A map of where the attendees for GDC 2018 came from.
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The game industry is finally making its way into emerging markets

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 18 min

The recent Game Developers Conference had a diverse collection of attendees and speakers from all over the world. Some of them had trouble making it into San Francisco, thanks to heavier border screening. But a map of where people came from (above) showed that game development has spread all over the world.

At GDC, GamesBeat held a breakfast panel about the growth of emerging markets for games and how much progress the $116 billion industry has made. Once upon a time, all you needed for this growth to happen was stores and electricity. But now games are connected, and it takes broadband connectivity and a number of other factors for games and game studios to thrive.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.