The DeanBeat: The outlook for online game events in 2021

I’m writing this on a Thursday night while participating in a panel in Clubhouse, the social audio chat platform that has grown quickly to more than 8 million users in a couple of months. I’m in the Nordic Games breakfast room run by Zsuzsa James and other folks. We were bemoaning the fact that we can’t meet in person at places like the Game Developers Conference this year, which considered doing a hybrid online-and-physical event in July in San Francisco, but nixed that idea and decided to go with an online-only event.

When I heard GDC might be doing an in-person event in July, I thought that would be too soon. We haven’t vaccinated enough people in the world, and it wouldn’t feel safe to me. But I recognize the strong desire to return to physical events and the need to make virtual events better. It’s just so sad that it will probably be next year before we comfortable with that idea.