New conference tempts devs to Oz

With plans to attract over 30,000 visitors from across Australia and around the world, GO3 is the territory’s version of events like GDC and the consumer-facing parts of the London Games Festival.

The show takes place in Perth at the end of March and features both a two-day games development conference, which runs from March 30th to 31st, and a three-day consumer expo and gaming tournaments from March 30th to April 1st.

The event has already attracted sponsorship support from the likes of the Australian Government, Nvidia, Nintendo, Microsoft, Epic Games and many of the studios in Australia’s fast-growing games development sector, including Pandemic, Krome, BigWorld Tech, Creative Assembly and Team Bondi. Develop is onboard as a media sponsor, too.

“Australia is one of the fastest growing gaming spots in he world,” organiser David Kazim told us. “The market here is growing rapidly from both an industry and consumer perspective.”

“We have both a consumer and industry focus for the event which we think can bring a unique elements for both markets,” added Kazim, who says that events for trade and consumer audiences under one roof is also perfectly positioned to forge links between the two.

“There is no reason why they can’t exist together and drive unique benefits each way. We have some of the best industry people in the world coming to Perth in March for this, which is exciting for both the industry and consumers. Our full focus is to deliver a world-class event from a conference and expo perspective and give the industry a platform to show their latest innovations to everyone in this region every year.”

Speakers already confirmed for the developer conference includes a number of notables, such as: Epic Games’ Gears of War producer Rod Fergusson, Chris Williams from LucasArts, Midway’s Harvey Smith, Q’s Tetsuya Mizuguchi, president of NanaOn-sha Masaya Matsuura, Grasshopper president Goichi Suda (aka Suda 51), Roy Taylor — Nvidia’s content relations VP Roy Taylor, John De Margheriti, CEO of technology company BigWorld, and John Passfield from Pandemic Studios Australia, who helped form Krome.

More information about the event can be found here, details on earlybird registration can be found here.