Even a rebrand may not be able to save America's most storied gaming event In this week's newsletter: since 1988 the Game Developers Conference has been a core part of the gaming calendar - but exorbitant costs and Trumpism put that at risk E very year for as long as I have been alive (read: since 1988), the annual Game Developers Conference has been held in California. It started out as essentially a house party: a gathering of 27 people in the living room of Atari designer Chris Crawford. By the mid-90s it had left Chris's house and grown to more than 4,000 attenders, and in 2005 found a permanent home in San Francisco's Moscone Center. These days, about 30,000 game development professionals of all kinds attend every year. The online GDC Vault is a precious trove of game development history and useful advice for any gaming discipline.

Despite the sunny spring skies in San Francisco this week, the mood among nearly 30,000 video game industry professionals was gloomy as they descended upon the city for the yearly Game Developers Conference (GDC). Some were so frustrated with the state of affairs in their business that they organized a group screaming session in a park. "Those of us who have a job and can afford to be here are going through the motions and trying to have a good time," said Maxi Molina, a game developer attending the event from Spain. "But the vibe is rancid in the industry right now." The gaming industry saw more than 10,000 workers laid off in 2023, up from 8,500 in 2022, according to the Game Industry Layoffs project, which tracks game developer and publisher job losses globally.

As many people around the world limit their time outdoors for fear of the coronavirus, one might think it's a boon time for the video game industry, which can provide a form of entertainment that isolated people so desperately need. But in reality, the outbreak could not have come at a worse time for the gaming business. Concerns over the virus, which can cause potentially deadly health complications, have led organizers to postpone a major industry event where designers often make big publication deals, potentially killing the next Fortnite in the cradle. Furthermore, it threatens to wreak havoc with the industry's supply chain just as Sony and Microsoft, two of the industry's biggest competitors, are gearing up to release their next big consoles later this year. News that the Game Developers Conference, or GDC, was being rescheduled came down late Friday.

At an industry conference for video game developers in late March, the thousands of lanyarded attendees could try new games, swap business cards and hear from experts on rendering realistic blood spatter. Or they could talk about unionizing. Hundreds joined a series of standing-room-only roundtables on the topic of organized labor, taking time away from the Game Developers Conference to brainstorm ways to build worker power in an industry that is almost entirely nonunion. Organizers with Game Workers Unite, a group that has sprung up in the last year to push for wall-to-wall unionization in the $43-billion game industry, kicked off each session with an icebreaker: "Damn the man." "Damn the man" for making designers work 100-hour weeks for months on end to deliver a game on time -- a practice known as "crunch" that often comes without overtime or bonus pay.

It's Friday, which means it's once again time for Replay, WIRED's look at the world of gaming. Since nearly everyone involved in the videogame industry spent the week at the Game Developers Conference discussing the future and reflecting on the past, a lot of news came out of that annual gathering. But a lot of news came from elsewhere too. Well, there are awards, a new title to look forward to, and an old conflict finally (almost) coming to an end. Earlier this week at the Game Developers Conference, the Independent Gaming Festival held its yearly awards ceremony, honoring the best and most exciting works in the indie gaming sphere.

Google has taken the wraps off of its new gaming service. Dubbed'Stadia,' the gaming platform operates entirely on the cloud and lets users'instantly' stream games on any device, without the need for pesky downloading. The service is slated to launch later this year in the U.S., U.K. and Canada, with more details about available game titles expected to come in the next few months. Stadia ditches the traditional console; instead, users can play games with their existing laptops, desktops, TVs, tablets or phones, as well as their own keyboard and mouse. No updates, no downloads,' Google said.

First person shooters have evolved over the years to build fun environments for non-player characters: soldiers that take cover, aliens that give chase and allies that help in the heat of battle. In this case study I look at what happens when you toss out the rule-book with id Software's 2016 reboot of DOOM. DOOM is built around a philosophy known as'push forward combat': influencing narrative, level design, combat, player progression and more. In short, it acts as a critical reflection and reaction to contemporary shooter games. Whilst Call of Duty will have you hunker behind cover and pick off enemies from afar, DOOM breaks from these conventions to deliver a powerful, fast-paced and visceral gameplay experience.

This year's Game Developers Conference (GDC) set the battleground for another skirmish between long-time Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) foes AMD and NVIDIA. NVIDIA is the reigning champ in discrete desktop graphics chips with 72.4% market share (per Mercury Research), while AMD has announced its new GPU architecture, called Vega, which will attempt to gain additional market share when it launches in Q2. But NVIDIA is not content to sit back and wait for AMD to catch up – it has gone on the offensive with a new high-performance GPU based on a tweaked version of its existing high-performance Pascal GPU architecture. NVIDIA's new performance champ is the GTX 1080 Ti and preorders have already sold out. NVIDIA hosted an Editors' Day with industry analysts, press, and tech enthusiast sites to introduce updates to its extensive set of developer tools.

When I was a kid dreaming of being a game developer, I hoped that in the future I'd be joining a large studio and working on a blockbuster title. Things didn't quite pan out that way. After leaving university with a fellow student, I am now the co-founder of my own company, Vlambeer, renowned for successful game releases such as Nuclear Throne and Ridiculous Fishing. I was born in the Netherlands, the son of an Egyptian immigrant and a Dutch mother, and was raised as a proud Muslim. For the past years, much of my travel to the United States has led to secondary selection, investigation, or interrogation.

President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration and green card holders from several majority-Muslim countries earned widespread response this weekend with protests and legal action. Among game industry companies and developers, their response was similarly vocal. In a statement, industry trade group the Entertainment Software Association strongly came out against the order. "The Entertainment Software Association urges the White House to exercise caution with regard to vital immigration and foreign worker programs. As a leading force in technology and exporter of entertainment, the U.S. video game industry thrives on the contributions of innovators and storytellers from around the world," the Software Association's statement said.