Google has always had a strong presence at the annual Game Developers Conference but for the 2020 edition, they’re bringing everything under one branding: Google for Games. To kick things off on March 16, they will have their Google for Games Developer Summit Keynote where they will be sharing all the biggest announcements and innovations for game developers across all their product teams. This will be followed by two days of developer sessions to bring to the forefront how to use Google products to better your gaming business.
The Google Keynote seems to cover all the major products related to gaming including Google Play, Google Cloud, and Stadia. The good news is that even if you can’t make it to San Francisco, you can still watch the keynote and some of their Developer Summit sessions as they will be live-streaming it. You will have to sign up and register so you will get updates as the day draws near. There doesn’t seem to be any fee so if you’re a game developer, it would be good to sign up.
The first day of sessions are all about Android game and cloud services, including new tools for game development and optimization, how to reach more devices and players, and using new Firebase features in case you run into infrastructure management challenges. There’s also one Stadia session that first day but most of the sessions related to Google’s gaming streaming service will happen on the second day.
Some of the sessions lined up in relation to Stadia include incorporating multiplayer game services, a postmortem on bringing the game Destiny 2 to the streaming platform, and Google’s approach to Vulkan graphics API development. There’s also a session on Cloud Gaming in relation to Stadia, bringing Machine Learning in developing games, and how to make your game more discoverable in Stadia.
From March 18-20, Google will have a booth at the GDC Expo with product demos and Google gaming experts on hand for any questions. The Game Developers Conference happens from March 16-20 in San Francisco so expect more details and updates over the next few weeks.
