Crows Crows, the studio founded by Stanley Parable co-creator William Pugh, was scheduled to take place in San Francisco this week before being postponed due to a global coronavirus health emergency, and the 2020 Game Developers Conference, prepared an alternative for the social aspect of the conference.

Pew and company's alternative GDC is, as they put it, "a massively multiplayer online browser-based networking and conference experience with light roguelike elements," which you can play here.

It is called the CDC-Crows Developers Conference, where players explore San Francisco's "Moscrowne" Center (a play on the Moscone Center) with other participants through dry coughs that translate into convention small talk. Opportunities to communicate are given; standard GDC phrases are also included:

Very realistic. And if you explore the convention floor, you can observe the streets jammed with "a perfect 3:1 ratio of Uber to Lyft" while sipping a $13 coffee.

Meanwhile, the actual Game Developers Conference is still on: instead of a physical event, virtual talks are being streamed this week on the GDC Twitch channel. The full schedule can be found here.

Starting tomorrow, the San Francisco Bay Area will be under an evacuation order. The area will not be completely sealed off; residents will be able to shop for groceries and go out for health care, and home delivery services will continue to be available, but "non-essential" gatherings and travel will be temporarily prohibited. In other words, GDC organizers were correct in announcing the postponement at the end of February.

Bay Area residents can find more information on the Shelter-in-Place order here; for general information on the Covid-19 coronavirus, see the North American Centers for Disease Control, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, or the World Health Organization.

If you play CDC for virtual socializing, we recommend opening the menu, switching to 4K mode, and checking out the talks "The Problem with Gamers Today" and "Let's Get Pissy."