When event organizers postponed GDC 2020 in San Francisco from March to (apparently) an August 4-6 makeup event, development teams all over the world suddenly found themselves scrambling to make up for missed professional networking time, lost opportunities with potential players, and in many circumstances, unrecoverable travel investments. As E3 and other events follow suit and business nearly everywhere grinds to a halt, the usual advantages of working in close geographic proximity to traditional industry hotspots have all but vanished. This was the topic of my discussion with Robert Hubert, the Los Angeles-based development director responsible for Brutal Grounds, an upcoming top-down competitive shooter from AGOG Entertainment.
Todd Mitchell is a US Midwest-based comedy writer and game developer with bylines at Weekly Humorist, Fanbyte, Slackjaw, End of the Bench Sports, and more. He’s the author of Inside Video Game Creation, the founder of CodeWritePlay, and host of the GameDev Breakdown podcast. Follow him on Twitter @Mechatodzilla.