This year the GDC is setting up ALL the tutorial, lecture, and panel classrooms with super fancy HD projectors. These projectors will provide more detailed and brighter images. We want the visual presentations that speakers deliver at the GDC to be as good as the verbal content they provide.

And, as usual, the classrooms in the Audio Track with have Dolby 5.1 surround sound.

Posted by at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Good morning everyone! One of the traditions we work hard to present at GDC is the tremendous wealth of Japanese developers on site. We've already talked about developers from Nintendo and Square Enix, but we've got a few more luminary folks to share with you. I'll go through them quickly, as there's a lot to cover.

As Ask a Ninja would say, it's time for everyone get on the omnibus! Composer Masafumi Takada has kindly agreed to deliver a retrospective on his work, titled The Music of Killer 7, God Hand, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, and No More Heroes.

Plus, our good friend Ray Nakazato, president of FeelPlus, is going to tell us what worked and didn't work on his latest project, in a session titled Looking Back at Lost Odyssey: The Challenges of Cross-Cultural Development.

In what's shaping up as an embarrassment of riches, we are also very pleased to feature Time Pilot and Street Fighter II creator Yoshiki Okamoto, now President of Game Republic. Okamoto-san has had a dramatic impact on the style of gameplay today, and he's prepared to delve deeply into the subtely of his process in his session titled Creativity in the Form of Improvement.

Finally, we have a couple of talks dealing with Final Fantasy XIII. While most high profile Japanese sessions at GDC fall into the game design track, we are pleased to present advanced sessions for other key disciplines at this year's GDC. Technical Research GM Taku Murata is back this year to give a detailed talk about Square Enix's switchover to a common development platform, their creation of a new engine, and their decision-making process in not going third party. This programming session is titled The Technology of Final Fantasy.

Also, we get a lot of requests regarding the art style of Final Fantasy games, and so we are delighted to feature a companion session, The Art of Final Fantasy (link pending). Final Fantasy art director Isamu Kamikokuryo will talk about the art style of the series, his inspirations, and the flow from concept art to pixels in an interview with Bungie's Steve Theodore.

One more note on Japanese participation at GDC this year: we're going to two rooms with dual simultaneous wireless translation in both Japanese and English, so we've got an open door for Japanese attendees too! Feel free to forward this link to any Japanese developers you know who may be interested in coming to GDC.

Cheers,

Jamil Moledina
Executive Director
Game Developers Conference

Posted by at 9:33 AM | Permalink

Hello everyone! A rare Thursday update from me, largely because we're going to push the schedule live early next week (yes, it's true), and we have a handful of interesting talks that need to go live beforehand. I know a lot of folks out there like these updates to have a theme, and so it strikes me that the common theme on these late arrivals is, well, brains.

First up, people have been talking for a while about using game engines to produce linear animation for film, TV, and commercial work. We're very pleased to present a couple of teams using their brains to make this happen. Kim Libreri of the leading LA special effects house Digital Domain and Jerry O'Flaherty from engine and game developer Epic Games will present a session titled Challenges of Creating Linear Content in a Game Engine. They'll explore the issues arising on Digital Domain's output for shorts, cinematics, and feature films and feature examples. Also, the bright people at Blockade are working on TV shows using game engines, and will present a talk on one of them, The Sacred Road, addressing the next stage of selling it to the network and distribution. The talk titled The Future of Animation is Games is presented by Blockade writer/director Bill Kroyer and Voom Networks HD Vice President of Programming, Mark DeAngelis. If you follow transmedia, game engines, or feature animation, you'll not want to miss this pair of talks.

The next talk has as much to do with guts as it does brains, since it's about Puzzle Quest. Infinite Interactive's CEO and Lead Designer Steve Fawkner will present a postmortem of the game, is his session Conquering Bane's Citadel: The Collision of Casual and Hardcore Gaming in Puzzle Quest. Blending hard core RPG elements with casual mechanics was huge leap of faith, and Fawker will describe the design process, lessons learned, and lessons applied moving forward.

Taking a step back from the direct nuts and bolts of making games, the next session we have to talk about is one that is literally about the brain and the human computer interface (HCI). As you may know, Emotiv systems is working on a technology to control in-game objects using only the mind. Yes, I know it sounds like flying cars. However, getting to the product required a significant degree of understanding about the brain and research into how we think about objects in a virtual space that could be relevant to everyone looking to close the gap between gamer and virtual world. With that in mind, Allen Snyder, PhD, Director for the Centre of the Mind and Co-Founder of Emotiv Systems will present with Randy Breen, Chief Product Officer also from Emotiv, are doing a session titled Semantic Interactivity - Virtual Coherence Using Next Generation Human Computer Interface.

Finally, we are presenting a chance for developers to give game journalists a piece of their mind. Newsweek editor N'Gai Croal has put together an all-star panel of game journalists including Kotaku's Brian Crecente, Spike TV's Geoff Keighley, 1Up Yours's Garnett Lee, Game Informer's Andy McNamara, and MTV News' Stephen Totilo to address the issues and conflicts in game journalism today in a session titled Up Against the Wall: Game Makers Take on the Press. This issue has largely been filtered by marketing, public relations, game publishing, and media publishing executives, but we felt it was appropriate to bring the media to our stage, so that actual developers can cut through the red tape and get the straight story.

At this point, there's only a couple more sessions coming in, but we know you're anxious to plan your GDC. We're working feverishly to get the schedule live for you, and a couple more surprises too!

Cheers,

Jamil Moledina
Executive Director
Game Developers Conference

Posted by at 8:25 AM | Permalink

I'm sure you're all scrambling to get your registrations in before the early registration deadline (tonight) - thought it might help to provide a few tutorial suggestions. Just in case you can't decide on what to pick to associate with your pass...here are few of the top rated tutorials:

Audio Boot Camp
Audio for games and other interactive entertainment has grown far beyond simple mash-ups of technical concepts with linear audio design techniques. Today's games require responsive and dynamic musical scores; ambiences, sound effects, and dialog that respond to player actions; immersive and accurate player-surrounding soundscapes; not to mention AI driven dynamic control of the overall mix.

Microsoft Game Developer Day
Topics include: Games for Windows - LIVE – Just the Facts, Getting More from Multicore, Xbox 360 XDK Update, Performance Tools Update, The Evolving Windows Gaming Platform, DirectX Futures.

XNA Game Studio Developer Day
Topics include: Advanced Debugging with XNA Game Studio 2.0, CLR Performance on Windows and Xbox 360, Understanding XNA Framework Performance, Networking with XNA Game Studio 2.0, Extending the Content Pipeline in XNA Game Studio 2.0, Xbox LIVE Arcade Extensions for XNA Game Studio 2.0.

Physics for Game Programmers
This lecture continues the tradition of the "Math For Game Programmers" and "Essential Math" tutorials and deepens it, by focusing in on the topic of physical simulation. Particular attention will be given to dynamics, numerical robustness, collision, and destruction.

Core Techniques and Algorithms in Shader Programming
This tutorial presents techniques that are used in leading games. It covers the currently most important global illumination models, probability-based shadow mapping methods that will ship soon in several games, a real-time grass approach that has proven to be useful on multi-core CPU/SPUs, a new data structure to store texture maps and a flexible material system.

View all Tutorials here.

Posted by at 6:09 PM | Permalink

Hello everyone! So two very important bits of information are going out today. One is the Wednesday keynote announcement, which I'm not going to talk about here because that actually goes live later this morning. The other is a trio of Nintendo talks going live today, which we're very excited to host at GDC.

While the company usually lets their products speak for themselves at most other venues, we've enjoyed a strong editorial relationship with Nintendo for a few years now. We're particularly proud that we've earned their trust in sharing real development experience and knowledge in our professional forum. Now that all eyes are on this company's successful gamble on the broader market, we are pleased to present their latest example, the development of Wii Fit, Nintendo's new balance-sensing peripheral and game. The session, Wii Fit Creating a Brand New Interface for the Home Console, is presented by project lead Takao Sawano, and the presents the philosophical and cultural ideas as well as the practical challenges behind bringing this title to life.

Another unique element that Nintendo has successfully experimented with is the development of the Wii Menu, all those channels and interactive online elements besides games that exist in the Wii interface. Takashi Aoyama, team leader for Nintendo's Network Group, gives us the inside scoop on the development of this project, in his session Planning the Wii Menu: From Pre-Launch to WiiWare. WiiWare is of course Nintendo's original downloadable game service, and Aoyama is preparing to outline the challenges they experienced in building the portal. On the subject of WiiWare games, you may also want to check out Square-Enix producer Toshiro Tsuchida's session WiiWare Project Lifecycle: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Little King.

Finally, we are very pleased to present the first postmortem of a major 2008 title, Development - Super Smash Bros. Brawl by Kirby and Smash Bros. veteran developer Masahiro Sakurai. With an eye to fine-tuned balancing, Sakurai shares what worked and didn't work integrating a variety of different characters as well as online play in adapting this modern classic to the Wii. Definiitely mark this featured talk on your schedule.

Okay folks, that does it for today's installment. Although I should mention that GDC's early bird pricing expires tomorrow, so I'd highly recommend that you register today!

Cheers,

Jamil Moledina
Executive Director
Game Developers Conference

Posted by at 7:00 AM | Permalink

The Game Developers Choice Awards, the highest honors in game development acknowledging excellence in game creation, will honor computer strategy game luminary Sid Meier with a Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s ceremony taking place at the Game Developers Conference (GDC). The Lifetime Achievement Award recognizes the career and achievements of developers such as Meier who have made an indelible impact on the craft of game development, as he has with the creation of a number of genre-defining titles including Civilization and Pirates! This year's show, presented by GDC and Webby-award winning Gamasutra.com, is held in conjunction with the Independent Games Festival and will be hosted on Wednesday, February 20, in the Esplanade Room in the South Hall of San Francisco’s Moscone Center. For complete details, please visit www.gamechoiceawards.com

Posted by at 4:21 PM | Permalink

Hello everyone, welcome back from the break! I had hoped to get an update out to you last week, but I had to focus on actually developing GDC. In the meantime, I hope you had a chance to check out our Thursday keynote announcement of luminary futurist Ray Kurzweil, who we've challenged to propose the next 20 years of games.

Today, I'd like to follow up on that theme of where games are going, and look at the broadening of the game-playing audience. One of the first movers in this space, who has since built a dynasty of intelligent historical strategy games, is Sid Meier. We just put out a press release announcing how proud we are to award him the Lifetime Achievement Award at our Game Developers Choice Awards. The one thing the press release doesn't mention though, is that while he is knee-deep in developing Civilization: Revolution, he will also be giving a talk at GDC, in the form of an interview. Veteran LucasArts designer and Civilization fan Noah Falstein will take us through the 25 years of his inspirational designs and career choices, in a session titled Standing the Test of Time: A Q&A With Sid Meier.

Now while Sid's games consistently attract an audience who may not call themselves gamers, The Sims Studio has been working on this angle for a while too. While we can't go into much detail now, and admittedly the session description is a bit vague, I would highly recommend that you make time to attend the session titled The Emergent Gamer. The session is being delivered by the head of the Sims Studio, Rod Humble, who is one of the visionaries behind EverQuest. All I can tell you about the subject is that there will be a closed beta at GDC, and you'll want to be there. Okay, now let's pretend I've artfully segued into the next thing I want to tell you about.

One of the other trends we're observing this year is the transmedia synchronization of film and game processes. Similar to Sid Meier, we have a session from a veteran who has been involved with transmedia for decades, and has much to present. Flint Dille, who wrote television series like Transformers (he killed Optimus Prime), writes games such as Escape From Butcher Bay, and is now adapting Frank Miller's Sin City graphic novel into a game, will give a detailed expose of the inner workings of the transmedia experience. His session is titled The Blur: Creating in the Eye of the Storm.

Finally, we have what I believe is a first for GDC, a interdisciplinary programming and design talk from Sony Pictures Imageworks on their most recent assault on Uncanny Valley, the film Beowulf. Software architect Parag Havaldar will present his session A Believable Character Postmortem: Motion Capture on the Virtual Set of Beowulf. He will detail the choices he and his team made in developing a custom motion capture system for the film, that could brings groups of interacting people believably onto the screen. Creating believability is a challenge that both game* and film animators and programmers face, and we're expecting to see many more lessons and tricks cross over between the shrinking divide.

So that's it for this Tuesday. There's still a handful of featured sessions in the pipeline, as well as our Wednesday keynote still to announce, so stay tuned!

Cheers,

Jamil Moledina
Executive Director
Game Developers Conference

* You may also want to check out the game side of the believability challenge, with the previously posted session Uncharted Animation: An In-depth Look at the Character Animation Workflow and Pipeline presented by Judd Simantov and Jeremy Lai-Yates.

Posted by at 10:18 AM | Permalink