Not way back, the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco was liberally sprinkled with advertisements for blockchain corporations and sponsored talks about NFTs. They’ve all left.
Whereas GDC 2023 featured talks equivalent to “So, You Want to Build a Blockchain Game” and “How Polygon Labs Is Optimizing Games for an Emerging Blockchain Future,” I can not discover a single session about that rising blockchain future on the schedule for GDC 2026, which kicked off Monday and runs by Friday.
The closest factor I discovered is one talk whose description mentions “digital wallets and alternative payment methods preferred by players in emerging regions,” and I noticed a single banner promoting a blockchain-related firm within the conference heart as we speak, however that is it up to now.
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Even all the best way again at GDC 2017, there was a talk titled “Embracing Disruption: What Blockchains Mean for the Game Industry,” however there’s nothing like that this 12 months. Disruption was not embraced, it appears.
Meanwhile, generative AI is well-represented at GDC 2026, with Nvidia and Google on the scene and talks arising this week that embrace “Experimenting With AI-Powered Assistants in Games,” “AI Trends of Today and Opportunities For Tomorrow,” and “Build Living Games With AI.”
The expo ground, which just a few years in the past featured some huge blockchain cubicles, will this 12 months be populated by Tripo AI, Arcade AI, Blueberry AI, Gamercury AI, Moonlake AI, Tesana AI, and plenty of AI corporations that did not conveniently put “AI” of their names so that we would know what they do.
There’s stress between huge tech and inventive staff right here: According to a survey revealed by GDC itself earlier this 12 months, nearly all of GDC’s attendees aren’t on board with generative AI.
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52% of the surveyed video games business professionals stated that “generative AI is having a negative impact on the game industry,” whereas solely 7% shared the other opinion, that generative AI is sweet for the business.
“I’d rather quit the industry than use generative AI,” one UK-based sport design supervisor commented.
At GDC 2026, I’ve already met with one generative AI-focused sport developer that hopes to change the dialog by demonstrating that enormous language fashions could be made subservient to authored storytelling in ways in which gamers like. More on that to come back.
While blockchain gaming has retreated from GDC, it hasn’t gone away. The hosts of the GDC 2023 talks I discussed, NFT card sport Splinterlands and blockchain firm Polygon Labs, are nonetheless round.
There’s some mainstream help, too. Sony has a Web3 wing referred to as Block Solutions Labs, which created the Soneium blockchain, and EVE Online developer CCP (not the prime instance of “mainstream,” I admit) is experimenting with a blockchain-powered sport referred to as EVE Frontier.