How GamesBeat will be a part of GDC next week

We’re busy getting ready for a full week of coverage of the Game Developers Conference. Our team includes GamesBeat news writer Jeff Grubb, community manager/writer Mike Minotti, and managing editor Jason Wilson. We’ll be covering everything from Monday through Friday, with a combination of embargoed news, press conferences (including AMD, Unity, Epic Games, PlayStation VR, and Oculus), interviews, the GDC Choice Awards, and various GDC sessions.

I’ll be speaking at a few events. They include a Monday morning, invitation-only breakfast with the Invest in Canada Bureau and Kabam chief operating officer Kent Wakeford. We’ll be talking about regional advantages for game development in a very small group session.

Also on Monday, I moderate a panel on diversity and virtual reality at the Open Gaming Alliance networking lounge at GDC. Our title is Diverse People, Perspectives and Products for Immersive Computing. And our participants include Megan Gaiser, principal of Contagious Creativity and diversity evangelist for the OGA and Elevate; Leslie Pirritano of Elevate Charity; Nichol Bradford, cofounder and executive director of the Transformative Technology Lab; and Jenn Duong of Women in VR.

The last few years have been a wake-up call for the gaming industry. Unconscious bias has been exposed as the root cause for a lack of diversity in leadership and content. What’s more, both genders suffer from it. Emerging technologies of AR and VR will radically change the way we engage and interact with the world, our businesses and each other. The breadth and diversity of employees, products and audiences depend entirely on who is shaping the vision. This panel will explore creative leadership approaches, strategies and initiatives to complement current diversity tactics that foster both human and financial capital.

This is a continuation on discussions on diversity that I’ve done with Gaiser on the topic of diversity and creativity and on the struggles over diversity in the game industry.

The diversity panel is at the SF Green Space, 657 Mission Street, Suite 200. The OGA also has a full couple of days of sessions at the lounge.

I’m also speaking at the Digital River Sixth Annual Monetization Day at the GDC. The event starts at 9:30 a.m. Pacific on Wednesday, March 16, and I’ll be doing a fireside chat at 11 a.m. with Digital River group vice president Jeremy Coker on monetization in digital games. I’ll be talking about my insights on games and trends for 2016. The session is in Room 2011 in the West Hall of the Moscone Center. The event is open to people who have registered for GDC.

Lastly, I’ll be handing out invites and seeking speakers for our GamesBeat Summit 2016 and our GamesBeat 2016 Los Angeles event as well.