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It was good to see you, GDC 2022!

April 7, 2022 in News | 7 min. read
Unity booth at GDC
Unity booth at GDC
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It was good to see you, GDC 2022!

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.

The highlights

Unity Showcase – Live at GDC!

Twitch hosts

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:

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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)

People standing in line

GDC speaking sessions

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.

  • Unity Roadmap for 2022 – Get a preview of Tech Stream 2022 release updates for even better performance, improved productivity, and higher graphics fidelity.
  • The path to leveraging DOTS in production – Hear from Lauren Frazier of Ramen VR and Jonas De Maeseneer of Electric Square as they describe their experiences creating games with Unity’s Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS).
  • Making beautiful cross-platform content with URP – Take a deep dive into the Universal Render Pipeline to create visuals that scale, regardless of platform.
  • Version control for game developers – Make sure your game project files are secure with DevOps and version control that’s optimized for the game creation workload using Plastic SCM.
  • The future of .NET and Unity – Explore the changes being made to scripting in Unity to ensure that you have speedy access to the latest industry standards, including CoreCLR.
  • How Unity Gaming Services addresses unsolved problems in gaming – Deepen your understanding of creating, launching, and operating games.
  • From creation to connection: What’s new for multiplayer gaming at Unity – Want to get started with multiplayer games? This session covers Netcode for GameObjects and services like Multiplay and Relay.

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.

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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.

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What you missed at the Unity booth

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Gigaya, our latest sample game

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.

Demo station
Getting artsy at the Professional Artistry demo station

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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.

Unity booth
Unity Gaming Services

Meanwhile, the Unity Gaming Services booth shared our Multiplay, Mainframe, Magic 3, and Boss Room demos. Here’s a brief summary of each:

  • The Multiplay demo focuses on the product’s new self-serve functionality, a simple three-step process.
  • The Mainframe demo unpacks products like Cloud Code, Cloud Save, Authentication, and Economy.
  • The Magic 3 demo is a match-three style game that utilizes Unity Analytics and Unity Ads in a production-ready environment.
  • The Boss Room demo exhibits Netcode for GameObjects, Relay, and Lobby in a small-scale cooperative, production-ready environment, so that creators can learn about multiplayer development in Unity.
Booth
Made with Unity games to play

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:

  • Greak: This side-scrolling, single-player game with hand-drawn animations lets you take on the role of three siblings, Greak, Adara, and Raydel. Guide them through the lands of Azur, alternate control between them, and use their unique abilities to escape from the Urlag invasion.
  • TUNIC: Explore a land filled with lost legends, ancient powers, and ferocious monsters in this isometric action game about a small fox on a big adventure.
  • Last Epoch: A combination of time travel, exciting dungeon crawling, engrossing character customization, and endless replayability makes this action RPG a favorite among veterans and newcomers alike.
  • Hitman Sniper: Step into the shoes of Agent 47 and discover the most compelling sniper experience on mobile to date.

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.

If you had fun, thank the events team!

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!

April 7, 2022 in News | 7 min. read

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