GCAP will run in Melbourne from 6 – 8 October 2025 as part of Melbourne International Games Week.
The global games industry is evolving rapidly, and stability and sustainable business practices have never been more critical. 2024 proved a challenging year for many industries, and games were not excluded from these disruptions. 2025 looks to be similar.
GCAP 2025 will meet the industry where it’s at. As such, our focus for this year is on the feedback we have received in surveys, consultations, and recommendation from industry professionals. We have explored this feedback in five mission statements for this year:
#ForYou: Marketing and discoverability techniques are crucial for your game to stand out to a global audience, across thousands of releases each year. Making your game known to potential players will affect demand, investment, sales, and the overall reception from the players and the community. Speakers will tackle analytics, marketing practices old and new, how to engage the algorithm, and techniques for staying relevant in a consistently shifting market.
Investment: Australia boasts a robust government funding ecosystem on a federal and state level. However, most projects require a mix of funding to deliver projects and ensure the longevity of a studio and team. GCAP will work with speakers from a variety of funding networks to ensure a broad range of discussions, from first investment to what comes after your success.
2030: What does your career look like for you in five years’ time? Are you looking to lead? Secure international partners? To work on new IP’s or existing? Or just take the next step forward in your career? GCAP 2025 aims to address issues of upskilling and development skills that will prepare you to tackle development issues not just of today but looking towards the future too.
Technological: Games always sit on the precipice of several large technological changes. As an intersection of arts and technology, games are affected by issues of the console shift starting anew, VR tech in both games and film, machine learning and generative AI. How are these changes affecting our community? What does the future hold? How do we stay on top of these ever-adapting technologies?
Failing fast: Games can, on average, take up to five years to make. Falling into the sunk cost fallacy can leave you in the toughest position. From programming, to art, to leadership, we can all learn the benefits of tools for rapid iteration, cost effective solutions for development, and finding the best time to let go.
Our tracks for 2025 are:
We are looking for intermediate-to-advanced level talks based in practical reality, with tangible takeaways and educational outcomes. If you have an idea for a beginners/introductory talk, please contact us regarding the IGEA Educates Summit, our free conference dedicated to student and early career devs.
Through internal review and feedback, GCAP 2025 will deliver the skills industry have told us they require. Sav Wolfe will be leading content curation supported by a team of professional content specialists in each discipline to ensure relevance and quality of our topics and speakers.
Our schedule will be comprised of curated talks taken from both talks submitted and hand-picked content provided by our GCAP Subject Experts.
All speakers will receive a full pass to both GCAP 2025 and The AGDAs. Speakers will be compensated $200 AUD per talk slot, not per speaker. We do not accept panel submissions.
Talks will be recorded as in previous years, with selected sessions made publicly available on our YouTube Channel. The rest will go into the GCAP Vault for a year, with some talks released publicly each week via speaker agreement.
Applications will close at COB on the 28th of March.
Detailed applications are highly recommended.
To apply, click here.
A copy of the questions that will be asked in the form can be found here.
If you have any questions or enquiries, please reach out to:
