After waiting 1,096 days (not that we counted) since our last GDC, our team was thrilled to meet with members of the community in person once again. The main thing we learned at this year’s event is that many of you are shorter than we realized! But all jokes aside, although you couldn’t see our smiles – masks up! – you probably noticed the excitement in our eyes.
It was so good to see everyone in attendance, and we look forward to doing it again next year. Now let’s relive some of the highlights together.
Over the course of three days, our Twitch hosts Kal O’Brien (@kalobrien), Hasan Al Salman (@HalSalmn), and Ruby Chung joined forces with numerous creators and members of the Unity team to discuss upcoming games, new features, and gamedev tips. On the final day of GDC, Hasan and Ruby announced the highly anticipated winners of the 2021 Unity Awards. Rewatch the announcement below:
Unity Awards 2021 winners
Best desktop/console game: Inscryption
Best AR/VR game: I Expect You to Die 2
Most anticipated game: Hollow Knight: Silksong
Best multiplayer game: Crab Game
Best student project: Metamorphos
Best social impact project: Baba Yaga
Best animated short: Namoo
Best Unity Insider devlog: Mark Brown
Best Unity Insider entertainment value: Dani
Best Unity Insider tutorial creator: Code Monkey
Best Unity development streamer: Lana Lux
Best development tool: RPG Builder
Best artistic tool: Feel
Best artistic content: Polygon Dungeon Realms
Asset Store publisher of the year: Blink
Best project in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction: Real-time Spatial Analytics
Best project in Automotive, Transportation, and Manufacturing: Fetal Heart VR (Training Simulator)
The Unity Developer Summit kicked off GDC 2022 with a full day of technical talks outlining what we’ve been working on and what’s to come in 2022. From the Unity roadmap to high performance programming with DOTS to creating beautiful cross-platform content, these talks can help you realize your vision.
Watch the Developer Summit talks as well as all of our GDC sponsored sessions in this YouTube playlist.
Our team also invited Dr. Alok Kanojia, MD, MPH, cofounder of Healthy Gamer, to discuss combating toxic behavior in gaming. His session, Tackling toxicity: How to build a thriving player community, explored issues of toxicity in gaming and the reasons behind this disruptive behavior. He even equipped attendees with actionable advice to better protect players and studio reputation through AI technology.
Additionally, our Head of Publisher Operations Emory Irpan presented some of the data we recently released in the Unity Gaming Report 2022. Emory walked us through current trends that we see in the industry, and how Unity is enabling developers to build and run more games. With real data and analysis from Unity’s systems, as well as input from our gaming experts, we’ve compiled actionable insights that you can leverage to take your game to the next level.
At GDC, we gave attendees a taste of our latest sample game, Gigaya. Gigaya was created to demonstrate the ecosystem of tools and features that work together to empower creators like you to realize all kinds of creative ambitions.
Jump into the world of Okkeriel to find inspiration on how to bring your own game to life. Use this project for learning how to sharpen your skills, from programming to artistry, and then engage with us as we continue to shape and evolve Gigaya.
The Artistry booth welcomed artists and developers interested in seeing how our latest features in ArtEngine and SpeedTree, plus new releases such as Ziva, strongly support the creation and publishing workflow. Through interactive demos, we unpacked how artists can deliver greater volume and quality in 3D content with our definitive set of cloud-based artist tools. We also shared the Enemies demo, which started numerous conversations around the use of Unity for virtual production and cinematic creation in gaming.
During a live discussion, CTO of Weta Digital Joe Marks chaired a panel of technical pioneers working with Unity’s art tool technologies, centering on a new era of creativity at Unity, tied to Weta Digital’s stellar toolchain. Topics ranged from product roadmaps to Unity’s vision for empowering artists and data pipelines, plus upcoming plans for building a rich content library.
Meanwhile, the Unity Gaming Services booth shared our Multiplay, Mainframe, Magic 3, and Boss Room demos. Here’s a brief summary of each:
Of course, it wouldn’t be GDC without incorporating games to play onsite. At the Unity booth, attendees had the opportunity to play Greak, TUNIC, Last Epoch, Hitman Sniper, and Father. Intrigued? Get the details on each and find out where you can check them out:
Father: Fight off a horrifying cult in the Garden of Eden in search of your wayward daughter, Eve, in this FPS inspired by Half-Life and Resident Evil.
Finally, we want to express a note of gratitude to the team behind the magic. Cheers to the Unity events team on a job well done. You can rewatch the moments captured on our IG story highlights under “Events.” See you all next year!
Is this article helpful for you?
Thank you for your feedback!