GDC News and Information Blog

The call for submissions to present lectures, roundtables, panels and poster sessions at the 2013 Game Developers Conference Europe (GDC Europe) is now open through Monday, April 22.

Organized by UBM Tech Game Network, the event, now in its fifth year, will run Monday through Wednesday, August 19-21 at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany.

Co-located and taking place alongside Europe's leading gamescom trade fair, GDC Europe 2013 will again provide the essential pan-European perspective of game development and business trends currently happening throughout the continent.

Submissions are being accepted for Main Conference tracks in Business, Marketing & Management, Design, Production, Programming, and Visual Arts. Organizers are looking for leading industry practitioners to propose lectures and panels with significant, applicable takeaways for today's video game community.

Content submissions are also being accepted for the three Summits taking place during GDC Europe 2013: the Free to Play Design & Business Summit, the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit and the Independent Games Summit.

GDC Europe will continue to serve the pan-European game industry by gathering the world's leading game development professionals to discuss timely and relevant topics pertaining to current trends across platforms and industry disciplines.

Highlights from the 2012 event, which hosted more than 2,200 attendees, include the GDC Europe Classic Game Postmortem debut featuring the Nintendo 64's Golden Eye 007 creator Martin Hollis, a rich and detailed keynote talk given by Assassin's Creed III creative director Alexander Hutchinson and Dear Esther's Dan Pinchbeck offering valuable insights from lessons learned during the game's development.

Continue reading "GDC Europe 2013's call for talks now open until April 22" »

Posted by Staff at 7:39 AM | Permalink

UBM Tech Game Network's 2013 Game Developers Conference, the world's largest and longest-running event serving professionals dedicated to the art and science of making games, revealed a record 23,000 industry professionals attended last week's conference in San Francisco's Moscone Center.

The 2013 conference kicked off with two days of tutorials and summits focused on specific emerging platforms and topics, including a newly introduced Free to Play Design & Business Summit, the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit, and the Independent Games Summit.

Summit highlights included Microsoft senior game designer Richard Rouse III giving a timely Game Narrative Summit lecture titled, "Seven (or So) Techniques for Writing a Moral Game." In the talk, Rouse detailed the ways that developers can write games with a solid foundation of morality and engagement.

In the Free to Play Design & Business Summit, King's Tommy Palm presented a session titled "Candy Crush Saga Postmortem: Luck in the Right Places" - for which a free GDC Vault video recording is already available - to reveal some of the secrets behind creating a mega-successful free-to-play casual game.

The main conference began on Wednesday and included the 10th and final edition of a GDC favorite, the Game Design Challenge, for which this year's theme was "Humanity's Last Game." Independent game designer Jason Rohrer won the competition with his game proposal, A Game for Someone, a board game locked away in a titanium tube and buried in the Nevada Desert.

All attendees of the session were given a unique sheet of paper in an envelope listing 900 different GPS coordinates, with only one coordinate in one of the envelopes revealing the location of the game. Rohrer estimated that if one person visits a GPS location each day with a metal detector, the game would be unearthed within the next million days.

Continue reading "GDC 2013 reveals record 23,000 attendees, next year's show dates" »

Posted by Staff at 10:32 AM | Permalink

An Epic interview on HTML5 support, a Unity interview on platform partnerships, an IGF booth hijacking, and the IGDA's response to its controversial party mark Day 4 of GDC 2013 news coverage.

GDC 2013 is running Monday, March 25th through Friday, March 29th at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. Gamasutra is onsite to cover the event in its entirety, and the following are some of the fourth-day, can't-miss highlights:

- Facebook's director of game partnerships Sean Ryan talked about what the social network is doing to attract developers, and make them want to create Facebook games in 2013.

- Unity CEO David Helgason spoke with Gamasutra about its partnerships with Sony, Nintendo, and Facebook, and how the company continues to make sure its engine is elegant and works on all those platforms.

- Tim Sweeney and Mark Rein sat down to talk about what HTML5 support means for Epic, where the platform is going, and whether rich browser games could be threatening to hardware makers.

Continue reading "GDC Day 4/5: Facebook, Unreal and IGDA controversy" »

Posted by Staff at 11:51 AM | Permalink

An interview with PS4 chief architect Mark Cerny, Konami's FOX engine for Metal Gear Solid 5, Epic's Unreal Engine 3 for browsers, and DICE's Frostbite 3 for Battlefield 4 mark day 3 of GDC 2013. The IGF and Choice Awards concluded the evening of the first day of the Main Conference.

GDC 2013 is running Monday, March 25th through Friday, March 29th at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. Gamasutra is onsite to cover the event in its entirety, and the following are the third-day, can't-miss highlights:

- In an interview with Mark Cerny, the PlayStation 4's lead architect offered an inside look into the upcoming console and explained how he began the process of designing Sony's new system -- with developers' desires.

- Firefox developer Mozilla has revealed a partnership with Epic Games, which will bring the latter's Unreal Engine 3 to web browsers very soon.

- Although it was previously thought that the next installment in the Battlefield series would use DICE's Frostbite 2 engine, the company has revealed that the Frostbite 3 engine will debut later this year.

Continue reading "GDC 2013 Day 3: Engines and awards" »

Posted by Staff at 12:07 PM | Permalink

Kongregate COO Emily Greer described what keeps F2P players playing and paying, while QWOP developer Bennett Foddy identified F2P problems and potential solutions in the second day of the 2013 Game Developers Conference.

GDC 2013 is running Monday, March 25th through Friday, March 29th at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. Gamasutra is onsite to cover the event in its entirety, and the following are more can't-miss highlights:

-Kongregate COO and co-founder Emily Greer has built her company on maintaining players for the long haul. In her Free-To-Play Summit session, she described the six pillars her company has identified for keeping players happy (and keeping the revenues flowing).

-QWOP and GIRP developer Bennett Foddy says the free-to-play business model has five big problems. However, being creative about solving them can result in a more meaningful application of free-to-play games.

-FTL: Faster Than Light developers Matthew Davis and Justin Ma didn't bother with a design document -- after all, they expected it to be a three-month side project. But when development got serious, they had to adjust, the two share in this postmortem.

-Ndemic Creations CEO James Vaughan outlines some of the business decisions that made mobile disease simulation game Plague, Inc one of the most successful and top-grossing mobile games of 2012.

Continue reading "GDC 2013 Day 2: F2P problems and solutions" »

Posted by Staff at 12:47 PM | Permalink

The 2013 Game Developers Conference is in full swing, and highlights from the first day include Double Fine's Kipnis on the game jam inspired by @petermolydeux, Terry Cavanagh calling for indies to curate their own games, and Giant Sparrow on The Unfnished's Swan's journey to PSN.

GDC 2013 is running Monday, March 25th through Friday, March 29th at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. Gamasutra is onsite to cover the event in its entirety, and the following are some of the first-day highlights.

In How a parody Twitter account inspired a global game jam, Double Fine's Anna Kipnis gives a postmortem of "What Would Molydeux," last year's event that offered a unique spin on the concept of a game jam by basing prototypes on the tweets of Twitter parody account @petermolydeux.

Elsewhere, Super Hexagon creator Terry Cavanagh argues that fellow indie game developers are the community's best curators in Indies question whether journalists should be our game curators .

In Lessons from The Unfinished Swan's unique development journey, Giant Sparrow creative director Ian Dallas shares what he learned in The Unfinished Swan's journey from USC student prototype to full-scale, 12-person PlayStation Network release.

Continue reading "GDC 2013 Day 1: Indies speak out" »

Posted by Staff at 11:29 AM | Permalink

Mere days before GDC 2013 begins, organizers offer an extensive overview of the event and remind of conference-navigating tools to maximize attendees' experiences, such as the schedule builder and mobile app, and the availability of onsite pass purchases.

GDC 2013 will run Monday, March 25th through Friday, March 29th at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California.

The event is set to provide a wealth of knowledge, networking and inspiration for game development professionals worldwide, and is centered around more than 500 lectures, panels, tutorials, and roundtable discussions from more than 900 speakers.

Also key to the event are the Independent Games Festival (IGF) and Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCAs) ceremonies, and the most comprehensive Expo floor of its kind, open from Wednesday to Friday and featuring a Career Pavilion, Business Center, and more than 350 exhibitors in total.

The best way to maximize the week of events is to plan ahead for them with online schedule builder, which can be exported or added to the GDC mobile app. Attendees can also plan their expo routes with the detailed expo floor plan.

Continue reading "GDC 2013: What you need to know onsite" »

Posted by Staff at 4:32 PM | Permalink

GDC 2013 organizers are reminding attendees of the return of its onsite independent and emerging developer area GDC Play, featuring over 70 playable exhibits and the first hand-picked Best in Play showcase.

This will be the second GDC Play expo, after a successful 2012 debut, and will take place Tuesday, March 26 - Thursday, March 28 at San Francisco's Moscone Center during the 2013 Game Developers Conference.

In a new, expanded onsite location this year, GDC Play 2013 will be in the South Hall's Gateway Ballroom, in a prominent position directly opposite the main GDC Expo floor (which is open from Wednesday to Friday) - providing enhanced opportunities to target the more than 20,000 attendees at the show.

All Access pass holders and GDC Play exhibitors can easily arrange meetings with each other now using GDC's Business Matchmaking tool, too.

Earlier this month, organizers announced the eight Best in Play winners and eight strong runner-ups that will showcase next week. Winners will receive specially designated kiosks at GDC Play and two All Access Passes for the 2014 Game Developers Conference.

Continue reading "GDC 2013 organizers highlight titles to watch next week at GDC Play" »

Posted by Staff at 9:51 AM | Permalink

On the last day of discounted online registration, GDC 2013 organizers are highlighting talks on freemium app CSR Racing getting 30 million downloads, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm's cinematic process, and the 'reinvention' of Tomb Raider and Crystal Dynamics.

These talks are part of the Main Conference for Game Developers Conference 2013, which will take place next week, Wednesday-Friday, March 27-29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.

Today's highlights begin with Blizzard's Wyatt Cheng, who will explore his company's iterative design process in 'Through the Grinder: Refining Diablo III's Game Systems.' Cheng will focus particularly on what worked and what did not for the game's health recovery, controls, and skills systems.

'The Reinvention of Tomb Raider' called for a reinvention of Crystal Dynamics, studio head Darrell Gallagher and creative director Noah Hughes will share. Along with a studio "reboot," the two will discuss how the game required rebooted creative vision and production techniques to develop a Tomb Raider for a modern audience.

In another Blizzard session, lead writer Brian Kindregan will trace the story development of a difficult StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm cinematic in 'How Hard Could It Be? The Story of a Cinematic.' While showing multiple versions, Kindregan will track "the differing speed of cinematic production vs. game design, the feedback we received, the choices we made, and how they impacted the story."

Continue reading "GDC 2013 highlights Tomb Raider, StarCraft II: HotS talks; discount pre-reg ends tonight" »

Posted by Staff at 10:01 AM | Permalink

Just one day before discounted registration ends, GDC 2013 organizers are calling attention to several interactive events for the March conference, including playable board games from video game designers, plus multiple game history exhibits spanning The Neverhood through classic Sega games.

These events will be free to all GDC passholders for the week of the 2013 Game Developers Conference on March 25-29 and will be found in the common areas across the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA. The full line-up of exhibits is as follows:

The MADE - Game History Exhibit

Firstly, occupying part of the West Hall's Street Level, the Oakland-based Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment will host and curate a playable, diverse game history exhibit in three parts: 'Games You Can Frame', 'The Sound of Games', and 'African-Americans in Game Development'.

The main exhibit, 'Games You Can Frame' focuses on beautiful visuals from video gaming's past, and includes titles spanning GDC Classic Postmortem honoree Myst, Cinemaware's It Came From The Desert!, LucasArts' Grim Fandango, Q's Rez, and Fumito Ueda's Shadow Of The Colossus, to name but a few.

'The Sound Of Games' is a mini-exhibit featuring games with amazing audio or soundtracks, including Streets Of Rage and Super Metroid, and the mini-exhibit on African-Americans in games will feature the Fairchild Channel F game console, Designasaur 2 and Battlecruiser 3000AD.

Continue reading "GDC 2013 adds Sega history, board game exhibits, with 24 hours to pre-register" »

Posted by Staff at 10:45 AM | Permalink