2026 Indie Arcade Party with: Unity, VIVERSE & Genies

Experience the largest Indie Arcade Party during the week of GDC 2026! As an official GDC Affiliate Event, SF Game Development invites you to our 5th annual night of game industry networking and indie game showcases. Join over a thousand developers at the iconic DNA Lounge in San Francisco on Tuesday, March 10th. Proudly hosted alongside Unity, VIVERSE, and Genies, this is the FREE GDC party you can't miss. RSVP now on Meetup to secure your spot for the ultimate San Francisco game dev celebration! Also, if you want to bring a friend, just send them the event link here and have them register themselves (we need an accurate guest count per GDC guidelines).

• Four massive rooms packed with game demos, tech-talks and music
• 35+ indie game demos from members of the SF Game Development community
• 8 tech talks featuring industry-leading companies & speakers
• Video game-themed music in The Lounge for dancing

Whether you're a developer, publisher, artist, student, indie creator, journalist, or just love games, this is the perfect place to expand your career and learn about new games and solutions coming to market.

• No GDC pass? No problem! This event is open to the public (18+)
• Want a taste of last year’s event? Watch the recap video!
• Having trouble registering on Meetup? No worries—sign up on Luma instead.
• Want to showcase your game? Apply today!

Speaker Lineup:

7:30 PM – Unity | Corrie Green, Senior Developer Advocate
️Performance Analysis and Solutions in Unity 6 ️
This session explores common performance pitfalls encountered during development, and shows how to isolate them using Unity 6’s suite of analysis tools—including the Profiler, Memory Profiler, Project Auditor, and build analysis tools—and demos comparisons with best practices to improve scene performance.

8:00 PM – VIVERSE | David Goodwine, Chief Academic Innovation Officer and Executive Director at the School of Game Development, Academy of Art University, and Michael Morran, Creator Relations Manager at VIVERSE
Radical Reach: Why the web is the new secret weapon for game developers️
This conversation looks at how today’s tools, engines, and web platforms let developers launch, find audiences, and monetize independently. We’ll discuss the industry’s biggest tech inflection points, the comeback of 2D/stylized approaches, and why success doesn’t require competing on bleeding-edge graphics.

8:30 PM – Genies | Carl Domingo, Head of Developer Relations
️Avatars Made Easy: Accelerate Character Customization with Genies ️
Building systems that allow character customization is challenging and time consuming, but players are more immersed when they identify as the character they see. With Genies, you can enable full personalization of their avatar in minutes - from their clothes to their facial features. Learn how you can save time with the Genies Avatar SDK and content creation tools, so that you can focus on making your game fun!

9:00 PM – Unity | Esteban Maldonado, Senior Developer Advocate
️Unity 6.3 Multiplayer Template Overview ️
This session explores the new Unity 6.3 3rd-person gameplay multiplayer template that accelerates the creation of your shared online experience, with easily customizable and extendable gameplay.

9:30 PM – VIVERSE | Matt Rice, Co-Founder and Creative Director, Sennep Ltd
️Port Once, Distribute Everywhere: Unity on VIVERSE️
Learn how small studios and individual creators are expanding their reach and revenues by porting Unity projects to VIVERSE on the web.

10:00 PM – Genies | Carl Domingo, Head of Developer Relations & Hugo Cardoso, Code Monkey
Balancing Polish and Productivity, A Fireside Chat on Indie Development
With over 10 years of experience as an indie developer, Code Monkey has learned a lot in his time creating games and YouTube content. From his analysis of Steam stats and sales to his Unity tutorials, he's helped developers around the world stay informed on the shifting landscape of game development and tools. Sit down with Code Monkey to learn how indies can find success in a constantly evolving market through faster, iterative development.

10:30 PM – Pixile Studios | Michael Silverwood, Founder
Eight Years of Super Animal Royale: Lessons From Indie Live Service
In 2017, Super Animal Royale was a prototype built by two developers. Since launching in Early Access in 2018, it has reached 13+ million players across Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox, with full crossplay and a major v2.0 expansion, Super Animal World. In this talk, Michael Silverwood (Pixile Studios) shares the behind-the-scenes realities of sustaining an indie multiplayer live service over the long haul: shipping updates reliably across platforms, designing for compounding value instead of one-off content, making hard trade-offs between modes, queues, and regions, and building community trust without burning out a small team. Attendees will leave with practical strategies to survive and thrive in the live-service space without AAA resources.

11:00 PM – SF Game Development | Jordan Schuetz, Organizer
️Marketing Is Game Dev: Why Great Games Don’t Sell Themselves ️
You spent months perfecting your gameplay, polishing your art, and balancing every mechanic — but none of it matters if no one plays your game. In this talk, we’ll break down why marketing isn’t a post-production task — it’s part of game development itself. We’ll explore how successful indie devs are using product marketing from day one to build traction, gather player feedback, and position their games for success in crowded, oversaturated markets.

Contact for future sponsorship inquiries: jordan.schuetz@gmail.com

About SF Game Development:
SF Game Development is the largest gaming meetup in the United States, with over 10,000+ members, and this is our favorite after-hours event of the entire year! You do not need a GDC pass to attend, this is an event open to the public, so please RSVP, attend and show your support. Get ready to network, and celebrate the vibrant world of game development at our epic after party and expo! By registering, personal data may be shared with third parties. See you there!