VR fans will be gearing up for the 2017 edition of the Game Developers Conference soon, as it gets underway in just over a month, but another big industry event is taking place just ahead of it.
The 2017 D.I.C.E. Summit, another show aimed squarely at developers, will be taking place from February 21st – 23rd at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. It’s a respected event for industry professionals, with talks and panels from pioneering developers and the annual D.I.C.E. Awards, one of the more prestigious videogame awards ceremonies. This year’s show is significant for both the VR and MR industries, as it will feature appearances from some of the biggest names in both.
On the VR side, Jason Rubin, Head of Content at Facebook’s Oculus will be hosting a panel with Insomniac Games CEO and founder, Ted Price. The session, brilliantly titled ‘Jason and Ted’s Excellent VR Panel’, will see the pair discuss the first year of consumer VR and the future of the tech. Rubin has plenty of insight into the VR industry — just listen to him talk in our recent podcast — and Insomniac has already released three games on Rift, so it should be an interesting session.
Perhaps even more enticing is a session from Graeme Devine, Chief Game Wizard at the elusive mixed reality company, Magic Leap. There’s still much to learn about what this team are working on, and hopefully we’ll get a glimpse into that with his presentation, ‘Into the Future’, where he promises to talk about how MR will change our lives and how to create gaming content for it.
The D.I.C.E. Awards don’t have much to offer in terms of VR this year, however. Driveclub VR [Review: 7/10] is up for Best Racing Game and Schell Games’ I Expect You To Die [Review: 7.5/10] is up for Outstanding Achievement in Game Design but that’s about it. With other awards ceremonies starting to make their own categories for VR games, hopefully we’ll see D.I.C.E. follow on in 2018.
