Game Developers Conference | March 5-9, 2012 | Moscone Convention Center

Kinematics and Other Techniques for Managing the Creative Process

Laura Fryer (WB Games Seattle)

The heart of creation is mysterious and at some level unknowable. How can we stay true to ourselves, and our teams in the ever changing games business. We will explore game development as a creative process and discuss how to support and lead that process within the constraints of business, with examples from Crimson Skies, Gotham City Impostors and Xbox among others.Drawing from years of working on the publishing side internal development, this talk will cover different techniques and strategies for managing the fundamentally unpredictable process of making a game. No one way of managing a game works for every studio and team but everyone should walk away with a practical example or two to try.

This talk is designed to help team leads and producers with different techniques that they can use for managing the design process within the constraints of business.

Witcher 2: How CD Projekt RED Sold Over a Million Copies of its Exclusive PC Game And How You Can Too

Marcin Iwinski (CD Projekt RED)

Learn from CD Projekt RED Joint CEO Marcin Iwinski the tactics involved in creating a blockbuster franchise from scratch on a modest budget. From early research to finding a publishing partner and signing a deal, Marcin Iwinski will reveal what he has learned from 7 years working to bring games to market. Iwinski will show by example, using his experience from the award-winning Witcher franchise, the thought process that goes into creating a huge PC franchise and will then demonstrate what those lessons teach by sharing sales numbers from the Witcher franchise. Get a rare insider's look at the business decisions involved in transforming a game from an idea into products on store shelves in this hour-long session.

Team Fortress 2 from the Orange Box to Free to Play in Just Four Years!

Joe Ludwig (Valve)

This presentation tells the story of Team Fortress 2 as it journeys from a traditional "buy it once and play online forever" business model to one where item sales are a significant source of revenue and finally to a Free to Play model. The story includes tips on attracting attention with ongoing updates, introducing items to a game, managing the launch of an in-game store and easing the players through the transition to "free to play". There are also lots of pretty charts describing how Team Fortress 2 fared during this process.

When the Consoles Die - What Comes Next?

Ben Cousins (ngmoco Sweden)

Everything dies, eventually. Our industry is in a period of rapid, tumultuous change as social games, iOS/Android and PC free-to-play grow from nothing to hundreds of millions of users right before our eyes. Meanwhile, consumer technology is trending away from the use of specialized devices like MP3 players, digital cameras and GPS receivers towards multi-use devices like a laptop computers, tablets or smartphones.

What could these two trends mean for the central hardware platform and business model of the current games industry - the PS3, Xbox 360 or Wii sitting under your TV? Is the games console as we know it under threat? In this talk Ben Cousins examines questions that many are beginning to ask - will the console die? If so, what will kill it and when? What can console developers do to avoid their jobs dying with the platform?

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