GDC 2015 Predictions: Platforms of the Future

The game industry is changing fast, and perhaps nothing is a better indicator of the magnitude and velocity of the changes than the way the Game Developers Conference (GDC) is evolving to keep up with the industry. Even a quick look at this year’s list of GDC summits reveals topics that barely existed five or 10 years ago—like eSports, community management, and smartphone and tablet games.

As GDC 2015 draws near, the wealth of new and emerging game platforms will be front and center. Here are some of the trends to watch:

Valve Goes Big

Valve typically has a major presence at CES, but this year they sat the show out while dropping hints of a potential GDC presence. Only in the last week has Valve confirmed that they will indeed be making a big splash at GDC instead. We already know there’s a major update coming to Dota 2's engine, which I’m hoping we finally get to see demoed during GDC. That on its own would be reason enough to stop by Valve’s booth. But with the confirmation of Valve showing off the latest Steam machine devices and Steam controller, we definitely need check them out live! These products have been a long time coming so it will be awesome to see how the final product compares to the early versions that beta testers got to try out back in 2013. Accessing Steam’s entire library from the comfort of the living room couch can be a real market game changer. It will be interesting to see how this impacts the future of the console industry.

Virtual Reality, Really

We saw a big push for virtual reality at GDC last year: Oculus showed off the latest version of its Oculus Rift headset and Sony announced its own “Project Morpheus” VR prototype, while many smaller players showed off their own virtual reality products. Then shortly after  last year’s show Facebook shook the gaming industry with its announced acquisition of Oculus for $2 billion. Since then, we’ve seen several other heavyweight companies, including Samsung and Microsoft, make major announcements in virtual and augmented reality. With major companies investing in the space—and truly viable consumer products emerging—the market is finally moving from dream to reality.

Given all this, we should expect a much larger virtual and augmented reality presence at GDC 2015. VR is reaching all corners of the game industry—in fact, Chris Pruett of Oculus will be presenting a GDC session on developing VR for mobile. The market is emerging from being an unproven curiosity to a growing form of expression for digital content creators—and the big question now is when virtual reality products will touch the mass market. I think we’re almost there, and I’m hoping to see a HoloLens showcase at the Microsoft booth. Hopefully we see one of these companies eventually develop a holodeck in the not so distant future!

East Meets West in Mobile

Expect to hear more discussions centered on how mobile game developers in the West can reach the East and vice versa. Cracking international markets is still a key initiative for many developers, both large and small, but the holy grail of building and scaling a globally successful game remains a challenge.

We’re already seeing is Western companies partnering with mobile messaging apps, like LINE, KakaoTalk and WeChat in the East. Expanding globally can take an incredible amount of resources, but for the companies that do it well, it will be worth the investment.

The game industry has come a long way since the early days when developers had a handful of platform choices, i.e., PCs and several consoles. Today’s developers have an incredible number of choices about the platforms they’ll use to bring their games to life. This diversity—from virtual reality to tablets—is bringing new challenges and opportunities to the gaming industry. I’m looking forward to seeing more on these emerging platforms at GDC 2015—and I can’t wait to see how we’ll be playing our games in another 10 years.

Perry Tam is co-founder and CEO of leading mobile game network Storm8. Based in Redwood City, California, Storm8’s high-quality experiences and deep storytelling keep global users engaged, whether they play for minutes or hours at a time. For more information, please visit www.storm8.com. Visit Storm8 at GDC 2015 in the Career Center, Booth CC2212.