stop Motion Southern Gothic: Animating 'South of Midnight'
i
South of Midnight immediately captures people's attention with its southern gothic art style realized through the lens of stop motion visuals. This talk will have members of the animation and cutscene team break down how those visuals and performances were realized across gameplay and cutscenes, using an intentional blend of both art and tech.

Animation Summit
Programming

Visual Effects Summit: VFX Tricks that Might Save Your Life
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A VFX artist is expected to be able to solve a wide variety of problems. The more tools and tricks one has at their disposal, the more possibilities one has to explore to add depth and complexity to their work and achieve a better visual result, while at the same time being mindful of performance constraints.
In this session, Bruno showcases numerous VFX shader, mesh and texture techniques that he has accumulated throughout his career, that have proven useful, in a rapid fire manner, with illustrated examples.

Programming
Visual Effects Summit

Animation Summit: Bones and Booleans: Microtalks
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Welcome to the second season of Bones & Booleans! We've gathered experts from around the industry to talk about Animation Systems and the tools & techniques used in the space. Expect to see a few short microtalks with technical or practical advice, followed by an extended Q&A with the panelists answering questions drawn from an open form published earlier as well as the audience.

Perhaps the d20 will also make an appearance...

Animation Summit
Programming

Art Direction Summit: 'LEGO Horizon Adventures': Bringing the World to Life, Brick by Brick!
i
LEGO Horizon Adventures is a new LEGO game set in a brick-built world inspired by Guerrilla's critically acclaimed title Horizon Zero Dawn. In this talk, James Charlick (Lead artist at Studio Gobo) and Richard Court (Principal Artist at Studio Gobo) will talk about trying to push the boundaries and achieve a new benchmark not previously seen in LEGO titles. We will discuss how the team at Studio Gobo took on the challenge of making a world entirely out of LEGO bricks including terrain, buildings, rocks, foliage, clouds and even VFX! The talk will cover our approach, the artistic choices we made as well as mistakes and learnings that enabled us to deliver on our vision. We'll cover how we defined the style of the world, and theming of the various regions, and give an overview of the artist friendly pipeline and tools that we built enabling us to achieve our goals.

Art Direction Summit
Programming
Pipeline

Animation Summit: 2D Character Rigging in UE for Realtime Animation or MoCap
i
Rigging in real-time pipelines is gaining popularity, but 2D rigging has largely been overlooked by artists working within Unreal's rigging workflow. This talk introduces 2D character rigging and low cost motion capture techniques in Unreal.

In addition to exploring traditional 2D keyframe animation, a simple motion tracking workflow is presented, enabling real-time animation of a 2D character. Unlike conventional tracking workflows, this novel approach demonstrates how trackers can control IK limbs, emphasizing the feasibility and stability of animating a full 2D character using five trackers.

Additionally, 2D Drawing Replacements are introduced to mimic morph targets in 3D, allowing changing the drawing of body parts or facial features. In this setup, facial capture devices switch 2D drawing replacements to activate 2D facial expressions. Additional features demonstrate adjusting motion capture sensitivity and resetting the default pose to enhance performance flexibility, and allow live performers' movements to be mapped to unconventional default poses for the 2D character.

UX
Animation Summit
Pipeline
Workflows

Less Coding, More Booty Shakes: A New 'Peridot' Animation System
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Being an Animator in game development is chaotic already! There is a balance between creativity, technology, game design and more. Now add the situation where players can scan any object in their world and the need to have in-game characters recognize these objects and react based on their specific characteristics. Niantic is leading the charge in technical innovation, but how did the animation system and pipeline adapt with their technical progress and unique game requirements? Niantic's Lead Animator speaks about her experience of developing a new IP and creating a new patented animation system that was required to meet the ever-changing advancements of augmented reality and mixed reality gaming.

Visual Arts
Programming
Pipeline

Art Direction Summit: 'Angry Birds' and AI in Practice: Finding Our Own Way
i
This lecture explores Rovio Entertainment's use of Generative AI in art production pipelines, focusing on Angry Birds Dream Blast. How can you produce hundreds of high-quality illustrations a day without sacrificing the brand's promise? The session covers the technical implementation, challenges, and benefits of AI integration while emphasizing ethical considerations and brand impact. Key topics include safeguarding intellectual property, maintaining brand integrity, and balancing AI's unpredictability with precise creative control of traditional workflows. Examples from Angry Birds Dream Blast show how AI is used for background creation, but not for any core brand elements like characters. The lecture explains the reasons for this and highlights that while AI brings many changes, core storytelling and brand integrity remain crucial. It also aims to correct misconceptions about AI and offer guidance on adapting to this evolving technology.

UX
Art Direction Summit
Pipeline
Workflows

Art Direction Summit: Saving Your Gameplay Feedback Through Art Direction
i
Gameplay feedback (the visuals, VFX, and UI that we use to guide our players' actions in a game) can be a communication challenge between Art Direction and Design and is an essential pre-production consideration. Failure to think about the visual design of key game components early can cause significant roadblocks downstream. Experience has repeatedly shown that not concepting the look of your feedback early enough in pre-production can leave your team paralyzed as they encounter unforeseen conflicts and struggle to find solutions on the fly. This talk with show how to talk the same language as your game designers, common traps to we fall into, how we can correct our mistakes, and the lessons we can take into the future.

Art Direction Summit
Pipeline

Art Direction Summit: AAA Art at Scale: Getting Quality Results from External Partners
i
In the wake of massive layoffs across the industry, game studios are under pressure to meet ever increasing content demands with fewer internal resources. This has led to an increased load on art directors managing larger groups of external partners, and more artists and producers thrust into feedback owning roles without training. This practical talk walks art directors through the best ways to create emotionally impactful products when working with external partners regardless of internal team size. 2D pipelines are used as examples in the talk, but the content will be usable across any product.

Art Direction Summit
Pipeline

'Cyberpunk 2077': 'Hacking' the Secrets of Its Cinematic Animation
i
Cinematic animation is crucial to bringing Cyberpunk 2077's rich, well-written characters to life, ensuring full immersion into its brutal world. The session delves into the intricate animation techniques used to overcome the unique challenges of a first-person perspective game, giving fidelity to complex storytelling with thousands of detailed animations — all at the service of player experience. Among other animation techniques used in the pursuit of cinematic realism, you'll learn how our in-house RED Workspot System manages NPC behaviors and interactions across Night City, providing a naturalistic touch to its open world. Discover, with visual analysis and a case study, how all the techniques in our arsenal work together in Cyberpunk 2077 and its Phantom Liberty expansion to improve the kind of storytelling that has always been key to our studio.

UX
Visual Arts
Programming
Workflows

The Black Hair Matrix: A Game Developer's Toolkit for Authentic Black Hair Creation
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Join Isaac Olander, CEO at Tallgran, on his continued journey to enhance representation in games. Discover a new, systematic approach for creating diverse and authentic hairstyles. The 'Black Hair Matrix' simplifies and streamlines the creation of authentic and diverse hairstyles in game development. This presentation explores tools and workflows that make black hairstyles more technically approachable, with plenty of visual examples.

UX
Visual Arts
Programming
Workflows

Other Roundtables

The Great Engine Debate Roundtable (Presented by the IGDA)
i
As the game development landscape constantly evolves, so too do the tools we use to bring games to life. With major shifts in market share, controversies, and the rise of new contenders, it's time to revisit the perennial debate: commercial engines versus proprietary solutions and everything in between. This session will explore the strengths and weaknesses of popular commercial engines like Unity and Unreal, the draw of open source solutions like Godot and Ogre 3D, alongside the unique challenges and rewards of developing a custom engine. We will also reflect on lessons learned from engines that haven't succeeded to help attendees make informed choices for their projects.

Advocacy
Programming

Behind the Screens: Optimizing Production for Remote Teams Roundtable (Presented by the IGDA)
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Managing remote game development teams requires creativity and flexibility to keep everyone productive and aligned. Join us for this roundtable discussion hosted by the IGDA Production SIG, where we'll explore the ins and outs of remote production, including ways to encourage collaboration, tackle time zones, and optimize workflows within a distributed team. Through shared experiences and practical tips, participants will discover ways to optimize their successful, remote-first production.

UX
Advocacy
Workflows

Visual Effects Roundtable Day 1
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The tools and techniques of Real Time VFX have changed dramatically over the past few years. There are now extraordinarily powerful desktop GPUs, rapidly advancing mobile GPUs, compute shaders, complex particle sims, mesh-based effect techniques, and advanced post processing and compositing tools. The new consoles have matured and are showing what they're capable of, and VR/AR/XR continues to impact the industry. It's an incredible time in Real Time VFX. Join this roundtable to hear from other VFX artists, learn about their successes and failures, compare pie-in-the-sky ideas, and share your favorite tricks. Day 1: General topics and revisiting ground broken in the VFX Summit earlier in the week. (Jason Keyser) Day 2: VFX through an Artistic Lens, focusing on attendee questions about the artistic aspects of VFX. This may include art education (as students or veterans), art direction, and more. (Jason Keyser) Day 3: The Technical Lens for creating VFX, guiding the conversation through such as graph based effect authoring, effect lighting and optimization, new mesh based techniques, VR/AR/XR, and more. (David Johnson)

Visual Arts
Programming

Visual Effects Roundtable Day 3
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The tools and techniques of Real Time VFX have changed dramatically over the past few years. There are now extraordinarily powerful desktop GPUs, rapidly advancing mobile GPUs, compute shaders, complex particle sims, mesh-based effect techniques, and advanced post processing and compositing tools. The new consoles have matured and are showing what they're capable of, and VR/AR/XR continues to impact the industry. It's an incredible time in Real Time VFX. Join this roundtable to hear from other VFX artists, learn about their successes and failures, compare pie-in-the-sky ideas, and share your favorite tricks. Day 1: General topics and revisiting ground broken in the VFX Summit earlier in the week. (Jason Keyser) Day 2: VFX through an Artistic Lens, focusing on attendee questions about the artistic aspects of VFX. This may include art education (as students or veterans), art direction, and more. (Jason Keyser) Day 3: The Technical Lens for creating VFX, guiding the conversation through such as graph based effect authoring, effect lighting and optimization, new mesh based techniques, VR/AR/XR, and more. (David Johnson)

Visual Arts
Programming

Animation Roundtables Day 1
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The Animation Roundtable aims to bring all disciplines together under a common cause- how to best implement and improve the field of animation in game development. The following questions are among those that will be addressed: Who should be directing the animation in a game? Who owns each part of the animation pipeline after export? How can all disciplines work together better, to bring the best looking and feeling animation to their game? What workflow frustrations have been experienced and how were they resolved? What new technologies are available or coming online that can help animators excel at their jobs, and what challenges will those technologies bring? What is your best tip or trick that you think everyone needs to hear? What mistakes have you made that you think others can learn from? How can we all give and take feedback better, from all disciplines? In addition, this roundtable discussion will focus on helping newcomers by dedicating the last part of each session to them, encouraging questions to help them get prepared (or jump-started!) in their animation careers.

UX
Visual Arts
Pipeline
Workflows

Game Audio Programmer Roundtable Day 1: Game Integration
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Wednesday: 'Audio Programming Roundtable: Game Integration'
This roundtable session will focus on tools and techniques for integrating with game engines. Topics will center around technology choices, game audio engine design, and tool design. Newbies and experts are welcome to come and share their wisdom.

Thursday: 'Audio Programming Roundtable: Low-Level Topics'
This roundtable session will focus on low-level topics such as DSPs and mixing. Topics will center around algorithms, interesting effects to implement, and integrating those effects into workflows. Newbies and experts are welcome to come and share their wisdom.

Friday: 'Audio Programming Roundtable: Free-for-all'
In this roundtable session we will cover any topics that we didn't get to in the previous two days. We will also have a Q&A session where your questions can be answered by expert audio programmers. Newbies and experts are welcome to come and share their wisdom.

Programming
Audio
Programming
UX
Workflows

AI Roundtables Day 2
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The Wednesday deep dives roundtable prioritizes topics that come from the AI summit. We may also cover topics that should have been in the summits. The Thursday roundtable is a lightning Q&A round. Brings questions about game AI or to get them answered. Or bring your expertise and help answer those questions. The Friday roundtable will be AI centric, but it prioritizes machine learning topics. Topics like reinforcement learning, generative AI, and neural networks will be welcomed. In addition, the applicability of these techniques is strongly encouraged as topics. We'd also like to hear about lessons learned in using ML across game design.

Programming
Machine Learning

Animation Roundtables Day 2
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The Animation Roundtable aims to bring all disciplines together under a common cause- how to best implement and improve the field of animation in game development. The following questions are among those that will be addressed: Who should be directing the animation in a game? Who owns each part of the animation pipeline after export? How can all disciplines work together better, to bring the best looking and feeling animation to their game? What workflow frustrations have been experienced and how were they resolved? What new technologies are available or coming online that can help animators excel at their jobs, and what challenges will those technologies bring? What is your best tip or trick that you think everyone needs to hear? What mistakes have you made that you think others can learn from? How can we all give and take feedback better, from all disciplines? In addition, this roundtable discussion will focus on helping newcomers by dedicating the last part of each session to them, encouraging questions to help them get prepared (or jump-started!) in their animation careers.

UX
Visual Arts
Pipeline
Workflows

ML Roundtable Day 2: In-Game Runtime Features
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ML Roundtable: In-Game Runtime Features

Dive into the exciting frontier of real-time Machine Learning in games! This roundtable brings together leading experts to discuss the practical applications, challenges, and future potential of integrating ML features directly into your game engine. Explore how runtime AI can power dynamic gameplay experiences, enhance AI agents, personalize player interactions, and push the boundaries of procedural content generation, all while maintaining critical performance budgets. Join our panel for a lively discussion on current best practices, emerging techniques, and the transformative impact of ML on the future of game development.

Programming
Machine Learning
Procedural

Commercial Game Engines

Developer Iteration and Efficiency in Unreal Engine (Presented by Epic Games)
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Join us to explore how best to leverage the features and systems available today in UE 5.5—and those coming in future releases—to reduce your project iteration turnaround times, focusing on cooking, builds, and on-target deployment.

Programming
Pipeline

Why Build with Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) (Presented by Epic Games)
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In this session, we'll explore the benefits of building your game with Unreal Editor for Fortnite. Join us to explore what it means to be a developer in the Fortnite ecosystem and discover the wide opportunities for new and experienced game developers in the space.

Swing by to learn all about using current and upcoming features, how to bring over your UE skills, publishing your first game, and monetizing through the creator engagement program.

Design
Programming

Best Practices for AAA Development in UEFN (Presented by Epic Games)
i
Take a deep dive into various UEFN features that will allow you to build sophisticated islands and experiences within the Fortnite ecosystem. We'll explore ways to create custom UIs, use persistent data, and other features that empower you to test and deploy your UEFN games.

Design
Programming
QA

Moving to Mobile: Workflows for Unreal Engine Mobile Development (Presented by Epic Games)
i
Remove the fear and unknowns from mobile game development in Unreal Engine. In this session, we'll break down key workflows in Unreal Engine for building cross-platform games, including performance optimization, UI, touch inputs, and Blueprints, as well as covering mobile-specific features like IAP, ad integration, and push notifications.

We'll also explore new features added in the latest version of Unreal Engine specifically for mobile and peek into what's coming in the future.

UX
Programming
QA
Workflows

Dynamic Destruction in UE5 with the Chaos Destruction System (Presented by Epic Games)
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This session explores the evolving Chaos Destruction system: a toolset that empowers artists to create dynamic destruction by defining how geometry fractures and interacts in simulations.

Using tools that fracture geometry, define clustering models, and leverage strain evaluation, destructible assets respond to environmental forces, enabling realistic and controlled destruction.

Focusing on the latest features in Unreal Engine 5.5, this talk examines cost-effective methods for destroying geometry collections without excessive field usage, leveraging anchoring directly from the Fracture Mode and using Niagara Data Channels for gameplay interactivity.

Attendees will gain insight into propagation techniques, including break and shock propagation, and learn new workflows for enhancing destruction mechanics with improved simulation tools.

Whether you're anchoring assets, manipulating strain values for precise control, or building gameplay-driven destruction, join us for practical guidance on using Chaos Destruction to its fullest potential in Unreal Engine.

UX
Programming
QA
Workflows

Unity Developer Summit: The Unity Engine Roadmap (Presented by Unity)
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Want a sneak peek at the future of Unity? Join us at GDC 2025 for a can't-miss session exploring the latest advancements in the Unity Editor and Engine. In just one hour, we'll dive into the innovations shaping Unity 6—our current generational release—including upgrades to graphics performance, expanded platform support, and industry-leading tools. Discover how creativity, efficiency, and innovation come together to empower creators like you.

Programming
QA
Procedural

Unity Developer Summit: Accelerating the Creation of your Competitive Multiplayer Game (Presented by Unity)
i
Learn how to streamline the creation of scalable and competitive multiplayer games with Unity 6's new end-to-end multiplayer workflow. This session provides a live walkthrough of powerful tools such as the Multiplayer Center, Multiplayer Widgets, Playmode Tools, Multiplayer Roles, and the seamless in-editor integration of Multiplay Hosting and Matchmaking. Whether you're refining your multiplayer workflow or looking to launch your next multiplayer title, this session offers actionable insights and hands-on techniques to help you build robust, scalable multiplayer experiences for players around the globe.

UX
Programming
Workflows

Unity Developer Summit: Best Practices with 2D Workflows in Unity 6 (Presented by Unity)
i
Bringing your 2D game art direction to life is exciting—but it can also be labor-intensive. In this session, we'll explore creative workflows and techniques to help you streamline your 2D production pipelines. Topics include pixel art authoring, performance optimization, 2D physics workflows, and advanced customization capabilities. Plus, we'll share an exclusive sneak peek at in-progress Unity advancements for 2D game development. Join Rus Scammell, Unity's Product Manager for 2D, as he guides you through tools, workflows, and tips to make your 2D games more efficient and visually compelling.

UX
Programming
Pipeline
Workflows

Unity Developer Summit: Performance Tips & Tricks from a Unity Consultant (Presented by Unity)
i
Learn proven performance best practices from Nicolas Borromeo, a Unity consultant and author of the Hands-On Unity Game Development book series. In this session, Nicolas will outline some of the most impactful performance issues developers commonly encounter while working on Unity projects. You'll learn practical strategies to avoid or resolve these obstacles and ensure smoother performance. With live demos, this session will showcase how to use profiling tools to identify problem areas and apply effective solutions directly within a Unity project.

UX
Programming
Pipeline
Workflows

Unity Developer Summit: Graphics Rendering: Getting the Best Performance with Unity 6.1 (Presented by Unity)
i
Ready to take your game's performance to the next level across mobile, desktop, and console platforms? This session introduces the powerful graphics optimizations and tools in Unity 6.1 that can help minimize CPU and GPU rendering overhead. Learn how to increase frame rate, extend mobile battery life, and push visual fidelity further.

Programming
QA

Unity Developer Summit: Getting Dredge to Look Great and Run Cool on Mobile (Presented by Unity)
i
Discover the challenges and strategies behind bringing the award-winning game Dredge to Android. This session explores optimization techniques used to improve framerate, thermal efficiency, and GPU performance. Learn how the team optimized game assets and shaders for the Universal Render Pipeline (URP), developed an innovative approach to generating Level of Detail (LOD) models, and leveraged Adaptive Performance (ADPF) to address platform-specific challenges. This session will also cover solutions for issues around OpenGL and Vulkan, offering actionable insights to help you optimize mobile ports and push the boundaries of performance in real-time 3D projects.

Programming
Pipeline

Unity Developer Summit: Immersive Experiences: Building Cross-Platform Mixed Reality (Presented by Unity)
i
2025 promises exciting advancements in XR with new devices and enhanced spatial capabilities. Discover Unity's latest cross-platform development tools in Unity 6, designed to help you create innovative and immersive experiences. Build for leading XR platforms with tools that empower creators to push the boundaries of what's possible.

Programming
QA

Unity Developer Summit: Building Fear: The Tech Behind Phasmophobia (Presented by Unity)
i
Join Kinetic Games as they unveil the tech that powers Phasmophobia, the hit multiplatform ghost-hunting game. The team will delve into core mechanics, showcasing code snippets and screenshots to reveal secrets behind the game's atmosphere and immersion. Discover how algorithms create unpredictable ghost behaviour, how Kinetic uses the Unity Engine, and the tools and techniques used to bring the paranormal to life. This is a must-attend for developers and enthusiasts of all things spooky and technical.

Design
Programming

Design

'The Witcher 3' REDkit: Lessons Learned Bringing an In-House Engine to the Public
i
The Witcher 3: REDkit is a tool that allows players to create and modify content for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. In this session, Bence and Oleg will explain how REDkit was developed, its effects on the player community, and the challenges they faced in updating an engine that had been in use for nearly a decade. They will provide practical examples of the development process and how they addressed various obstacles to deliver a valuable resource for modders.

Design
Programming

Level Design Summit: Fostering Exploration: 9 Ways to Encourage Open World Engagement
i
Anyone who has worked on an open world game knows that one of the biggest challenges is getting players to care about your open world. Despite all the proper planning, playtesting and general iteration, player engagement with anything but the story missions are not quite at expectations.

This talk by Cameron offers tools to increase player engagement with your open world and turn your 15% activity engagement to 50%. These methods help designers increase content overlap, provide additional structure, and create more applications for varying player types. Attendees will hear real-world examples, review case studies, and dig into a variety of considerations to better communicate progression goals and exploration pillars with their team. Each method will provide problem spaces with examples of solutions. There are strong differences between golden, silver and bronze path content and attendees will dive into getting player's eyes unglued from the gold!

Level Design Summit
Programming
QA

Level Design Summit: From 'Skyrim' and 'Fallout' to Solo Dev: Creating 'The Axis Unseen'
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How does someone make a giant open world game as a solo indie developer?

Using lessons learned making games such as Fallout 3, Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout 76 and Starfield, Nate Purkeypile will discuss how he built The Axis Unseen by himself. This will cover topics such as world map layout and design, procedural generation versus manual, using Unreal 5 to make an open world game, production methods, playtesting, optimization, bug fixing and who should consider being a solo dev.

This will cover all the aspects that people need to know about when making an open world game, either as a small indie or as a AAA developer.

Level Design Summit
QA
Procedural

Designing 10,000 Handcrafted Puzzles for 'Islands of Insight'
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Islands of Insight was a puzzle MMO released by Lunarch Studios and Behaviour Interactive in February 2024. With over 10,000 handmade puzzles, it was one of the biggest puzzle games ever made.

This talk is a design post-mortem by the director of Islands of Insight. It will cover many of the key learnings from the game's development, on topics such as prototyping new puzzle types, structuring content to avoid sticking points, enhancing accessibility through UI and tutorial design, and balancing puzzle-heavy content for flow and pacing.

It will also detail some of the successful innovations in puzzle creation that were beloved by fans of the game, as well as some of the lessons learned from puzzle types that were never shipped or were less well-received.

Design

Invisible UI: How thatgamecompany Designs Interfaces for Emotional Immersion
i
thatgamecompany is known for creating minimalist, emotionally impactful experiences, as seen in their games Journey and Flower. In their latest project, Sky: Children of the Light, they expanded their vision by developing an MMO with deeper mechanics, available on platforms ranging from mobile phone to PC. This presented unique challenges in user interface design and development, as they aimed to make Sky accessible to a casual audience while maintaining their signature minimalism.
In this talk, Dylan Faust (UI Lead at thatgamecompany) discusses key UI design patterns they developed to deepen players' emotional immersion, while making the game intuitive for a diverse audience. He also explains the methods and technologies they use to extend their designs across various input devices and platforms.

Design
QA

Doing It Live: Prototyping in 'MARVEL SNAP'
i
Game development is a race - not just any race, but a frantic sprint through a maze full of invisible walls and playtesters shouting, 'This is fun!' (But is it, Greg? IS IT?!!)
Come learn how at Second Dinner we optimize for what we call 'Speed to Signal,' our approach to getting the highest quality feedback as fast as possible. To demonstrate, we'll take a look at how we designed the new social feature, Alliances, for MARVEL SNAP, a game not inherently built for social interactions.

Design
QA

Crafting Sabacc in 'Star Wars Outlaws'
i
Star Wars Outlaws is an action-adventure open-world game immersing players in a lesser-known part of the Star Wars universe, telling stories of the underworld, scoundrels and corruption. While roaming the galaxy, players can take part in various mini-games, which represent an important part of the Scoundrel Fantasy but also are a compelling progression tool.
This session explores the creative process and challenges the team at Ubisoft Paris Studio went through to create compelling mini-games in Star Wars Outlaws, focusing on the most famous card game in the galaxy: Sabacc. From creating the ruleset to overcoming to implementing diegetic mini-games in an open-world game, the session will delve in the main steps of development that made this implementation a success.

Design
Programming

Behind a Hundred Million Mini-Games: Why Everyone Loves Creating Games in 'Eggy Party'
i
The challenge for any UGC platform is transforming players with no creation experience into content creators who can gradually progress and produce more high-quality content. Currently, 'Eggy Party' boasts over 100 million player-created mini-game, and over 26 million creators with the youngest being only five years old. We believe our key to success lies in resolving a contradiction: ensuring that the UGC tools are simple and easy to understand for beginners while also meeting the needs of professional creators for rich features and editing efficiency. Through user experience design, we provide a suitable editing experience for creators of varying skillsets and stages.

Design
Programming

Postmortem

Independent Games Summit: Creating a Handcrafted Game: 'Harold Halibut' Postmortem
i
SLOW BROS., has worked on their debut title, Harold Halibut for more than a decade.
The game consists entirely of physically made models that are 3D scanned and put together in the Unity engine.
The result is a wholly unique stop motion-like visual quality that is deeply immersive through its carefully crafted interactivity.

This presentation will explore the studio's bumpy yet fortunate journey, showcasing its unconventional asset creation and development pipeline, as well as the experimental and iterative processes that led to this approach.

Independent Games Summit
Pipeline
Postmortem
UX
Workflows

Production & Leadership

AI Tools, IP Rules: Who Owns the Content?
i
The future of game development is AI. Developers have access to an increasing number of different AI tools to assist them in generating a host of elements of games, from art and graphics, music, sound effects, characters, and storylines to actual code, 3d objects, and game maps. But with these new tools comes complicated new IP issues. This session will examine the legal complexities surrounding the ownership of AI-generated game elements, including the potential for disputes over copyright and the implications for player agency in-game elements.

Business & Marketing
Programming

From Players to Creators: A Guide to User-Generated Content Success in 'Arma Reforger'
i
In Arma's vast, open world, the path from player to creator is more than just a journey—it's a transformation that reshapes our very approach to game development and community building. This session is set to illuminate the crucial role of user-generated content (UGC) in pushing the boundaries of Arma, underlining its invaluable impact on fostering a robust community, the marvels of modularity, and ensuring the game's persistent charm.
The speakers navigate the intricate process of how UGC morphs ordinary players into architects of their own adventures. You'll get an insider look at how we craft Arma's expansive sandbox tool set and tackle the unique challenges that emerge when players tinker and toy, modding the game into uncharted territories. The goal? So that you can learn from our playbook of trials, and construct your own Lego empire for your players.

Pipeline
Programming
Production & Team Leadership

How Managing Dependencies for 'Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty' Led to Smooth Production and a Successful Release
i
Konrad will present the challenges and strategies of managing dependencies between teams in complex technological projects, drawing on his experience from the production of Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty. The talk will focus on how Dependency Qube can turn chaos into structured, multidimensional, product-focused collaboration. You can expect many real-life examples and tips on how to easily use it yourself. The talk will also touch upon the barriers and challenges that need to be addressed in an organization before it can be used.

Production & Team Leadership

Amplifying Player Voices with LLMs in Game Development
i
Our players dedicate tens, hundreds, or even thousands of hours to the experiences that we craft for them. Players have valuable feedback about how we can improve those experiences, but it can be challenging for developers to quickly parse vast amounts of feedback and identify ways to improve experiences. The presenters will explore the benefits and risks of using Large Language Models (LLMs) for analyzing player feedback. LLMs offer a way to efficiently analyze feedback at depth and scale that has not been previously possible. However, there are dangers of producing incorrect outcomes that are easy to overlook without a careful approach. Prompt structure, game terminology, and data complexity can easily trip up LLMs. The session will present ways that Blizzard has been validating the use of LLMs for this type of analysis. We will illustrate workflows for using LLMs to enhance processes for analyzing feedback from players.

UX
Production & Team Leadership
Workflows

Process Lite: Less Time on Process, More Time on Development
i
There is a delicate balance to how much process helps development run smoothly and it feeling like processes are getting in the way of the work itself. This talk is about advice and actionable steps for teams that are feeling overburdened by process and producers feeling overwhelmed with the time commitments needed to maintain those processes.

How to avoid falling into the trap of adding more heavy-handed and time-consuming processes to 'fix' development workflows. Discuss how to have the conversations on scaling back on the level of process.

Delve into what the right ratio of producers for a project is and how that ratio needs to scale based on a number of factors including the layers of process being used

Finding the right balance of process for your team, what areas to really focus on, and how much bandwidth is needed to maintain those processes.

UX
Production & Team Leadership
Workflows

Third-party DCC Tools

Twisting Terrain and Populating Forests on an Anomalized Olympic Peninsula for Pacific Drive (Presented by Houdini)
i
As an indie game studio, Ironwood Studios needed an efficient way to make a massive number of bespoke maps for their game, Pacific Drive, but with only a small team to do so. Utilizing Houdini Engine for Unreal and with the help of a proprietary UE plugin, they created a suite of tools to empower a much smaller team to create and decorate a large library of dense and diverse maps. Karl Kohlman (tech artist) will cover the general methodologies used to refine rough terrain sculpts into shippable landscapes, generating maps for landscape material layers, controllable blending of biomes, road spline incorporation and terrain modification, and foliage scattering based on all of the aforementioned data. Kendall Wix (level designer) will cover the end user experience, how he incorporated the tools into his work flow, as well as the myriad of benefits the tools provided.

Pipeline
UX
Workflows
Design
Programming

Tool Development Stories from the Game Tools Team at Houdini (Presented by Houdini)
i
Based on his years of experience as a technical artist and then as a team lead at SideFX Labs, creating game tools widely used in the industry, Mai Ao will share with you a list of principles he follows in tool development, such as how to understand the artists, how to nurture your motivation and support your teammates, how to navigate tough problems, and how to not give up in the face of uncertainty. Meanwhile, Senior Technical Artist Cody Spahr will address the challenges of implementing procedural generation systems at production scale, focusing on issues faced when iterating large environments. Using an internal tool as context, he will introduce strategies for creating non-destructive workflows that balance efficiency with the demands of large-scale game development.

UX
Workflows
Procedural
Visual Arts
Programming
Programming

Autodesk Developer Summit: Leveling Up Creative Workflows with AI
i
AI is the buzz everyone's talking about, and we're thrilled to take you on an exciting journey into the future of gaming with Hilmar Koch, Autodesk Research Director for M&E Industry. We'll show real-world examples of how AI is revolutionizing the industry and learn about Autodesk's commitment to ethical AI to boost artists' productivity and creativity. Get an exclusive look at groundbreaking research projects that are thoughtfully and responsibly shaping the future of design and make.

UX
Visual Arts
Workflows

Adobe Developer Summit: Silent Hill 2: Remaking a Horror Icon — An Artistic Journey into Fear (Presented by Adobe)
i
This session will explore the balance of preserving SILENT HILL 2's iconic essence while embracing state-of-the-art technology. Key elements include the transformative use of camera and level design, as well as the crucial role of art in amplifying environmental storytelling. From the symbolic fog world to the haunting otherworld, every detail enhances the depth of the narrative.
Iconic characters and monsters take center stage, with a focus on casting, visuals, and direction to honor their legacy while amplifying their emotional and thematic impact for today's audience.
In the practical segment, Mateusz Lenart and Pablo Poliakov will delve into the creation of the game's iconic monsters, showcasing how Adobe tools were utilized to perfectly balance nostalgia and innovation. This approach breathes new life into these unforgettable figures, ensuring they resonate deeply with both devoted fans and a new generation of players.

Visual Arts
Programming
Procedural

Adobe Developer Summit: Game Environment Creation Made Easier with Substance 3D Designer (Presented by Adobe)
i
Delve into the creative process of Niki Marinov as he unveils his Signature Collection of ten realistic materials for Substance 3D Assets, bringing the 19th-century Bulgarian Revival to life. Discover how Niki artfully used these parametric materials to create a traditional village as a playable game environment. He will detail how he leveraged the power of Substance 3D Designer to ensure the versatility of the various textures and used them in a wide range of contexts in his project.

UX
Visual Arts
Workflows

Adobe Developer Summit: Adobe Substance 3D Keynote (Presented by Adobe)
i
Stay updated on the most recent advancements and news within the Adobe Substance 3D ecosystem. Learn how the Substance 3D team is enhancing workflows and empowering artists to produce stunning games and content. The team will reveal the latest product updates, initiatives, and much more.

UX
Visual Arts
QA
Workflows

Adobe Developer Summit: Layer by Layer: Texturing with Intent in Substance 3D (Presented by Adobe)
i
Using Substance 3D, Kasita will take you through her approach to crafting materials that tell a story—one layer at a time. Whether you're working on a whimsical character or a grounded, realistic prop, understanding how materials evolve in the real world is key to bringing your digital creations to life. She'll demonstrate how to layer textures, focusing on intent while avoiding unnecessary complexity. You'll learn how to break down materials into logical steps, ensuring each layer contributes to the final result with purpose. Along the way, she will share insights into balancing realism with imagination, making even the most creative designs feel authentic. By the end of the session, you'll have a structured workflow for building believable textures that enhance storytelling and artistic direction in your projects.

UX
Visual Arts
Programming
Workflows

Adobe Developer Summit: Helldivers 2: Diving into Biome Material Creation with a Tiny Team (Presented by Adobe)
i
Dive into the material creation for biome environments in Helldivers 2. As the sole material artist at Arrowhead Games Studios, Romain Lemaire will guide you through the evolution of the material pipeline, from its inception to its current state. Learn how a streamlined approach to material authoring was developed to meet the challenges of creating diverse planetary environments with limited resources. This presentation will cover the technical and artistic solutions implemented to maintain quality and consistency across multiple biomes, including the use of procedural tools and efficient workflow strategies that enabled a single artist to manage the material creation for an entire game.

Visual Arts
Pipeline
UX
Workflows
Programming

Autodesk Developer Summit: The Magic Behind Baldur's Gate 3: Pipeline Efficiency Enabled by Production Management Tools (Presented by Autodesk)
i
Discover the game development sorcery behind the hit title Baldur's Gate 3 and how it was brought to life with remarkable efficiency with the help of product management tools.

Pipeline
UX
Workflows
Production & Team Leadership
Programming

Autodesk Developer Summit: Unleashing Creativity: Building Artist-Friendly Pipeline Tools and Workflows (Presented by Autodesk)
i
Discover how LIGHTSPEED STUDIOS maximize their team's creativity with the help of production management tools such as Flow Production Tracking.

UX
Programming
Pipeline
Workflows

Autodesk Developer Summit: Power Up your Game Development Workflow with Bifrost for Maya (Presented by Autodesk)
i
Gear up for an in-depth session on leveraging Bifrost, Autodesk Maya's visual programming environment, for procedural world-building in game development. Discover how Bifrost can transform your workflow by automating content creation, enabling you to generate high-quality and diverse assets quickly and efficiently. Elevate your creative output with Bifrost and create immersive game environments like never before.

UX
Visual Arts
Programming
Workflows

Autodesk Developer Summit: Animation Workflow Hacks for Seamless Game Engine Integration (Presented by Autodesk)
i
With deadlines looming, you don't have time for trial and error. Join Alex Ferreira Simoes, Senior Gameplay Animator at Riot Games, as he shares the animation techniques that streamlined the process in League of Legends and other game projects. Learn the secrets to optimizing your workflow, setting up your scenes correctly, and ensuring smooth integration with any game engine.

UX
Visual Arts
Workflows

Autodesk Developer Summit: Ethical AI for Next-Gen Game Development (Presented by Autodesk)
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Join us for an enlightening session with seasoned industry veteran, Rade Stojsavljevic to demystify AI models and provide valuable insights on how game studios can ethically and effectively integrate AI into their pipelines, what AI can and can't do well, and where the technology might be heading.

Visual Arts
Pipeline

Check out the other guides from previous years:

24 Feb 2024 » Toolsmiths GDC 2024 Guide

At GDC 2024, you’re diving into an expansive sea of over 650 sessions, tutorials, and events. With 350 of these containing the word “tool” or similar terms, finding those that align with your expertise and needs might seem overwhelming.

Here, I have distilled and organized a list of sessions tailored for Game Tools developers.

This guide is your compass through GDC 2024’s vast offerings. Whether you’re going in person or watching these sessions via the GDC Vault, the curated selection is designed to optimize your experience at GDC 2024, ensuring you engage with the most relevant content for you.

Note: Several presentations highlighted may not focus exclusively on tools, yet they offer valuable insights and fresh perspectives. Grasping the nuances of how our tools’ users operate is crucial for our tools’ effectiveness and success.

If you don't have a lot of time or just want Game Dev Tool-centered sessions - don’t miss the Tools Roundtables, and Tools Design Roundtables. These sessions are organized by Geoff Evans, David Lightbown, and Robin-Yann Storm to bring you the best Tool Centered Talks and Discussions from experts around the industry.

Sessions marked with Toolsmiths icon - point to sessions that you should consider going to because you are 100% guaranteed to find insight as a Tools Developer.

Keywords & Key Roles

I have tried to make navigating this list easier by providing helper labels that will hint what Tool Developer roles might be interested in this session. Just use the find feature of your web browser and type one of the following key terms.

Here is the list of roles that you can use to search:

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer
Pipeline Dev
ML Dev
Build Dev
Tool Lead
Dev Support/Integration Engineer
Tools QA

Glossary of Key Roles

DCC Tool Dev - a software engineer that is focused on digital content creation tools that artists, designers, and other devs use.
Tool UX/UI Designer - a UX designer, User Researcher that is specializing in Game Development tools and workflows
Tools QA - a quality assurance specialist who concentrates on testing the features of development tools, responsible for identifying, reproducing, and refining bug reports from users to ensure the reliability and functionality of these tools.
Pipeline Dev - a software engineer that optimizes and maintains the software and systems facilitating efficient data transformation between different content creation tools and the game,
ML Dev - a software developer specialized in designing and developing applications powered by machine learning technologies.
Build Dev - a software engineer with expertise in managing CI/CD processes, ensuring game reliability/quality at scale, handling game packaging, and overseeing various DevOps processes along with the infrastructure that supports these systems.
Dev Support/Integration Engineer - a engineer/technician that is dedicated to enhancing studio-wide tool efficiency and workflow quality, acting as a central resource for addressing any questions or issues related to tools, game engines, and content setup, with the goal of unblocking and optimizing the work of content creators, tech artists, and engineers (a.k.a. Production Engineer).
Tool Lead - a software engineer responsible for overseeing the development and integration of tools and pipelines that streamline game production, ensuring teams have efficient workflows and robust systems to support all aspects of game development.

Furthermore, you can search the list by using the following keywords:

Programming
UX
Workflows
Pipeline
VFX
Visual Arts
Production

Design
AI
Procedural
Machine Learning
Visual Arts

How to use this list

If you are going to GDC, you can follow the links in the list below to create a schedule for yourself. Alternatively, if you already have a plan, you can check and make sure you don’t miss out on anything you would enjoy.
If you are not going, you can still look forward to watching sessions that you want to see in the GDC Vault.

I’m sure that you can find a session that will inspire you to make something great!

Tools Summit
Tools Roundtables
Technical Art Roundtables
Automated Testing Roundtables
Universal Scene Description Roundtable
Open Source Roundtable
UX
Programming
Pipeline
Version Control & Files
Build
AI/ML in Testing
Automation, Automated Testing, and QA
Technical Art
Machine Learning
Procedural
AI-enhanced content authoring
AI
Audio
Visual Arts
Independent Games
Other Roundtables
Commercial Game Engines
Design
Production & Leadership
Sponsored Sessions

Tools Summit

Unfortuantly there is no Tools Summit this year. 😿

It will return strong next year! 💪

Tools Roundtables

Tools Design Roundtable Day 1: Design & UX
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For Day 1:
This Tool Design roundtable is about the UX of in-house and external toolsets. Come and meet, discuss, and find out what everyone has been doing with Tool Design in the last year.
Examples of topics discussed in previous years are:
1. What user experience techniques have you seen best fit for your toolsets?
2. Is classical UX applicable in tools, or is it very different?
3. What differences, if any, have tool service companies seen with their tool designs?
This years' questions may be different, or similar! Feel free to join, and ask.

Programming
Design

Tool UX/UI Designer
DCC Tool Dev
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer

Tools Roundtable Day 1: Engineering
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These roundtable sessions focus on discussion of best practices, novel techniques, and technical trade-offs for building game development tools and services. Game development tools are constantly evolving, so come to share what works (and what doesn't) at your studio, and listen to others' take on how to keep their creative teams producing awesome games.

Wednesday: 'Engineering', focuses on tools programming, testing, deployment, frameworks, scripting, automation, extensibility, and telemetry.

Thursday: 'Assets' focuses on export/import, interchange, persistence, collaboration, search and organization, development models (branching and/or trunking), revision control, and outsourcing.

Friday: 'Build' focuses on processing assets through to the game in all its forms: build systems, caching, distribution, scalability, optimization, disc mastering and patching.

Pipeline
Programming
QA

Dev Support/Integration Engineer
DCC Tool Dev
Tools QA
Build Dev
Pipeline Dev

Tools Design Roundtable Day 2: Production & Strategy
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For Day 2:
This Tool Design roundtable is about the UX of in-house and external toolsets. Come and meet, discuss, and find out what everyone has been doing with Tool Design in the last year.
Examples of topics discussed in previous years are:
1. What communication channels do you use to inform users about new tool features? E-mail? Meetings? Videos? Gifs?
2. What is a ticketing request pipeline that works really well for you?
3. In what size team did your tool request/ticket pipeline work best?
This years' questions may be different, or similar! Feel free to join, and ask.

Pipeline
Programming
Design

Tool UX/UI Designer
DCC Tool Dev
Dev Support/Integration Engineer
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer

Tools Roundtable Day 2: Assets
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These roundtable sessions focus on discussion of best practices, novel techniques, and technical trade-offs for building game development tools and services. Game development tools are constantly evolving, so come to share what works (and what doesn't) at your studio, and listen to others' take on how to keep their creative teams producing awesome games.

'Assets' focuses on export/import, interchange, persistence, collaboration, search and organization, development models (branching and/or trunking), revision control, and outsourcing.

Pipeline
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Pipeline Dev

Tools Roundtable Day 3: Build
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These roundtable sessions focus on discussion of best practices, novel techniques, and technical trade-offs for building game development tools and services. Game development tools are constantly evolving, so come to share what works (and what doesn't) at your studio, and listen to others' take on how to keep their creative teams producing awesome games.

'Build' focuses on processing assets through to the game in all its forms: build systems, caching, distribution, scalability, optimization, disc mastering and patching.

Pipeline
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Pipeline Dev

Tools Design Roundtable Day 3: User Research
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For Day 3:
This Tool Design roundtable is about the UX of in-house and external tool sets. Come and meet, discuss, and find out what everyone has been doing with Tool Design in the last year.
Examples of topics are:
1. What user research methods do you use?
2. Do you have a dedicated user researcher on your team?
3. What surprises has your research uncovered in the last year?
This years' questions may be different, or similar! Feel free to join, and ask.

Programming
Design

Tool UX/UI Designer
DCC Tool Dev

Technical Art Roundtables

Technical Artist Roundtable Day 1
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The role of a technical artists has grown from a clean-up artist and data wrangler to someone who is in charge of complex content creation pipelines and asset tracking systems. Increasingly, the lines between programmer and artist are blurring for technical artists. Tool creation, scripting, shader creation, working with both programmers and artists, and managing workflow are all skills required of a modern technical artist. This roundtable will bring together technical artists from across the industry to share their knowledge, experiences, and tips for being the best at their jobs.

UX
Programming
Visual Arts
Workflows
Pipeline

Dev Support/Integration Engineer
DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
Pipeline Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

Technical Artist Roundtable Day 2
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The role of a technical artists has grown from a clean-up artist and data wrangler to someone who is in charge of complex content creation pipelines and asset tracking systems. Increasingly, the lines between programmer and artist are blurring for technical artists. Tool creation, scripting, shader creation, working with both programmers and artists, and managing workflow are all skills required of a modern technical artist. This roundtable brings together technical artists from across the industry to share their knowledge, experiences, and tips for being the best at their jobs.

UX
Programming
Visual Arts
Workflows
Pipeline

Dev Support/Integration Engineer
DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
Pipeline Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

Technical Artist Roundtable Day 3
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The role of a technical artists has grown from a clean-up artist and data wrangler to someone who is in charge of complex content creation pipelines and asset tracking systems. Increasingly, the lines between programmer and artist are blurring for technical artists. Tool creation, scripting, shader creation, working with both programmers and artists, and managing workflow are all skills required of a modern technical artist. This roundtable brings together technical artists from across the industry to share their knowledge, experiences, and tips for being the best at their jobs.

UX
Programming
Visual Arts
Workflows
Pipeline

Dev Support/Integration Engineer
DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
Pipeline Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

Automated Testing Roundtables

Automated Testing Roundtable Day 1: Process
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Process
Automated testing provides a team with more stable software at an earlier point in development, allowing easier scheduling and fast iteration. Yet investing in automated testing has a bad reputation in the industry, where just-ship-it is the mantra. Maybe, as increased budgets and team sizes make stability even harder, its time has finally come.

On Day 1 we prefer to discuss the people that write the tests and the workflows used to reinforce them. How does the process work in your studio? Are the engineers responsible for automated tests, or QA? Are QA silo'd or integrated? What could be better? What doesn't work?

These roundtables bring together people of all experience levels and budgets to discuss how they currently, or would like to, use automated testing of any form. See autotestingroundtable.com (https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/lW7GCn5YzpclwQoRYu9OGtV?domain=autotestingroundtable.com) for more details and to join our discord!

QA
UX
Programming
Workflows

Dev Support/Integration Engineer
Tools QA
Build Dev
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer

Automated Testing Roundtable Day 2: Legacy
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Legacy
Automated testing provides a team with more stable software at an earlier point in development, allowing easier scheduling and fast iteration. Yet investing in automated testing has a bad reputation in the industry, where just-ship-it is the mantra. Maybe, as increased budgets and team sizes make stability even harder, its time has finally come.

On Day 2 we prefer to talk about introducing automated testing to an organization. Do you have a culture or a codebase that doesn't currently embrace automated testing? Are you having trouble getting people on-board, or maybe it was very easy and you can share why? Grand failures are just as interesting as successes!

These roundtables bring together people of all experience levels and budgets to discuss how they currently, or would like to, use automated testing of any form. See autotestingroundtable.com (https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/lW7GCn5YzpclwQoRYu9OGtV?domain=autotestingroundtable.com) for more details and to join our discord!

Programming
QA

Dev Support/Integration Engineer
Tools QA
Build Dev
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer

Automated Testing Roundtable Day 3: Implementation
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Implementation
Automated testing provides a team with more stable software at an earlier point in development, allowing easier scheduling and fast iteration. Yet investing in automated testing has a bad reputation in the industry, where just-ship-it is the mantra. Maybe, as increased budgets and team sizes make stability even harder, its time has finally come.

On Day 3 we prefer to discuss the many faces of automation, from locally-run functional and unit tests, to server-driven continuous integration, and even external device farms. How do you do automated testing in your team? What works well for you? More interestingly, what didn't work and why?

These roundtables bring together people of all experience levels and budgets to discuss how they currently, or would like to, use automated testing of any form. See autotestingroundtable.com (https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/lW7GCn5YzpclwQoRYu9OGtV?domain=autotestingroundtable.com) for more details and to join our discord!

Programming
QA

Dev Support/Integration Engineer
Tools QA
Build Dev
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer

Universal Scene Description Roundtable

The Universal Scene Description (USD) Roundtable
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USD stands for 'Universal Scene Description', and it is a 3D file format Pixar created over a span of many years and movies, and was released open source to the public in 2016. Although technically it is more of an API than a file format, which is an ongoing discussion into the terminology and use of USD.

In this session, attendees can gather to talk about USD. Come and meet, discuss, and find out what everyone has been doing with USD.

Questions can be submitted during the roundtable. For example, these may include topics such as:
1. What are issues you have bumped into when implementing USD into your pipeline?
2. What would be required for USD to be more widely adopted?
3. How can studios, and vendors, best share Schemas?

Questions can be oriented towards technical issues, design, and artistic workflows.

Pipeline
UX
Visual Arts
Workflows

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev
Build Dev
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer

Open Source Roundtable

Open Source Game Development Rountable (Presented by the IGDA)
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In 2023, there have been 'disruptions in The Force' around aggressive re-licensing in both the tabletop and digital realms from Hasbro and Unity, with both back-pedaling substantially on those efforts after user reaction to the changes. Hasbro ended up re licensing some aspects of their IP under Creative Commons and Unity brought in former Red Hat CEO and Open Organization author Jim Whitehurst as an interim CEO. In the meantime Godot, The Open 3D Engine and Blender have all seen growth in interest around their tools in part due to this turmoil. During this round table, the floor is opened for discussion around ways to better communicate, and ideally increase, the role of Open Technologies and practices within the Industry.

Advocacy
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev
Build Dev
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer

UX

Improving Your Tool UX Design by Removing the Faults of 'Sensible Defaults'
i
When we make game development tools it is very easy to pick what we think is a 'sensible default', and have all users deal with it. We think those defaults makes sense, and work for most users. However, even a cursory look at DCCs such as Unity, Unreal, 3dsMax, Maya, and Blender shows us that this is wrong. Unity, Max, and Maya have the hierarchy on the left side of the screen, while Unreal and Blender have the hierarchy on the right side of the screen. The same differences can be found between all of them when it comes to toolbars, the 3D view, the property panel, and the asset browser. There is no 'sensible default' for any of those panels in the UI, yet we often hear they 'should' be on the left or 'should' be on the right.

What do we have to unlearn, to improve the UX of our tools?

Design
Programming
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Programming

UIPainter: Tile-Based UI Rendering in One Draw Call
i
Every game editor needs a user interface. It is how we allow developers to create content for the game in a visual way. A good UI renderer has clear-cut constraints, like drawing nicely anti-aliased primitives, yet programmers have vastly different approaches to rendering game editor UI.

In this session, Wessel Mast, Tools Programmer at Guerrilla, will tell you about how Guerrilla's editor 'Decima' renders UI: how it uses a tile-based renderer, commonly used in light culling, SSAO, depth of field and more, for drawing complex UI in an efficient manner and how it manages to draw thousands of primitives like rectangles, lines and curves in a single draw call using signed distance fields.

Programming

DCC Tool Dev

Upgrading the Snowdrop Engine for the Massive World of 'Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora'
i
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is Massive Entertainment's largest and most complex world to date. This session describes the changes made to the Snowdrop engine to support a huge world densely filled with procedurally generated objects, as well as the optimizations necessary to support online co-op server hosting and local servers for offline play.

Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Where Story and Tech Meet: 'Cyberpunk's' Quest Editor in Action
i
Learn about the narrative systems of REDengine 4, the engine used to create Cyberpunk 2077. This session will showcase changes and improvements made to the engine based on previous systems, and how the simple wish to create everything a designer can dream of influenced the tools design for the narrative department. The presentation will illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of complex visual scripting tools based on different engine and tool iterations, and provide tips and guidance when creating your own narrative engine setup for your games.

Programming
Design

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designe

Nanite GPU Driven Materials
i
This advanced technical talk takes a deep dive into Nanite's novel GPU driven material pipeline.

A high-level overview is presented, detailing all of the core components and explaining how they fit into the overall design.

This talk also covers low-level technical details, including how artist-authored materials drive the rasterizer, how final shading is evaluated, an innovative variable rate shading technique, and some challenges of GPU driven rendering.

Additionally, this talk discusses several learnings and optimizations that were discovered during the development of these components.

Pipeline
Programming

Pipeline Dev
DCC Tool Dev

Large Scale GPU-based Skinning for Vegetation in 'Alan Wake 2'
i
Alan Wake 2's forests and vegetation of the Pacific Northwest carry the atmosphere of the horror survival genre almost like a character on their own.

This talk showcases Remedy's new GPU-based skinning pipeline, built to handle detailed and dense environments that are mostly comprised of dynamically animated vegetation geometry. To match the team's ambitions in geometric fidelity and complexity of motion, they also developed a new GPU-based animation system that could animate skeleton rigs at runtime via compute shaders.

The talk provides a look under the hood at the techniques used to hit performance targets, create feature rich systems for artists, and enable full representation in the Northlight engine's raytracing implementation.

Pipeline
Procedural
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Applied Mesh Analysis: Automating Distant-City LODs in 'Marvel's Spider-Man 2'
i
The New York City of Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is roughly twice as large as that of earlier titles in the series. At the same time, new quality and performance constraints required the creation of additional distant city LODs. The manual distant-LOD geometry pipeline of Marvel's Spider-Man and Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales was no longer viable. This lecture describes how Insomniac Games transitioned to automated distant-LOD geometry generation. In particular, it covers in-depth the applications of fundamental mesh analysis concepts (dual meshes, the Euler Characteristic, curvature estimation, etc...) to several difficult problems (beyond standard reduction and remeshing) that arise from the unique constraints regarding distant city LODs present in Marvel's Spider-Man 2.

Pipeline
Procedural
Programming
QA

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Pondering Orbs: The Rendering and Art Tools of 'COCOON'
i
This talk details the graphical techniques developed for COCOON, the debut title of Geometric Interactive, founded by Jeppe Carlsen, lead gameplay designer on LIMBO and INSIDE.

Rendering the game's beautiful worlds within worlds takes a few tricks—from thick billowing froxel fog and spherical harmonics volumetric lightmaps, to a host of visual effects like crystalline Voronoi bridges, SDF shoreline ripples on water, and warping through ponderable orbs.

Mikkel Svendsen presents how these features, tools and effects were implemented and shipped on the game's target platforms, how they contributed to the game's look, and how it all works together with an MSAA-friendly rendering pipeline by carefully considering the gotchas of fitting these features and effects with that.

Programming
Visual Arts
Pipeline
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Pipeline Dev

Pipeline

Building Game Worlds with OpenUSD
i
The complexity and size of the game worlds is ever-increasing and tools need to meet that demand. At Remedy, we have been working on new tools and tech stack to allow us to build worlds faster and with more detail than ever before. At the core of our solution is Universal Scene Description (OpenUSD) by Pixar which provides a powerful composition engine as well as a format compatible with the DCCs. In this presentation, we share how we integrated OpenUSD into our tools and engine, what kind of technical and user experience challenges we have faced, and show examples how we have tackled those while having two major game projects using it throughout the development.

Pipeline
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Pipeline Dev

Real-time World Editing Technology in Northlight
i
Requirements for game worlds are ever-increasing, being more realistic, more interactive, and larger than ever before. This means that there is a ton of content to be authored, but also large amounts of data to pass through pipelines and workflows to the engine runtime. Remedy has been working on a new data pipeline and technology stack for the Northlight engine that allows us to optimize entity data for authoring at edit time, and performance at runtime, while keeping near-instant iteration times for world editing workflows. The fundamental parts of this technology are OpenUSD for authoring, and Northlight's transformative live-edit pipeline that enables entity modifications to be applied to a running game process on the fly. In this presentation, Sebastian shares how we keep the editor and runtime data representations separated, how the data is transformed, and how the real-time editing between the editor and runtime works in practice.

Pipeline
UX
Programming
Workflows

Tool UX/UI Designer
DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Pipeline Dev

DELTA FORCE WORLD CREATION: Cross-Platform Art Pipeline and Tools (Presented by Tencent Games)
i
Delta Force is developing top-tier experiences to gamers for all platforms and its' development team is working across multiple platforms in the short term to achieve it. This session will give a detailed introduction to a set of In-house art pipelines and tools that cover various modules ranging from Digital Content Creation (DCC) to the Engine including art assets solutions, OpenWorld infrastructure/Biome integrations, and more. The team and processes take great consideration to achieve the high fidelity and design density required to hit the high-end graphics PC gamers crave while accounting for maintaining a high level of performance on mobile devices.

UX
Programming
Visual Arts
Workflows
Pipeline

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev
Build Dev
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer

Unified Cross-Platform Dev Pipeline In DeltaForce Hawk Ops (Presented by Tencent Games)
i
Delta Force is preparing to deliver top-tier experiences to gamers for all platforms. This session will cover an efficient production process while pursuing exceptional development quality as TiMi Studio Group readies for the release of a new edition to a classic FPS franchise. This talk will summarize the valuable experiences learned through the development process of Delta Force regarding various aspects of cross-platform production including asset management, open world solutions, auto scalable 3C, adaptive UI framework and the performance tracking tools we build for better tracking during the unified development process.

Pipeline
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
Pipeline Dev

Version Control & Files

MergeBot: Activision's Merge and Resolve Infrastructure
i
Source control is one of the foundational elements in a software's lifecycle. Unfortunately, not all source control systems handle code merges and conflict resolution gracefully, particularly in a game development environment with numerous large files scattered across branches that must be kept in sync. This talk serves as a postmortem on a tool that emerged from our ongoing struggle to smoothly integrate Perforce changelists between streams, all while ensuring it doesn't disrupt our continuous development pipeline. The presentation will delve into the architecture of the tool, the challenges encountered while making it as hands-off as possible, the complexities involved in the file resolution process, which needed to be universally accessible, and a discussion of the compromises we had to make while developing and customizing the tool to suit our needs.

Pipeline
Postmortem
Programming
QA

Dev Support/Integration Engineer
DCC Tool Dev
Tools QA
Build Dev
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
Pipeline Dev

Scaling Git Workflows for Game Development
i
Game development studios often face a dilemma when choosing version control systems—specific requirements like exclusive file locking can limit options, while common solutions remain financially out of reach for up-and-coming studios. Surprisingly, even with widely used solutions, many projects struggle to adhere to the 'not rocket science' rule of software engineering: maintaining a code repository that consistently passes all tests.

Join Vikram in this session as he delves into the challenges of version control in game development and explores how modern git tooling, coupled with strategic workflow adjustments, can pave the way for a cost-effective solution. Discover practical insights to start utilising modern DevOps practices with your projects.

QA
UX
Programming
Workflows

Dev Support/Integration Engineer
DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer

Build

Compile Score: Slay the C++ Build Time Dragon
i
Build times have been affecting productivity and iteration times since the dawn of programming. Developer improvement efforts have been based on guesswork so far considering the compiler has always been a closed box. 'Compile Score' allows us to peek inside and dissect how the compiler digests the code empowering the engineer to make targeted improvements and identify the real bottlenecks.
This presentation covers how to extract, interpret, and act with the provided data, as well as go through C++ best practices to keep the dependencies healthy. It also goes through the setup in Santa Monica Studio to get up to date information automatically to the whole team.

Programming

Build Dev
DCC Tool Dev

AI/ML in Testing

Machine Learning Summit: Taming the Beast: Leveraging Machine Learning to Curb the Cost of Continuous Integration
i
Continuous Integration (CI) is a common practice in modern software organizations. It plays an especially important role for AAA game development, where thousands of build jobs are submitted daily. However, the size and complexity of video games tend to inflate build size and duration, leading to a slower CI and longer feedback time. To provide faster CI feedback, studies have explored optimization techniques that can skip steps, and sometimes the entirety, of build jobs. This talk presents an overview of these techniques and highlights their costs and benefits. Then, it introduces RavenBuild Dev, a novel ML-based technique tailored for video games. Contrarily to existing approaches, RavenBuild predicts build outcomes for both code and data submissions, providing full coverage for a game development CI. RavenBuild skips passing builds and therefore reduces the CI cost, up to 43%, while ensuring that failing builds are properly anticipated.

Machine Learning
Machine Learning Summit

Build Dev
ML Dev

AI Summit: Building ML Bots at Ubisoft La Forge: From Research to Production
i
In this presentation, Ubisoft La Forge's explores the approach to developing ML bots, designed to simulate human players in our games. These bots are not only integral to enhancing player experiences, particularly for onboarding in multiplayer games, but also play a crucial role in Quality Control (QC) testing across our expansive open-world titles. They delve into specific examples to demonstrate how these bots, underpinned by cutting-edge machine learning (ML) technologies, are collaboratively integrated into game development. This synergy between production teams and innovative ML applications is pivotal in upping game quality and pushing the boundaries of technological advancement in gaming.

Machine Learning
AI Summit
QA

Dev Support/Integration Engineer
Build Dev
Tools QA
ML Dev

Levelling Up: How AI's Transformative Role in Level Automation Production Adds Business Value in 'Candy Crush Saga'
i
Anna Hernandelius, Product Director in Candy Crush Saga, together with Sahar Asadi, Director AI Labs at King, present King's journey in implementing and using AI to create business value; from A/B testing to high speed AI level testing to enhance the player experience. The session will look at the role of AI in business transformation within the games industry and how the technology is helping us in our mission of Making the World Playful.

Business & Marketing
Programming
QA

Dev Support/Integration Engineer
Build Dev
Tools QA
ML Dev

Automation, Automated Testing, and QA

Machine Learning Summit: 'SaGa Emerald Beyond': Balancing Battle with Reinforcement Learning AI
i
Battle system is one of the most vital parts of SaGa and costly to balance due to the huge volume of the game. We present a machine learning (ML) framework to help us balance the battle system of the latest title of the series under development, SaGa Emerald Beyond, with Reinforcement Learning (RL). We show how our game designers use the AI to help their daily work, the challenges, the detail of our in-house algorithm, and the engineering backend to deliver the system. Also, our system and algorithm are generally applicable to other games and address major key challenges on implementing reliable ML system within general production line. With this system, we can evaluate more than 700 stages in one day and find critical bugs, speeding up the QA process significantly.

Machine Learning
QA
Machine Learning Summit

Dev Support/Integration Engineer
Build Dev
Tools QA
ML Dev

Machine Learning Summit: Analyze Your Bugs Automatically: Root Cause Analysis with Causal Models
i
Existing ways to find bugs including client logs, server monitors, and feedbacks from user community. Finding a bug is far from satisfactory. What we need to know is dive into the mechanism and dig out the factors that cause the bug. That is why we need root cause analysis. Existing bug root analysis requires a data science engineer diving into the game logs, analyzing the data of many variables and factors, even playing the game in person to reproduce the bugs. Those efforts could be time-consuming and labor-consuming. We will introduce casual analysis and explain how causal models can help with root cause analysis and improve user experience.

Machine Learning
Machine Learning Summit

ML Dev
Build Dev
Tools QA

Testing Empowered: Integrating ML-Based Playtesting in a Team with Limited QA Capacity
i
Playtesting is a crucial aspect of modern game development. However, small-to-mid-sized teams often face difficulties in meeting their testing demands due to limited QA resources.

In this talk, Sun Jeong discusses how he and his team built and harnessed a machine-learning-assisted automated playtesting solution to fulfill the testing requirements for the launch and live service of an action-packed roguelite game, Frame Arms Girl: Dream Stadium.

He talks about the technical details of the automated playtesting stack, introduces various detailed use cases and the workflow used to debug and discover valuable design insights, and shares the tips and lessons learned during the development of the stack under dynamic and unstable production settings.

UX
Programming
QA
Workflows
Machine Learning

Dev Support/Integration Engineer
Tools QA
Build Dev
ML Dev

Automated Testing of Shader Code
i
Rare has a rich culture of writing automated tests for their game and engine code. The 'Sea of Thieves' project has hundreds of thousands of automated tests that exist to validate behaviour and to ensure that bugs are kept to a minimum, as they continually deliver an ever-changing experience to players. Among this large test suite, are tests that validate and verify shader code. This session explores the technologies that Rare currently uses to write tests for their shader code, both on 'Sea of Thieves' and on their upcoming game, 'Everwild'. Throughout this session Rare discusses two forms of testing shader code:

1. Screenshot Comparison
2. Shader unit tests

They go through the pros and cons of both types of tests, as well as delving into the implementation of their shader unit testing framework to discuss the design goals of the system.

Programming
QA

Dev Support/Integration Engineer
Build Dev
Tools QA

Technical Art

Visual Effects Summit: Fracture Animation Techniques
i
Fracturing your geometry is only the first step in your destructible asset pipeline. There are many different techniques to animating these fractured assets. This talk covers several different ways we can animate the fractured pieces in engine. By avoiding the need of baking out a simulation, we can allow for faster iteration time and dynamic input from gameplay. During the first half of the talk, we focus on using custom UV sets to add animation inside of a material. Then we cover how to animate the pieces with Niagara by using its Mesh Renderer for mesh flipbooks. All the techniques are covered using Houdini for source art generation and Unreal for the game engine.

Visual Effects Summit
Procedural
Pipeline
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Pipeline Dev

Visual Effects Summit: Procedural Cinematic Symbiotes in 'Marvel's Spider-Man 2'
i
Symbiotes take various forms and play a significant role in Marvel's Spider-Man 2. These symbiotes are rendered in highest fidelity during the game cinematics. Insomniac created a variety of workflows to make symbiotes. These workflows had to be robust enough to convey life-like motion, fast enough for users to iterate within a production timeline, and performant enough to run at sixty frames per second.

This presentation breaks down the creation process of cinematic symbiotes in Marvel's Spider-Man 2. The presenters walk through custom procedural tools created to facilitate art directable effects, the export process, and the custom engine systems implemented. The presenters dedicate special attention to showcasing a novel real-time meshing system used extensively in the rendering of Symbiotes in Marvel's Spider-man 2.

UX
Programming
Procedural
Workflows
Visual Effects Summit

DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Pipeline Dev

Animation Summit: Technical Animation Pipeline of 'Fort Solis'
i
Dive into the technical animation pipeline and workflow built for 'Fort Solis,' an indie title created by a small team all within a little over two years. This presentation covers the building blocks of the 'Fort Solis's' character skeletons with approaches that offload deformation calculations to runtime rather than a baked approach, our artist-friendly workflow to face rig development and creation, our animator-first tools and pipelines that empower animators to do what they do best (animate!) and how state-of-the-art technologies inside of Unreal Engine 5 helped breathe life into the characters and truly blurred the lines between cinematic and gameplay through motion matching locomotion. Finally, the session is rounded off with the many character and animation optimisations required to hit 60 frames per second on PlayStation 5. The many hurdles, and lessons learnt will be shared from trying to push the animation envelope with an indie-sized team and resources.

UX
Programming
Workflows
Animation Summit
Pipeline

DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Pipeline Dev

Technical Artist Summit: Build Your Own Particle System
i
Shaders are most commonly used to define the appearance of model surfaces - but they can do a lot more! In this session, Ben will show how to construct a full-featured, performance-friendly particle system using only a node-based shader tool such as Unreal's Material Editor or Unity's Shader Graph.

Attendees will learn how to make particles face the camera, move, rotate, and scale as well as control particle movement and rotation. They will learn how to control particle color and opacity, as well as how to fade out particles where they intersect with scene geometry.

Even more features can be added to provide more control, or removed to increase performance. Artists can have full control over a particle system they build themselves and Ben will show them how in this session.

Technical Artist Summit
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Technical Artist Summit: GPU based Foliage-Interaction for 'Ark: Survival Ascended'
i
Step into the immersive world of 'Ark: Survival Ascended' as we delve into our new GPU-based foliage interaction system. Our presentation outlines how we've combined UE5's Nanite technology with a custom force-injection system to create truly dynamic open-world environments. Explore how millions of Nanite-based assets—from trees to grass—interact in real-time with players, NPCs, weapons, visual effects and even each other. Our process leverages tools like SpeedTree 9 and Houdini for asset creation and data encoding, significantly optimizing computational loads. You'll get insights into our custom compute shader pipeline, dynamic memory allocation, and how forces are injected into multiple volumetric render targets to achieve the fully dynamic open multiplayer world of 'Ark: Survival Ascended'.

Pipeline
Technical Artist Summit
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Pipeline Dev

Technical Artist Summit: Using Generative AI as a Tool for Tech Artists
i
Generative AI is shaking up the industry, so like any other emerging technology we, as tech-artists, can ride the wave and bend our curious eye at its challenges, promises, and time saving nature. All to fold the best parts into our workflows, pipelines, and processes.

Daniel Ocean is an Associate TechArt Director at Ubisoft currently working on XDefiant – a competitive arena shooting pulling from all the Ubisoft gaming franchises and engines, both old and new.

The session includes an evaluation of generative AI and its current place in production – both generally and within Ubisoft. Daniel takes a look at the novel and different ways AI is, and will, solve pain points for artists and designers through examples. Additionally, we look practically at how to create training data for custom GenAI, image-based, tools using Houdini. With a focus on the importance of owning the input training for tools as much as the output of the generation.

Technical Artist Summit
UX
Programming
Procedural
Workflows
Pipeline

DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Pipeline Dev

Technical Artist Summit: Procedural Tool Development for 'Marvel's Spider-Man 2'
i
Marvels Spider-Man 2 employed over a dozen procedural systems in creation and population of its open world and many more in support of destruction, breakables, effects and characters. The power of procedural systems in production is widely recognized and it's hard to name a studio that isn't taking advantage of them. It allows efficient, rapid generation and iteration of a vast amount of content in game development. Unfortunately, the development of production ready procedural systems themselves can be far from an efficient process. This presentation uses successful and less than successful examples from Marvel's Spider-Man 2 production in a guide to development and implementation of procedural systems from inception.

Procedural
Technical Artist Summit
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Pipeline Dev

Building a User and Developer Friendly Cross-DCC Animation Pipeline
i
This session provides insights into the technical artist team's development of a lightweight, highly reusable and artist-and-developer-friendly Cross-DCC animation pipeline. Fleming Lin from LIGHTSPEED STUDIOS will introduce two key pipeline frameworks: Protostar and NodeZoo. The presentation includes a demonstration of versioning strategies, data-driven rig generation, and the implementation of universal toolkits tailored to diverse projects at LIGHTSPEED STUDIOS.

Pipeline
Procedural
Programming
Visual Arts

DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Pipeline Dev

From Firefighters to Service Providers: Technical Art as a Service
i
Technical art has grown from a niche discipline into a critical component of big enterprise game studios. How does this evolution of this component change the way we approach how technical art operates at a procedural level? In this talk, we'll discuss the following:
- How Legends Of Runeterra uses systemic analysis to support multiple satellite offices around the world with a small core technical art group operating as a service team.
- Explore strategies for maintaining global pipelines that cross borders, languages, and time zones, and give concrete examples of how we've used our lessons to change the way we operate.
- Finally, we'll also discuss how we've adopted Continuous Deployment development practices to unify the ability for our TAs to contribute to a shared tooling solution between projects.

Pipeline
Programming
Visual Arts

DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Pipeline Dev

Embracing Art Performance on 'Diablo IV'
i
Performance: a word that conjures up many emotions for the average game-artist and can often breed conflict in production. But with the right approach, optimization can be something that the team embraces as part of the development process.

Diablo IV shipped to critical acclaim in its technical strength and performance across a wide variety of hardware, but the journey to get to that point was full of trial-and-error, teamwide initiatives, and no shortage of hard work. Join Senior Technical Artist Evan Edwards as he talks about a cultural approach to optimization, and how developers can make performance less of a dirty word on their teams.

UX
Visual Arts
Workflows

DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Pipeline Dev

Machine Learning

Machine Learning Summit: Introduction & Real-time Neural Textures for Materials Compression
i
We present a novel neural material compression technique that is designed to take advantage of hardware accelerated texture compression formats. This approach leans on a multiresolution set of block compressed (BC6H) textures that is subsequently decoded by a small neural network. In practice, our method is integrated into the current pipelines in two stages. At production stage, we use deep learning to jointly learn the texture set and the decoder network. At runtime, we sample the learned textures and then reconstruct the material information by inferring neural network in a shader.

Machine Learning
Pipeline
Machine Learning Summit

ML Dev
DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Machine Learning Summit: ChatAvatar: Multi-agents Enhanced 3D Character Creation in 'Earth: Revival'
i
LLM has substantially accelerated the pace of game development. Recently, they successfully apply LLMs in the game 'Earth: Revival', for offline production of game NPCs and online creation of player characters.This talk will delve into how multi-agent systems assist in the creation of avatars within 'Earth: Revival'. The most recent LLM of ByteDance will also be introduced. The details of driving agents across multiple tasks will be described. The cooperating agents increased the art team's speed in character creation by 50%.
This multi-agent includes the Dialog Agent, Brain Strom Agents, and Prompt Agent, etc. In addition, they also apply three generative AI modules, including SD for character original painting generation, DreamFace for text/image-to-avatar conversions, and Rodin Search. Furthermore, a text-to-face entrance can be directly experienced by players in 'Earth: Revival.

Machine Learning
Procedural
Machine Learning Summit

ML Dev
DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Machine Learning Summit: Fictional Speech Synthesis to Avoid the Risk in Generative Contents
i
In creating interactive digital content including characters, text-to-speech technology is a promising option to flexibly respond to arbitrary user input. We propose a method of applying text-to-speech technology to generate speech in a fictional language that the user has never heard before. We will share with attendee how this method can generate a pronunciation language for a fictional language that fits the worldview and creates an immersive experience, as if the user is listening to the language spoken in that world. We will introduce the simple but effective approach to synthesis fictional language speech, and explain the possible application in games.

Machine Learning
Machine Learning Summit

ML Dev
DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Machine Learning Summit: From Photo to Expression: Generating Photorealistic Facial Rigs
i
In the presentation the speaker discusses how machine learning can improve facial animation in the gaming industry. A showcase on their solution using in-house facial rig, FaceRig, and will demonstrate how blendshapes can be automatically created to suit various character identities. The presentation covers: FaceMixer, which can generate blendshapes from a neutral input, and FaceOptim, which automates the creation of blendshapes and animations from scanned expressions or 4D animation. The presenter also introduces FaceBot, a solution that generates photorealistic face textures and meshes with expressions that can then be fed back into the previous system. By combining FaceBot with FaceOptim or FaceMixer, users can generate high-quality rigged faces for game characters with minimal effort. Future developments include incorporating FaceAnim animation, allowing for more organic and realistic facial animation.

Machine Learning
Programming
Machine Learning Summit

ML Dev
DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Machine Learning Summit: Introduction & Training Human-like and High-performance Basketball AI Bot for 'Streetball Allstar'
i
'Streetball Allstar' is a 3v3 street basketball game that attracts players with its real-time competition and fairness. AI bots play an important role in the game. Firstly, they assist beginners in learning and improving, providing examples of exceptional skills and teamwork. Secondly, AI bots serve as teammates or opponents, increasing the diversity and competitiveness of the game. Most importantly, AI bots ensure fair competition, fill the gap when there are not enough players and match players of different tiers with highly customized parameters. In terms of training, we combine reinforcement learning and imitation learning, allowing AI bots to learn a wide range of strategies and simulate human thinking and behavior patterns, possessing human-like qualities and human-AI interaction while also having rich strategy diversity. Through dynamic difficulty control, we can control the operation level of the AI accurately and reasonably, adapting to different skill levels. With the client-side deployment solution, AI bots are decoupled from the core logic of game, improving response speed and ensuring data security. In our demonstration, AI bots have shown outstanding performance in various aspects such as difficulty switching, accurate response, strong adaptability, human-AI interaction, and high stability, receiving enthusiastic praise from both players and our customer.

Machine Learning
QA
Machine Learning Summit

ML Dev
DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Machine Learning Summit: 'Naruto Mobile': Optimization for Large-scale Reinforcement Learning in Fighting Games
i
Naruto Mobile is a popular Fighting Game with over 100 million registered players. AI agents are deployed to the game for various applications such as level challenges. Although deep reinforcement learning is an excellent approach to creating agents with diverse strategies, it is difficult to apply to Naruto Mobile--a game that is built on a pool of 300 characters with unique skills. A traditional approach of self-play training at such a scale may require substantial training costs and time. This talk presents a new training approach to improve agents' generalization ability and optimize massive-scale self-play. The proposed algorithm has already been employed by Naruto Mobile to create agents, which have been used in more than 300 million human-AI fighting matches. To the best of our knowledge to date. This is the first time that deep reinforcement learning has been employed by a commercial fighting game.

Machine Learning
Machine Learning Summit

ML Dev
DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Machine Learning Summit: Would You Like Fries with That? AI-assisted Recommendations in Development
i
While we're flooded with generative AI approaches, we intend to show a different possibility to facilitate ML for better and faster gamedev: AI-assisted game design. AI-assisted development is barely emerging, usually as recommendations in programming IDEs. We tried a similar approach to build tools for game designers in three areas: level design, narrative, and game object design (game mechanics related). In this talk, we will show which areas benefited the most, with very promising ML recommendations to ease the designers' work, and what algorithms are showing the most promise despite being really low effort. We will share where, from our experience, ML will not deliver good results anytime soon and how we went from a hardly working system to what seems to be a promising tool.

Machine Learning
Programming
Machine Learning Summit

ML Dev
DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Procedural

Facing Our Failures: Creating 3D Environments from a 2D Legacy for 'Darkest Dungeon II'
i
In this session, Red Hook Studios' Lead Environment Artist, Marielle Fox, will discuss the pillars of Darkest Dungeon 2's environment art creation and how the art team established their unique workflow.

She will share the experiences of the team and the challenges they faced while trying to transition the 2D art style of the first Darkest Dungeon game to 3D for the sequel. They will cover various methods that the team experimented with, and how, through a few failures, they managed to develop an elegant solution that fit the project's needs and resources perfectly.

This presentation will also discuss various rendering and procedural generation techniques that Red Hook developed and maintained, in order to achieve the look and tone of various 3D worlds in the style of Darkest Dungeon.

UX
Visual Arts
Procedural
Workflows
Pipeline

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

'Marvel's Spider-Man 2': 10 Years of Procedural Content Creation
i
A look at the evolution of procedural content creation at Insomniac Games across multiple 'Marvel's Spider-Man' titles culminating in 'Marvel's Spider-Man 2.

Visual Arts

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer
Pipeline Dev

AI-enhanced content authoring

Converging Game Design and AI: New Frontiers and Pitfalls
i
Although it's a hot topic now, AI and machine learning have existed in and outside of games for many years! To fully grasp the power of AI to transform game development, we have to understand how it works and where it's best put to use.

Hilary Mason, Co-Founder and CEO at Hidden Door, gives attendees a peek behind the hidden door of AI's current integration into game development. In this session, she outlines the current state of AI as a game dev tool and explains its strengths and shortcomings. Hilary then presents potential solutions for common AI challenges—such as filtering out bad outputs and carefully handling the ethics of AI's use of copyrighted material.

She then discusses how to assemble the ultimate AI game development dream team, merging the powers of man and machine to create entirely new gaming experiences.

Machine Learning
Programming
Design
QA

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designe

GiiNEX: Generative AI Game Engine (Presented by Tencent AI Lab)
i
This session introduces GiiNEX, Tencent's generative AI game engine, offering comprehensive AI solutions to enhance game development and operations across MOBA, FPS, MMO, and other game categories. GiiNEX excels with its AI bot services and AIGC tools. A highlight of the session will be a detailed case study on the AI bot's application, specifically in the 'Challenge Wukong' gameplay mode of Honor of Kings, demonstrating how these AI bots significantly boost player engagement. Additionally, the session features AIGC tools such as 'Automatic 3D Virtual Scene Generation', 'Scenario Editor', and 'UGC Editor'. These tools streamline content creation, empowering developers and UGC creators to build immersive game worlds and design level maps efficiently.

Business & Marketing
Procedural
Programming

ML Dev
DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designe

Modernizing Games with NVIDIA RTX Remix and Generative AI (Presented by NVIDIA)
i
NVIDIA RTX Remix, a graphics modding platform for remastering classic games with path traced lighting, modern PBR Assets, DLSS, and Generative AI was released in January, 2024. It is a first of its kind modding tool that allows modders to capture game scenes into OpenUSD format, making them easy to manipulate. RTX Remix allows you to replace a game's meshes, textures, materials, lighting and even renderer. It offers modders access to generative AI Texture Tools to revamp old game textures in higher resolution and with physically accurate properties. The final output -- a stunning mod that rivals modern games in looks and technology. We build Portal With RTX using RTX Remix, and modders are creating Half Life 2 RTX using the tool. Join our session to learn how we built RTX Remix, how it works, and what we've seen the community able to do with it.

Programming
Visual Arts

ML Dev
DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designe

MotorNerve：A Character Animation System using Machine Learning (Presented by Tencent Games)
i
This presentation will introduce to you a character animation system using machine learning, dubbed MotorNerve, which implements two core character animation functions: locomotion control and transition animation generation. First, by combining Motion Matching and Learned Motion Matching technologies, MotorNerve achieves high-quality, low-consumption locomotion control while speeding up the tuning process for Learned Motion Matching. Secondly, MotorNerve also implements an inhouse Motion In-Betweening (MIB) algorithm, which uses a variational autoencoder to encode leg movements, significantly improving the foot skating problem of existing methods. This method, a joint work by Zhejiang University and TiMi Studio Group, a Tencent Games studio, has been published in SIGGRAPH 2022. MotorNerve applies MIB to interactive animation scenarios, generating high-quality transition animations while saving the project costs.

Machine Learning
Procedural
Programming

ML Dev
DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designe

Innovation Unleashed: High-performance UE5 Mobile Rendering and Next-gen Character Creation Pipeline Powered by Machine Learning (Presented by Lightspeed Studios)
i
The bar of quality and performance on next-gen platforms has been raised once again with Unreal Engine 5. However, a significant gap has emerged between these advanced features and their mobile counterparts. In this presentation, we will explore how the presenters addressed the challenge of developing high-quality UE5 mobile games involving the implementation of multiple optimizations and creation of new mobile rendering pipelines.

Similarly, MetaHuman by Epic revolutionized character creation technology, yet challenges in performance and customization persist. This session will introduce a groundbreaking character creation pipeline designed for crafting high-definition, animation-ready characters that enhance the immersion in the next-level metaverse. The creators will showcase a novel system, built upon multimodal machine learning techniques, that empowers both artists and gamers to generate hyper-realistic avatars seamlessly from photos, sketches, or even text within seconds.

Machine Learning
Pipeline
Programming
QA

ML Dev
DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designe

How Generative AI is Transforming Game Development, Discovery and UGC (Presented by Roblox)
i
The latest AI and LLM (Large Language Models) innovations have paved the way for completely re-imagining the game development process, driving the discovery of new games, and making safer gaming experiences. What was a weeks-long process of creating the first playable prototype can now be achieved within a day. We will explore how developers can leverage AI for everything from texturing 3D models to generating and debugging code and arranging 3D scenes. We will also explore how AI is being used at Roblox to help drive the discovery of new games and match players to the right content. And how AI is helping to create safer and more civil gaming experiences. Lastly, we will showcase how AI enables a new generation of User-Generated Content (UGC) with a conversational interface and how these capabilities will empower developers to make more engaging experiences where their users participate in the creation process.

Procedural
Programming
QA

ML Dev
DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designe

AI

AI Summit: Making the Most of NavMeshes in FPS games: From 'Crysis 3' to 'Hunt: Showdown'
i
The Navigation System and NavMeshes in Cryengine have gone through significant changes in the past decade. In this session, we present the new major features added to the NavMeshes since their introduction during the development of 'Crysis 3'. We also share details about each added feature in chronological order, what problem each feature solves, what challenges we needed to overcome, how it was implemented and how it is used specifically in Crytek's latest game 'Hunt: Showdown'. We also show, whenever possible, what the performance implications of each feature are.

AI Summit
QA

DCC Tool Dev

AI Summit: Level Generation With Large Language Models
i
Can LLMs generate video game levels, among the many other things they can do? This session provides an overview of how to generate game levels with large language models, including but not limited to GPT-3, GPT-4, and Llama. Various strategies based on prompting, finetuning, and bootstrapping are discussed. The talk is accessible and some of the ideas are immediately actionable.

Machine Learning
Procedural
AI Summit
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
ML Dev

AI Summit: Modularize Your AI Tools to Create Behavior Instead of Code
i
When authoring behavior for game AI we must reason about a broad range of systems and their associated data. Commonly, this reasoning is formulated by means of visual scripting languages and behavior trees (among others). These tools often introduce challenges for reusability, and managing data dependencies in complex worlds.

In this talk, Sam Fay-Hunt demonstrates a framework to modularize game AI concepts into compartmentalized, reusable components. This system is highly suited to reasoning about, and describing properties of, environments or situations. He describes the core pillars of its design, and how it can be used to augment existing behavior authoring systems to empower designers to incorporate powerful concepts such as quality, danger, or utility into decision making.

AI Summit
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

AI Summit: From Text to Gameplay: Generative AI's Influence on Behavior Trees
i
Behavior trees have been a cornerstone of game AI for years, but what happens when you infuse them with the power of generative AI? Join Pierre Dalaya and Trevor Santarra as they explore the remarkable synergy between large language models (LLMs) and behavior tree authoring. Discover how these cutting-edge techniques can revolutionize your game development process by generating behavior trees and code, seamlessly integrating modern AI convenience into a familiar tool set. This talk showcases how generative AI techniques can supercharge your gameplay authoring tools, providing you with a whole new level of efficiency and creativity. Don't miss this opportunity to explore the future of game AI!

UX
AI Summit
Programming
Workflows

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

AI Summit: Practical Utility AI
i
Utility theory is a common method for handling decision making in games. Much has already been said about it, but most resources focus on theory rather than the nuts & bolts of actually building the system. This session solves that by focusing on implementation with only a light touch on theory.

The session starts by dissecting the architecture of a utility system, breaking down core concepts such as considerations, utility curves, and decision hierarchies. The session also examines the importance of data in tuning utility systems, offering insights into how designers manipulate data, curves, and more. Attendees discover essential tools for debugging utility systems and learn to navigate potential challenges and performance concerns.

The session concludes with a live demo, showing the full process of adding a new decision into the game, from design to implementation.

AI Summit
Programming

DCC Tool Dev

AI Summit: Endless Stories: Utilizing AI to Power a Content Creation Engine
i
Generative AI, when combined with traditional game development techniques, can allow for a new generation of games, ones that possess truly infinite worlds that dynamically respond to player inputs. Drawing upon decades of work as a data scientist and her current role leading Hidden Door, Hilary walks attendees through the process of integrating AI into traditional game development. Within the talk, Hilary will address AI's shortcomings and ethical concerns, as well as outline an action plan for attendees to use as they explore incorporating A into their game development workflows.

Procedural
UX
AI Summit
Workflows

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

Audio

Audio Summit: Challenges and Opportunities in Designing and Developing Audio Tools
i
This talk offers valuable insights into the design and development of audio tools, showcasing the importance of user-centered approaches, collaboration, and iterative processes in creating tools that enhance the productivity and creativity of sound designers and content creators. The talk emphasizes the iterative nature of tool development, where user feedback and collaboration play a vital role in refining the tool's functionality and workflows. It highlights the importance of continuously adapting and improving tools based on user experiences to maximize productivity and creativity. Additionally, some arguments for showing the value of investing more in audio tools are presented.

UX
Programming
Audio Summit
Workflows
Pipeline

Tool UX/UI Designer
DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Mixing, Music, and Mods: 'Cyberpunk 2077' Audio Technical Pipelines
i
The music and mixing systems of Cyberpunk 2077 give Composers and Sound Designers the power to author their content, but also stands as a 'director' between the player and the multitude of audio cues that naturally emerge from the life of Night City.

In this talk, Colin Walder, Engineering Director, Management & Audio, and Giuseppe Marano, Staff Engineer, Audio at CD PROJEKT RED, present an overview of the music and mixing tech developed for Cyberpunk 2077, and how creativity was put into the hands of the players through the audio modding system. They discuss the challenges involved in authoring dynamic transitions within a vast and dense open world, how to overcome the limitations of an area-based pipeline, and how to design a system that allows for injecting audio hooks into quests, scenes and dynamic encounters.

Pipeline
Audio

Tool UX/UI Designer
DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Visual Arts

Art Direction Summit: Lights of Dogtown: Narrative Lighting in 'Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty'
i
This session promises to be a journey that invites you to explore the historical process of crafting the Cyberpunk 2077 visual language through the interplay of light and color. Yet, it delves even deeper into the narrative-driven aspects of art-directing lighting within the 'Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty' world. Throughout this session, Jakub guides the audience through a process of gathering references, conducting in-depth analyses of the open world and quest narratives' unique requirements, and creating a coherent vision of per-location lighting. From there, Jakub transitions into the art of color scripting, an integral step that places a strong emphasis on evoking and enhancing the emotional impact of the game.

Art Direction Summit

Tool UX/UI Designer
DCC Tool Dev

Art Direction Summit: Deciphering Dogtown: How We Built the Last District of Night City
i
This session brings the environmental art behind Dogtown closer to you. It shows how different that district is from Night City and with that, presents all the challenges this project had in store for us and how we overcame them. It goes through the process of creating Dogtown from a graybox phase up to a polished quality, and the improvement of the elements we were not very happy with in 'Cyberpunk 2077' from the environment art point of view.

This talk also addresses technical pipelines and explain how we worked with Dogtown to create this heavily dense district in an optimized manner, going through how some of the pipelines were enough, yet others were improved quite a lot, and others created from scratch. Attendees will learn what lessons we drew from 'Cyberpunk 2077' and how we implemented that knowledge to create a better gaming experience

Art Direction Summit
Pipeline

Tool UX/UI Designer
DCC Tool Dev

Independent Games

Independent Games Summit: Critical! Combat Presentation Tools for 'Darkest Dungeon II'
i
Darkest Dungeon cast an intimidatingly large shadow over it's sequel with it's signature presentation style and strong visual identity. Darkest Dungeon II transitioned the series from 2D to 3D with the goal of maintaining the same distinctive visual style and presentation but pushing the bar as high as we could go. This talk will cover, in detail, the approaches, challenges, and trade-offs made in pursuing this goal. In particular, the challenge of achieving a robust presentation pipeline as one programmer with many artists to support.

Discover how the visual communication of features was gravely important for keeping everyone on the same page. How rapid previsualization influenced the way tools were built for sequencing animations and visual effects. Missteps that caused wasted time and lessons learned.

Aspiration unites the hopeful!

Pipeline
Independent Games Summit
Programming

Tool UX/UI Designer
DCC Tool Dev

Other Roundtables

Refactoring Systems at Scale Roundtable (Presented by the IGDA)
i
In the ever-evolving landscape of game development, maintaining and improving existing systems is as crucial as building new ones. Refactoring, the process of restructuring code to enhance readability, maintainability, and performance, becomes increasingly complex when working at scale. This technical roundtable delves into the challenges and best practices of refactoring large and intricate systems in game development, providing a platform for developers to exchange insights, strategies, and real-world experiences.

Advocacy
Programming

Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
Build Dev
DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

AI Roundtable Day 1: Deep Dive with Experts
i
The AI Roundtables session provides discussion-based sessions on Wednesday and Friday and a Q&A format session on Thursday. The Monday session starts with a discussion of machine learning versus regular game AI and then goes on to topics from the audience. The Thursday session is Q&A; bring questions and help answer questions and expect a larger number of topics to go by. The Friday session is completely driven by topics from the audience. The moderator helps to make sure that everyone gets a chance to speak and to keep the topics moving.

Programming

DCC Tool Dev

External Development (Outsourcing) Roundtable Day 1
i
External Development, or Outsourcing as it is commonly referred, plays a huge role in the game development industry and with it comes a huge amount of challenges. The External Development Roundtable is a moderated forum discussion surrounding external development topics which are mainly generated by the participants. Whether it's team/leadership buy-in, career growth, best practices, vendor relations, etc. this roundtable will provide a forum for questions, ideas and solutions from industry peers on the front lines of external development. Attendees from all experience levels and disciplines are welcome and will benefit from the discussion. Attendees are strongly encouraged to participate in the conversation.

Pipeline
Visual Arts

Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
Build Dev
DCC Tool Dev

Animation Roundtable Day 1
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The Animation Roundtable aims to bring all disciplines together under a common cause- how to best implement and improve the field of animation in game development. The following questions are among those that will be addressed:

Where is the line between aesthetics and gameplay? Who should be directing the animation in a game? Who owns each part of the animation pipeline after export? How can all disciplines work together better, to bring the best looking and feeling animation to their game? What are the expectations of animation? Of the player? What new technologies are available or coming online that can help animators excel at their jobs, and what challenges will those technologies bring? What is your best tip or trick that you think everyone needs to hear? What mistakes have you made that you think others can learn from? How can we all give and take feedback better, from all disciplines?

In addition, this roundtable discussion will focus on helping newcomers by dedicating the last part of each session to them, encouraging questions to help them get started (or jump-started!) in their animation careers.

Pipeline
Visual Arts

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

Visual Effects Roundtable Day 1
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The tools and techniques of Real Time VFX have changed dramatically over the past few years. There are now extraordinarily powerful desktop GPUs, rapidly advancing mobile GPUs, compute shaders, complex particle sims, mesh-based effect techniques, and advanced post processing and compositing tools. The new consoles have matured and are showing what they're capable of, and VR/AR/XR continues to impact the industry. It's an incredible time in Real Time VFX.

Join this roundtable to hear from other VFX artists, learn about their successes and failures, compare pie-in-the-sky ideas, and share your favorite tricks.

Day 1: General topics and revisiting ground broken in the VFX Summit earlier in the week. (Jason Keyser and Gabriel Boileau)

Day 2: VFX through an Artistic Lens, focusing on attendee questions about the artistic aspects of VFX. This may include art education (as students or veterans), art direction, and more. (Jason Keyser)

Day 3: The Technical Lens for creating VFX, guiding the conversation through such as graph based effect authoring, effect lighting and optimization, new mesh based techniques, VR/AR/XR, and more. (Gabriel Boileau)

Programming
Visual Arts

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

Game Audio Programming Roundtable Day 1: Game Integration
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Wednesday: 'Audio Programming Roundtable: Game Integration'
This roundtable session will focus on tools and techniques for integrating with game engines. Topics will center around technology choices, game audio engine design, and tool design. Newbies and experts are welcome to come and share their wisdom.

Thursday: 'Audio Programming Roundtable: Low-Level Topics'
This roundtable session will focus on low-level topics such as DSPs and mixing. Topics will center around algorithms, interesting effects to implement, and integrating those effects into workflows. Newbies and experts are welcome to come and share their wisdom.

Friday: 'Audio Programming Roundtable: Free-for-all'
In this roundtable session we will cover any topics that we didn't get to in the previous two days. We will also have a Q&A session where your questions can be answered by expert audio programmers. Newbies and experts are welcome to come and share their wisdom.

Workflows
UX
Programming
Programming
Audio

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Visual Effects Roundtable Day 2
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The tools and techniques of Real Time VFX have changed dramatically over the past few years. There are now extraordinarily powerful desktop GPUs, rapidly advancing mobile GPUs, compute shaders, complex particle sims, mesh-based effect techniques, and advanced post processing and compositing tools. The new consoles have matured and are showing what they're capable of, and VR/AR/XR continues to impact the industry. It's an incredible time in Real Time VFX.

Join this roundtable to hear from other VFX artists, learn about their successes and failures, compare pie-in-the-sky ideas, and share your favorite tricks.

VFX through an Artistic Lens, focusing on attendee questions about the artistic aspects of VFX. This may include art education (as students or veterans), art direction, and more.

Programming
Visual Arts

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

External Development (Outsourcing) Roundtable Day 2
i
External Development, or Outsourcing as it is commonly referred, plays a huge role in the game development industry and with it comes a huge amount of challenges. The External Development Roundtable is a moderated forum discussion surrounding external development topics which are mainly generated by the participants. Whether it's team/leadership buy-in, career growth, best practices, vendor relations, etc. this roundtable provides a forum for questions, ideas and solutions from industry peers on the front lines of external development. Attendees from all experience levels and disciplines are welcome and can benefit from the discussion. Attendees are strongly encouraged to participate in the conversation.

Pipeline
Visual Arts

Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
Build Dev
DCC Tool Dev

Animation Roundtable Day 2
i
The Animation Roundtable aims to bring all disciplines together under a common cause- how to best implement and improve the field of animation in game development. The following questions are among those that will be addressed:

Where is the line between aesthetics and gameplay? Who should be directing the animation in a game? Who owns each part of the animation pipeline after export? How can all disciplines work together better, to bring the best looking and feeling animation to their game? What are the expectations of animation? Of the player? What new technologies are available or coming online that can help animators excel at their jobs, and what challenges will those technologies bring? What is your best tip or trick that you think everyone needs to hear? What mistakes have you made that you think others can learn from? How can we all give and take feedback better, from all disciplines?

In addition, this roundtable discussion focuses on helping newcomers by dedicating the last part of each session to them, encouraging questions to help them get started (or jump-started!) in their animation careers.

Pipeline
Visual Arts

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

Animation Roundtable Day 3
i
The Animation Roundtable aims to bring all disciplines together under a common cause- how to best implement and improve the field of animation in game development. The following questions are among those that will be addressed:

Where is the line between aesthetics and gameplay? Who should be directing the animation in a game? Who owns each part of the animation pipeline after export? How can all disciplines work together better, to bring the best looking and feeling animation to their game? What are the expectations of animation? Of the player? What new technologies are available or coming online that can help animators excel at their jobs, and what challenges will those technologies bring? What is your best tip or trick that you think everyone needs to hear? What mistakes have you made that you think others can learn from? How can we all give and take feedback better, from all disciplines?

In addition, this roundtable discussion focuses on helping newcomers by dedicating the last part of each session to them, encouraging questions to help them get started (or jump-started!) in their animation careers.

Pipeline
Visual Arts

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

AI Roundtable Day 3: Open Discussion
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The AI Roundtables provides discussion-based sessions on Wednesday and Friday and a Q&A format session on Thursday. The Monday session starts with a discussion of machine learning versus regular game AI and then goes on to topics from the audience. The Thursday session is Q&A; bring questions and help answer questions and expect a larger number of topics to go by. The Friday session is completely driven by topics from the audience. The moderator helps to make sure that everyone gets a chance to speak and to keep the topics moving.

Machine Learning
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev

Visual Effects Roundtable Day 3
i
The tools and techniques of Real Time VFX have changed dramatically over the past few years. There are now extraordinarily powerful desktop GPUs, rapidly advancing mobile GPUs, compute shaders, complex particle sims, mesh-based effect techniques, and advanced post-processing and compositing tools. The new consoles have matured and are showing what they're capable of, and VR/AR/XR continues to impact the industry. It's an incredible time in Real Time VFX.

Join this roundtable to hear from other VFX artists, learn about their successes and failures, compare pie-in-the-sky ideas, and share your favorite tricks.

The Technical Lens for creating VFX, guiding the conversation through such as graph based effect authoring, effect lighting and optimization, new mesh based techniques, VR/AR/XR, and more.

Programming
Visual Arts

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

Commercial Game Engines

State of Unreal (Presented by Epic Games)
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Join us for a first look at what's in store for the future of game development. Learn about the latest advancements in our tools, hear news from our partners, and find out how you can take even more advantage of Epic's ecosystem.

Special Event
Programming
QA

DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Pipeline Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

UEFN Roadmap (Presented by Epic Games)
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Join us as we share the current state of Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) and discuss future development plans. This presentation will guide developers and studios through the latest capabilities they can leverage to engage the Fortnite audience. It will include tips on how to get started within the Fortnite Ecosystem, as well as discussing current limitations.

Programming
QA

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

Verse Update (Presented by Epic Games)
i
A look at the latest Verse features and what's coming soon to the language and framework.

Programming
QA

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designe

Using UEFN to Build New Genres (Presented by Epic Games)
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Join us as we discuss building new genres in Fortnite by leveraging UEFN features to expand the Fortnite Ecosystem. Explore new and upcoming tools through sample projects and community highlights. Leave feeling inspired to build games that look and feel unique.

Programming
Design

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designe

Advanced UEFN Features (Presented by Epic Games)
i
A look inside the new advanced UEFN features workflows and Verse APIs, which dramatically expand the power users have to construct content in UEFN.

UX
Programming
Workflows

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designe

Unity Developer Summit: Unity 6 and Beyond: A Roadmap of Unity Engine and Services (Presented by Unity)
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This is the can't-miss session of GDC 2024. Join Unity to discover the latest developments in the Unity Engine and how they're supported through additional tools and services to maximize your creative freedom and efficiency, while enabling you to produce gorgeous, immersive games that will wow players over and over.

In just an hour, we show you how to achieve fantastic graphics fidelity and flexibility through rendering pipelines, shader/VFX Graph, and AI tools like Muse. In addition, with new tools like Multiplayer Center and Multiplayer Playmode, you get a head start on streamlining your multiplayer development. And of course we haven't forgotten that a lot of you work in teams, so learn about some great collaboration tools such as Unity Cloud (with Azure) and Muse project-aware chat. Finally, we know it's all about platform reach – so we have you covered there, too.

Pipeline
Programming
QA

DCC Tool Dev
Build Dev
Pipeline Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

Unity Developer Summit: Crafting Beautiful Natural Environments with Unity and SpeedTree (Presented by Unity)
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Have you seen The oasis, our photorealistic URP sample? Go behind the scenes with the experts that crafted it and learn new ways to create eye-catching environments, ranging from vegetation to sky. This session walks you through how the shaders were made, how to create a beautiful sky, and how to build a Sago Palm including procedural structure and leaf canopy clusters.

Visual Arts

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designe

Unity Developer Summit: 20 Productivity Hacks to Make You a Unity Ace (Presented by Unity)
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Ready to up your productivity and make you and your team run as an efficient, well-oiled game-creation machine? Then this session is for you. It's packed with at least 20 hacks, tips, and tricks to get the most out of the Unity Editor and Runtime. You learn how to use Frame Debugger, profilers, and device simulators as well as how to set up custom hotkeys, advanced search and query building in-Editor, splines, object pooling, Muse Chat, material variants, and more. Don't miss this – you may find that gem of a trick to accelerate your workflows more than you could have imagined.

Career Development
UX
Workflows

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designer

Unity Developer Summit: Unity Muse: Accelerating Prototyping in the Unity Editor with AI (Presented by Unity)
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In this session, learn how Unity Muse – a collection of AI-powered capabilities – helps make creating in the Unity Editor faster, less complex, and more flexible. With natural-language prompts, you can chat to produce usable code, troubleshoot issues, and enhance your scenes with generative art, textures, animations, and much more. Get ready to enhance your current workflows and speed prototyping with Unity Muse directly in the Unity Editor.

UX
Design
Workflows

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designe

Unity Developer Summit: Bring Order to DAM Content Chaos with Unity Cloud (Presented by Unity)
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Its expensive to create and challenging to transform 3D content across multiple pipelines and applications. Just finding and using the right content can be a huge source of lost time and broken workflows. In this session, we discuss the unique challenges of 3D digital asset management (DAM) and how the new Unity Asset Manager can help organize your content across the studio and get great-looking games to market faster.

UX
Programming
QA
Workflows
Pipeline

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designe
Pipeline Dev

Design

Level Design Summit: Urban Planning in Games
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This session goes through all the basic steps of city creation. It explains why urban planning is important for game environments and how it can be useful for creating readable and distinguished urban space. The talk also helps to understand how to transfer from a real city to a game city, whether this is a realistic city or a fictional one. Everything that is said in this talk works both for big open world cities in AAA projects and smaller non-open world cities with linear gameplay.

Level Design Summit
Pipeline

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designe

Level Design Summit: Building Before 'Blockout': Better Communicating Your Design Before Placing Blocks
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This session will cover techniques that designers can use to improve how they communicate their designs.

The session will begin with a brief introduction to the speaker, a few situations a designer might find themselves in, and a touch on how all design, including level design, is the ability to communicate ideas to an audience.

We'll then dive into a short description of how the speaker has developed their own personal list of materials they use to better communicate their ideas.

Each material will be presented with a problem space to solve, the visuals and/or text that a designer can utilize to solve it, and applications of said visuals or text.

Once all materials are covered, an example level will be shown that was built using the techniques shared.

The speaker will close the session with questions.

Level Design Summit

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designe

Level Design Summit: Hyper-Modular Structures: Sins of a Level Designer
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The shortcomings and challenges of modular workflow for large-scale map production are often overlooked in favor of its alluring ease of execution and in-built optimization. This session aims to highlight the difficulties of adopting a modular workflow for relatively smaller and inexperienced teams and demystify some of the unrealistic expectations that come with it.

Investing a significant amount of time into engine tooling, runtime optimizations, and project maintenance utilities, the returns aren't always justifiable for the resources put into it.

Level Design Summit
UX
Programming
Workflows

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designe

Prototyping Games in Figma: Leveraging Variables and Expressions
i
In this talk, I will present a tech demo that pushes the limit of Figma's new features, including variables, logic, and formulas. With Figma's new features, we will essentially be using Figma like a more powerful Twine. Prototypes can be easily strung together into a series of mockups that animate, follow logic, and imitate real-time interactions. This is especially useful for artists who want to design games, since the software is a lot like Photoshop or Illustrator.

Programming
Design

DCC Tool Dev
Tool UX/UI Designe

Production & Leadership

Cinematic Workflow and Pipeline of 'FINAL FANTASY XVI'
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Good workflow and pipeline are essential in the development of AAA titles. This session explains the steps to design the workflow and pipeline for FINAL FANTASY XVI.

Eitaro Iwabuchi, Lead Technical Artist at Square Enix Co., Ltd., details the method of transferring data from MotionBuilder to Maya and the tools utilized to support their workflow. The workflow is designed with a combination of tools that have been used internally for other projects and tools that were developed from scratch exclusively for this project.

Other specialized tools used for the making of cut scenes, systems for voice placement, and tools for cameras creation will be covered—and concludes with the data flow and their progress management method with a customized ShotGrid API.

UX
Programming
Workflows
Pipeline
Production & Team Leadership

DCC Tool Dev
Pipeline Dev
Build Dev
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer

The Pillars of Hell: Achieving the Artistic Vision of 'Diablo IV'
i
This talk is dedicated to giving an inside look into the Art Direction of Diablo IV and how the Diablo art team developed a shared vision for one of the biggest games of 2023. This talk features John Mueller, Art Director for Diablo IV. He shares 5 processes utilized by the team to engage and grow a shared vision for one of gaming's biggest franchises.

Visual Arts
Production & Team Leadership
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
Tool UX/UI Designe

Leaders Working at the Heart of the Team 2024
i
Join four industry leaders as we explore leadership in four quick 10 minute microtalks. This years talks will cover: Studio Culture, The Artist-Art Director-Creative Director Pipeline, Leading with Empathy: Finding the Balance Between Being Human and a Leader, and Cross Discipline Equality: How to Generate Innovative Ideas and Solutions.

Pipeline
Production & Team Leadership

Dev Support/Integration Engineer
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer

Building the 'Minecraft' Creator Platform Block-by-Block
i
Minecraft has a long history of user-generated content and has formally supported Add-Ons on the Bedrock product since 2015 which enabled the Minecraft Marketplace to launch. With over $500 million in gross revenue and more than 1.7 billion downloads since 2015, hundreds of professional creators have built a career making content that engages our player-base. This session explores the platform's journey since 2020, discussing the development of its formal Creator API, tooling solutions, new gameplay features, and how we've evolved community engagement. We'll chart the creator's evolution from player to hobbyist to professional and discuss how Mojang Studios is supporting creators' evolving needs.

Production & Team Leadership
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Tool Lead/Engineering Producer
Tool UX/UI Designe

Not Just a Task Tracker Roundtable: Resolving Conflict and Increasing Team Productivity as a Producer (Presented by the IGDA)
i
As a game producer, you wear many hats, and one of the most critical roles is that of a mediator and motivator. Conflict resolution and fostering team productivity are crucial aspects of game production that often go hand-in-hand. In this roundtable, we explore strategies, tools, and best practices for producers to navigate conflicts, boost team morale, and enhance overall productivity, drawing from the collective wisdom and experiences of game producers in the industry.

Advocacy
Programming

DCC Tool Dev
Dev Support/Integration Engineer
Tool UX/UI Designer

Blog

Blog Archive

Blog Categories

🎮 GDC 2025: Game Tools Developer Guide

🛠 Must-See Sessions

🔍 Finding Relevant Sessions

🎯 Key Roles

Role Glossary

🔑 Searchable Keywords

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Table of Contents

Tools Summit

Tools Roundtables

Technical Art Roundtables

Automated Testing Roundtables

Universal Scene Description Roundtable

Machine Learning Roundtable

Programming

Pipeline

Technical Art

Version Control & Files

Rendering

AI/ML in Testing

Automation, Automated Testing, and QA

Machine Learning

Open Source

Procedural

AI

Audio

Visual Arts

Other Roundtables

Commercial Game Engines

Design

Postmortem

Production & Leadership