GDC Courses

Modernizing Rendering at Supercell

A case study in implementing a new rendering framework and migrating Supercell’s existing games to use it.

• YouTube
• 51 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

Open Salaries - Ensuring Equitable Pay Through Pay Transparency

Drawing on research and three years of practice, Matt Schembari examines the benefits and challenges of making company salaries open to employees.

• YouTube
• 31 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

Play With Your Audience - Enhancing Your Social Strategy Through Theater

Use performers’ techniques to make game-community social content more engaging and enjoyable for players and social media managers.

• YouTube
• 28 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

Finding Harmony in Anime Style and Physically Based Rendering

Explore how physically based rendering techniques preserve anime aesthetics through toon shading, lighting, shadows, and materials in games.

• YouTube
• 30 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

Sunless Skies - A Narrative Postmortem

A narrative postmortem on building Sunless Skies, covering narrative pillars, documentation, feedback, pitching, direction, and consultation.

• YouTube
• 55 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

Building the World of 'The Ascent'

A look at Neon Giant’s workflows for modeling, shaders, lighting, and assembling the stylized game world of The Ascent.

• YouTube
• 52 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

Don't Make My Job Easy - Effectively Pitching to Publishers

Learn how game publishers evaluate pitches and how to shape presentations around the emotional and rational factors influencing their decisions.

• YouTube
• 31 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

How Web3 Games Work - and Sadly Don't

An examination of why Web3 games struggle, how blockchain and NFTs shape game economies, and what alternative player value and interoperability models might offer.

• YouTube
• 1 hour 1 minute
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

Sparking Curiosity-Driven Exploration Through Narrative in Outer Wilds

Learn how narrative design in Outer Wilds creates curiosity-driven exploration and rewards players through story.

• YouTube
• 56 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

Research on Visual Fatigue When Playing Games

Methods for measuring visual fatigue in games and applying indicators to game design.

• YouTube
• 34 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

Approaching a Pedagogy of Game Writing

A framework for designing curricula that develop game writing and narrative design competencies.

• YouTube
• 30 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

How Do You Make a Game That Was Supposed to Be Small, but Ended up Being Huge

A production case study of how Outriders grew from a small project into a huge game while People Can Fly scaled its studio.

• YouTube
• 50 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

Accessibility on a Shoestring

Practical, low-cost techniques for making games accessible to more players, including approaches that can be implemented for free.

• YouTube
• 29 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

How to - Not Create Textures for VFX

A practical introduction to creating and reusing textures for visual effects, from galaxy and water textures to shader-based distortion, LUTs, and erosion.

• YouTube
• 55 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

FIFA 22's Hypermotion - Full-Match Mocap Driving Machine Learning Technology

Explore how FIFA captured a full 11-versus-11 match and transformed the data into animations using machine learning.

• YouTube
• 31 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk