Think Services Game Group and Reboot Communications have revealed new details on this May's GDC Canada, including an advisory board including EA, Next Level Games, Radical, and BioWare execs, as well as a track line-up based around the production schedule of video games.

According to NPD Canada, the Canadian game industry grew by 23 percent in 2008, reaching C$2.09 billion in revenues. GDC Canada plans to serve this fast-growing region by providing a forum for Canadian developers to share best practices for fostering ingenuity and quality within their globally distributed games.

GDC Canada’s content lineup emphasizes the production cycle of game development, with lecture and panel tracks focused on the following stages of game creation: Concept/Preproduction, Production, Finalling and Post Launch/Analysis:

By organizing the conference tracks according to the stages of development rather than specific fields, participants can better understand production cycle efficiencies and their teammates’ point of view.

The advisory board for GDC Canada is composed of Canadian industry veterans including Deep Fried Entertainment's Brenda Bailey; BioWare's Ron Clement and Matt Robinson; Threewave Software's Dan Irish; Ubisoft's Derek Elliott; Pug Pharm's Steve Bocska, Electronic Arts' Dave Elton and Tabitha Hayes; Next Level Games' Douglas Tronsgard; THQ Canada's Tarrnie Williams; Radical Entertainment's Kelly Zmak; Disney Interactive Studio's Howard Donaldson; Gerri Sinclair of Great Northern Way Campus, and Jerome Kashetsky of the National Research Council of Canada.

"It oftentimes gets overlooked how much development activity occurs in Canada. With companies like EA, Activision, Disney Interactive Entertainment, and Ubisoft, responsible for production of major titles the region exerts a greater-than-realized impact on the global game industry," says Izora de Lillard, Event Director at Think Services Game Group.

"It’s important to bring to attention the work, developmental challenges, and opportunities of Canadian developers in a meaningful forum such as the Game Developers Conference."

GDC Canada will take place May 12-13, 2009 at the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Center in Vancouver, British Columbia, and registration is now open at the official event website.

Posted by Staff at 4:30 PM | Permalink

[In the fourth of a series picking out the most notable Game Developers Conference 2009 lectures, presented by sister site Gamasutra, they examine the Programming Track, with newly added talks from the Killzone 2, Halo Wars, and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves creators.]

Game Developers Conference 2009 (organized by Think Services) is set to take place in San Francisco's Moscone Center from March 23 to 27, 2009.

With nearly 280 sessions now confirmed for GDC 2009, we'll be taking a track by track look at the conference's line-up over the next few weeks.

Fourth on the list is GDC's Programming Track, which will focus on the "ever increasing challenge to produce games that capture the attention of the public and the media," as well as the opportunities presented by "mature consoles, new handhelds, a highly competitive sales environment, and increased demand for very high production values in games."

Notable highlights thus far announced for this track are as follows:

- In "The Rendering Technology of Killzone 2," Guerrilla's senior graphics programmer Michal Valient will present an overview of the rendering techniques used in the highly anticipated PS3-exclusive shooter. In addition to looking at lighting and shadowing techniques, Valient will discuss the "different optimization possibilities the Playstation 3 offers."

- Ensemble Studios's Colt McAnlis will present "Halo Wars: The Terrain of Next-Gen," a technical session on how the studio took advantage of the Xbox 360's hardware for the forthcoming RTS title by "moving from a standard height-field terrain, to a full vector field terrain and increasing vertex density by 8x over previous titles."

- Jason Gregory, generalist programmer at Naughty Dog, will provide an informative lecture on "State-Based Scripting in in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves", giving attendees an in-depth tour of the studio's "highly flexible, object-oriented, finite state machine based scripting environment," while preparing programmers to implement a similar system.

- Titled "Insomniac Games' Secrets of Console and Playstation 3 Programming," this full-day tutorial will have the Insomniac Engine Programming Team dispensing "a day's worth of technical presentations, each offering an individual perspective on the methods, tricks, and optimization strategies involved with programming the Playstation 3 console."

- Rockstar's lead graphics programmer Wolfgang Engel will cover the advantages and disadvantages of different render design patterns and introduce "The Light Pre-Pass Renderer - Renderer Design for Multiple Lights," new renderer design pattern more material variety, less memory bandwidth usage, easy MSAA implementations on all platforms, and other improvements over other patterns.

- In "Zen of Multicore Rendering," Halo Team Microsoft's principal engine programmer Corrine Yu plans to expose the audience to "novel technology and pragmatic engine designs that exploits parallelism to implement features previously not possible in single core fixed rendering pipeline hardware."

- Epic Games' senior programmer Niklas Smedberg and engine programmer Daniel Wright will share their studios "gore and blood rendering techniques" and their "approaches used to aggressively optimize Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, which is necessary for console hardware" in this informative discussion on "Rendering Techniques in Gears of War 2".

- Providing an in-depth look at the technology behind the studio's 3D fighting game, Midway's graphics programming lead Jonathan Greenberg will present "Hitting 60Hz with the Unreal Engine: Inside the Tech of Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe" and describe a "series of optimizations and guidelines that describe how one could create a 60 Hz game inside Unreal Engine 3.

- BioWare's John Watson will provide a visual model of the complexities of large scale software development to demonstrate how changing factors impact software development in "Massive Software Complexity", a useful poster session targeting "technical staff who are motivated to decrease development time and increase correctness."

- Pulling examples from Star Ocean 4's development, Tri-Ace CEO and CTO Yoshiharu Gotanda will share how attendees can integrate a flexible shader management system and physically-based camera simulation during post-processing. He'll offer practical examples, implementation details, and the challenges his team faced in his session titled "Star Ocean 4: Flexible Shader Management and Post-Processing".

The full Programming Track line-up to date includes many more notable lectures and roundtables, including discussions on artificial intelligence, tool development, creating truly destructible worlds, and more.

Posted by Staff at 2:52 AM | Permalink

Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo Co., Ltd. will deliver a keynote address at the 2009 Game Developers Conference, kicking off the main conference’s schedule of lectures, panel discussions and roundtables.

The address, “Discovering New Development Opportunities,” marks Iwata’s first return to the GDC keynote stage since 2006. The Game Developers Conference takes place March 23-27 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.

Being a developer himself, Iwata’s keynote lectures at the Game Developers Conference are known for inspiring other developers to think about creating games in new and different ways:

His 2005 keynote gave developers the first information about the technology being used for the next-generation console then codenamed "Revolution" -- which has since become known as the Wii.

In 2006, Iwata spoke about "disrupting development," and introduced the Western development community to philosophies on engaging new players, surprising existing players and the role the company’s video game systems would play in expanding the market and widening the possibilities for developers.

"The Game Developers Conference is thrilled to welcome Satoru Iwata back to the keynote stage," said Meggan Scavio, Event Director of the GDC. "His previous talks at the GDC can be credited with setting the stage for much of the huge growth the games industry has since seen, and attendees continue to talk about how both lectures impacted their perspective on development."

"We are confident that Iwata’s keynote this year will be added to the list of memorable GDC talks. Attendees are eager to know how he will inspire them this year."

Born in 1959 in the Hokkaido Prefecture of Japan, Iwata studied at and graduated from the Tokyo Institute of Technology University, where he majored in computer science. Shortly after graduating, Iwata joined HAL Laboratory, Inc. and in 1983 began coordinating the software production and development of Nintendo titles, such as the Kirby series.

By 1993, he had become president of that company. In 2000, Iwata moved to Nintendo Co., Ltd. as the head of the Corporate Planning division, where he was responsible for Nintendo’s global corporate planning. In 2002, he was named president of Nintendo Co., Ltd. where he continues to guide development of games with the passion of a game creator.

Satoru Iwata’s keynote, “Discovering New Development Opportunities,” is scheduled for Wednesday, March 25, 2009 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. PST in the Esplanade Room of the Moscone Center’s South Hall.

The Game Developers Conference (part of Think Services, as is this website), the largest professional industry event dedicated to the creation of games, attracts over 18,000 attendees, and will take place March 23-27, 2009, at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.

For registration details and for more information, please visit the official Game Developers Conference 2009 website.

Posted by Staff at 10:52 AM | Permalink

The organizers of the Casual Games Summit at the 2009 Game Developers Conference have revealed speakers and sessions for the two-day March summit, with notables from PopCap, EA/Pogo, Oberon Media, Playfirst and more discussing the state and future of casual games.

The GDC Casual Games Summit will take place on Monday and Tuesday, March 23rd and 24th, 2009 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco as part of Game Developers Conference.

This always popular Summit returns to GDC with a broad range of topics that reflect the increasingly diversified casual games industry. CGS' theme for this year is based on the dueling business strategies from the book 'Blue Ocean Strategy', by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.

The makers of Bejeweled, Women’s Murder Club, Build-A-Lot, Fairy Godmother Tycoon, Diner Dash and more will evaluate opportunities and challenges of the Red Ocean (established markets, audiences, and players) and the Blue Ocean (newly recognized or created markets addressing new segments) approaches in casual games:

In particular, they will look at hot topics like publisher’s funding criteria, optimizing the portal, the state of monetization, common design pitfalls, connecting people through casual games, and emerging platforms and business models.

Top sessions include 'The Year in Casual Game Design' with Nick Fortugno (Rebel Monkey) & Juan Gril (Joju Games). Back by popular demand, Juan & Nick will dissect the most successful casual games of the past year in their own unique way.

In addition, the 'Design Today' segment will feature a series of mini-lectures from some of the most successful designers in the industry; Kenny Shea Dinkin (PlayFirst), Jane Jensen (Oberon), Nick Fortugno (Rebel Monkey), Miguel Tartaj (KatGames), Jason Kapalka (PopCap Games), Michael Wyman (Big Splash Games), and Todd Kerpelman (EA/Pogo).

These notables will weigh in on designing today's leading game genres and provide tips for standing out in a crowded field. They’ll also recap recent developments in Hidden Object, Time Management, Adventure Puzzle, Card/Board, Match and Strategy Simulation games.

Industry veteran and Summit co-organizer Steve Meretzky of YouPlus commented of this year's line-up: "The field of casual games continues to expand to new platforms, new demographics, and new methods of monetization. The Casual Games Summit is a single super-strength dose of everything you need to know to create and to sell casual games in 2009, in this fast-changing but incredibly promising environment."

Elsewhere at the Summit, while genres are expanding, the current economic climate is tightening budgets everywhere. 'Business in a Red Ocean: Surviving the Squeeze' will feature Wade Tinney (Large Animal Games), David Rohrl (Casual Games - Zynga), Dan Prigg (RealGames, RealNetworks, Inc.), and Ofer Leidner (Oberon Media) discussing their survival techniques.

Some of the key questions discussed will be: 'What criteria do publishers use when deciding which games to fund? And how do portals decide which games to distribute? How can the big Web portal experience be perfected?', and, perhaps most key: 'How does a small developer survive in this climate?'

Despite the tough times now, Summit co-organizer Dave Rohrl from Zynga is optimistic, commenting: "Casual games are the key growth area for the game industry. This year’s summit brings together a great lineup of speakers spanning every part of the casual game industry – developers, publishers, distributors, journalists and more. They span downloadable games, social games, and every other part of the complex and diverse casual game ecosystem. This should be a multifaceted look at this exciting and fast-moving area.”

More information on the full line-up for the Summit is available at the official GDC Casual Games Summit webpage, with many new details on the entire March 23rd-27th GDC event also now available.

Posted by Staff at 8:29 AM | Permalink

The Independent Games Festival Mobile (IGF Mobile), an event that celebrates innovation in games for handheld devices, including mobile phones, DS, PSP, iPhone and iPod touch, has named the finalists for the second annual competition.

The number of entries more than doubled – to over 100 – compared to last year’s inaugural competition, bolstered by a strong showing from the emergent iPhone and iPod touch platform – so much so that a special ‘Best iPhone Game’ category has been designated for the titles which best use the unique possibilities of the device.

Winners of the 2009 IGF Mobile competition, who will get a share of $30,000 in prize money, will be announced at a special ceremony during the Game Developers Conference (GDC) Mobile conference on March 24, and additionally honored during the main Independent Games Festival Awards on March 25, 2009.

Some of the leading finalists for this year’s competition include stylish iPhone cube movement puzzler Edge (3 nominations), the technologically cunning Wardive on Nintendo DS, which uses local WiFi hotspots to generate enemies (3 nominations), and elegant iPhone ‘tower defense’-style title Fieldrunners (3 nominations).

Games also nominated multiple times include Secret Exit's touch-controlled iPhone rope wrapping game Zen Bound and iconic tilt-controlled iPhone puzzler Dizzy Bee, with a number of Flash Lite and Java cellphone games, including the innovative Cubic Republic, also finalists. Read on for the full list:

This year’s IGF Mobile competition is supported by Platinum and Founding Sponsor NVidia – which is awarding ‘The Next Great Mobile Game’ at this year’s awards, with finalists to be revealed soon, as well as Gold Sponsor and Best iPhone Game prize sponsor ngmoco.

The full list of IGF Mobile finalists, including screenshots and official website links, is available on the IGF Mobile website, and also listed below as follows:

IGF Mobile Best Game
Cubic Republic (IKS Mobile) – Flash Lite
Smiles (Sykhronics Entertainment) – iPhone/iPod touch
Fieldrunners (Subatomic Studios) – iPhone/iPod touch
Edge (Mobigame) – iPhone/iPod touch
Wardive (And-or) – Nintendo DS

Innovation In Mobile Game Design
Wardive (And-or) – Nintendo DS
Galcon (Hassey Enterprises) – iPhone/iPod touch
Eliss (Steph Thirion) – iPhone/iPod touch

Achievement In Art
Fieldrunners (Subatomic Studios) – iPhone/iPod touch
Dizzy Bee (Igloo Games) – iPhone/iPod touch
Ruben & Lullaby (Song New Creative) – iPhone/iPod touch

Technical Achievement
Football Tycoon (Dynamo Games) – Java
Real Racing (Firemint) – iPhone/iPod touch
Wardive (And-or) – Nintendo DS

Audio Achievement
Radio Flare (Studio Radiolaris) – iPhone/iPod touch
Zen Bound (Secret Exit) – iPhone/iPod touch
Edge (Mobigame) – iPhone/iPod touch

Best iPhone Game – Presented by ngmoco
Edge (Mobigame) – iPhone/iPod touch
Dizzy Bee (Igloo Games) – iPhone/iPod touch
Fieldrunners (Subatomic Studios) – iPhone/iPod touch
Zen Bound (Secret Exit) – iPhone/iPod touch
Frenzic (The Iconfactory) – iPhone/iPod touch

The IGF Mobile competition will have its own pavilion, adjoining the main IGF Pavilion and featuring playable versions of all of the finalists’ games, at Game Developers Conference 2009, set to take place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco from March 23rd to 27th.

“The mobile industry has seen incredible innovation and quality in mobile gaming, in particular with the rise of the iPhone and iPod touch platform,” said IGF Chairman Simon Carless. “The significant increase in the number of entries speaks to the unlimited possibility that exists in the mobile market, and the IGF is excited to acknowledge the importance of indie developers in the handheld game device space.”

The Independent Games Festival itself was established in 1998 to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize the best independent game developers, much the way that the Sundance Film Festival honors the independent film community.

The creation of IGF Mobile in 2007 was the direct response to the maturing of the mobile game industry, and the desire to similarly recognize and reward those driving the advancement of the space.

For more information on the Independent Games Festival Mobile finalists, visit the official IGF Mobile website; and to register for GDC, please visit the Game Developers Conference site.

Posted by Staff at 9:04 AM | Permalink

The organizers of the Game Developers Conference 2009 announced that ngmoco founder and CEO -- and former Electronic Arts executive -- Neil Young will provide this year's GDC Mobile keynote.

In his speech, titled "Why the iPhone just changed everything," Young will discuss Apple's platform and its effects on the mobile games industry.

Young's session summary describes the iPhone as "the most exciting innovation of the last year," and likens its launch to the introduction of industry-defining consoles like the Atari 2600, the Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Game Boy.

The executive will also use the keynote at the GDC Mobile summit to explain why he left Electronic Arts to form ngmoco and create games for Apple's iPhone, and will discuss what opportunities new mobile devices present in the future.

Young previously held industry positions as general manager at Electronic Arts Los Angeles and as head manager at EA Blueprint. He resigned in 2008 to found mobile developer ngmoco, which has produced popular iPhone titles such as Topple, Dropship, and the recently launched Rolando.

The Game Developers Conference is the world's largest professionals-only game industry event, attracting over 18,000 attendees each year. This year's conference will be held between March 23rd and 27th, 2009, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California.

Posted by Staff at 9:56 AM | Permalink

[In the third of a series picking out the most notable Game Developers Conference 2009 lectures, sister site Gamasutra examines the Game Design Track, with newly added talks from the World of Warcraft: Wrath Of The Lich King, Mass Effect 2, and Warhammer Online creators.]

Game Developers Conference 2009 (organized by Gamasutra parent company Think Services) is set to take place in San Francisco's Moscone Center from March 23 to 27, 2009.

With nearly 280 sessions now confirmed for GDC 2009, we'll be taking a track by track look at the conference's line-up over the next few weeks.

Third on the list is GDC's Game Design Track, which will help attendees "understand and exploit the possibilities of new technologies," and also explore the "challenges and ramifications of the interaction between new technologies and established techniques."

Notable highlights thus far announced for this track are as follows:

- The 'Cruise Director of Azeroth: Directed Gameplay within World of Warcraft', Blizzard Entertainment's Jeffrey Kaplan explains the guidelines and philosophies directing the creation of World of Warcraft content, and will also provide an informative look at the popular MMORPG's "quest system and how it has changed over time, with Wrath of the Lich King being the latest evolution."

- Project manager Corey Andruko and lead technical designer Dusty Everman will present a highly anticipated session on "The Iterative Level Design Process of Bioware's Mass Effect 2." The two will examine major issues encountered while building the original Mass Effect, and will share the sequel's new level-creation process.

- Mythic Entertainment's ribald Paul Barnett will share how his team managed to take a beloved franchise like Warhammer and "convert it into to an MMO that's fun in its own right", as he recounts humorous anecdotes from the Warhammer Online developer's process of 'Making an MMO Based on a Beloved IP (Without Pissing Everyone Off)'.

- Last year's Game Design Challenge champion, Infocom veteran Steve Meretzky, will compete against two as yet unrevealed combatants in 'The Game Design Challenge: My First Time.' The contestants will pitch a game concept that brings the themes of sex and autobiography together, providing for a session full of "extremely innovative and uncomfortably revealing design thinking."

- In his 'Vast Narratives and Open Worlds, Part Deux -- Big Huge Problems' session, Ken Rolston -- lead designer of the recent Elder Scrolls games -- will talk about his new open-world RPG with Big Huge Games. Along with BHG's lead designer Mark Nelson, he'll discus the "unique and varied challenges associated with designing a vast open-world game, how to avoid them, and what to do when they inevitably occur."

In addition, a number of other already announced lectures are notable highlights in the Design Track:

- In 'Player's Expression: The Level Design Structure Behind Far Cry and Beyond?', Ubisoft's lead level designer Jonathan Morin will share "proven design tools to support extensive player’s expression," as well as "examples on how to use those in the future to expand beyond what was done on Far Cry 2."

- Lionhead Studios's Peter Molyneux will display visual and playable examples for a range of both successful and failed ideas from his studio in 'Lionhead Experiments Revealed', depicting "cutting edge technology from several different disciplines."

- In 'Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap: Design Lessons Learned from Rock Band', Harmonix senior designer Dan Teasdale looks to inspire designers to "subvert the yearly franchise excuses that kill design innovation, and strive to push forward on innovating in their own titles, regardless of development time, franchise, or mechanic."

The full Game Design Track line-up to date includes many more notable lectures and roundtables, including discussions on breathing life into open worlds, camera-based gaming, screenwriting techniques, and many more.

Posted by Staff at 10:05 AM | Permalink

The 2009 Independent Games Festival (IGF) has announced the ten winners in the Student Showcase for its 11th annual awards, with games from three continents spanning ecological, paint-splattering and fantasy exercise games to be shown at GDC this year.

Chosen from a new record of 145 Student Showcase entries (up over 15% on last year's 125 entries), these games will go on to compete for an overall Best Student Game prize, to be awarded at the IGF Awards Ceremony on the evening of March 25th, 2009.

Some of this year's Student Showcase winners include CMU's 'active play' exercise-centered game Winds Of Orbis, quirky Danish first-person dish cleaning game Dish Washington (pictured), and ecological management puzzle game City Rain from Brazilian students.

Also honored are titles including USC's abstract painting game The Unfinished Swan and reality-manipulating German side scrolling shooter Zeit Squared:

All IGF finalist games will be exhibited at the IGF Pavilion at this year’s Game Developers Conference. GDC, Think Services' annual conference dedicated to the art, science and business of games, takes place March 23rd-27th at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.

Each finalist in the IGF Student Showcase will receive a $500 travel stipend to help aid expenses for the trip to GDC 2009. The winner of the IGF Best Student Game Award will receive a special trophy and $2,500 cash prize during the ceremony.

The Student Showcase games and game mods that will be considered for the 2009 Best Student Game Award are all highlighted on a special page on the IGF website.

The full list of finalists is as follows:

- Tag: The Power Of Paint (DigiPen Institute Of Technology, Seattle)
- Feist (Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland)
- Winds Of Orbis (Carnegie Mellon - Entertainment Technology Center, Pittsburgh)
- Dish Washington (The National Academy of Digital, Interactive Entertainment, Denmark)
- The Unfinished Swan (University of Southern California)
- Where Is My Heart? (Universität Ulm, Germany)
- The Color Of Doom (The Guildhall at SMU, Texas)
- City Rain - Building Sustainability (Universidade Estadual Paulista, Brazil)
- Kid The World Saver (University Of Southern California)
- Zeit Squared (Technische Universität Berlin, Germany)

The IGF was established in 1998 by Think Services to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize the best independent game developers, in the same way that the Sundance Film Festival honors the independent film community.

Notable previous IGF honorees include many of today's breakthrough independent games, from Number None's Braid through 2D Boy's World Of Goo and Invisible Handlebar's Audiosurf. Previous Student Showcase winners have included Narbacular Drop - subsequently evolved into Game Developers Choice Game Of The Year winner Portal - and Cloud, from the student team who then created downloadable titles Flow and Flower.

GDC 2009 will continue its support of independent gaming with the return of the Independent Games Summit on March 23rd and 24th. The IGF Pavilion, where GDC attendees can experience the finalist games in the IGF Main, Student, and Mobile Competitions, is open in Moscone West from March 25th to 27th.

For more information on the Independent Games Festival, please visit the official IGF website; to register for GDC, please visit the official Game Developers Conference site.

Posted by Staff at 10:43 AM | Permalink

[In the second of a series picking out the most notable Game Developers Conference 2009 lectures, sister site Gamasutra examines the Visual Arts Track, which includes talks from the Gears Of War 2, God Of War and Braid creators on cinematics, animation, and art in their games.]

Game Developers Conference 2009 (organized by Gamasutra parent company Think Services) is set to take place in San Francisco's Moscone Center from March 23 to 27, 2009.

With nearly 280 sessions now confirmed for GDC 2009, we'll be taking a track by track look at the conference's line-up over the next few weeks.

Second on the list is GDC's Visual Arts Track, which "delves into the nitty-gritty of the artistic side of games, and [also] offers longer format classes to allow speakers the time to walk attendees step-by-step through the latest tools and techniques."

Notable highlights thus far announced for this track, which takes place on the main Wednesday to Friday of GDC (March 25-27), are as follows:

- In 'Behind the Scenes: The Gears of War 2 Cinematics Pipeline', Tanya Jessen and Greg Mitchell of Epic Games discuss how the company created a completely new development pipeline for the sequel - explaining how "pre-planning and locking down the timing early on in motion capture helped streamline the process in the end."

- David Hellman's lecture is called 'The Art of Braid', and the artist responsible for the acclaimed title's watercolor landscapes "will share the intentions and thought process behind his contributions to the game. Also included will be a demonstration of the level-building tools used to create the organic-looking environments."

- Volition's Chris Fortier is presenting 'The Universal Character System in Saints Row 2', explaining how character customization and the random NPC generator work in the multi-platform open world titles. Topics include "[the] universal body mesh, character morphing, normal map blending, layered clothing, shader-based customization features, how we assemble NPCs and how all this character variation affects animation."

- Newly announced is 'Self-Limiting Rigging Methodology Used on God Of War', from a trio of Sony Santa Monica and SCE technical artists, explaining the rigging processes and pipeline in making the latest in the franchise. They will be focusing on "self-imposed limitations on their processes and pipeline to achieve fast deployment, fast animator feedback, and fast runtime content."

- 'The Brutal Art of Brütal Legend, from Double Fine's Lee Petty, examines how the Tim Schafer-headed developer "met the challenge of creating a unique, stylized look while also delivering a “AAA looking” game on the current generation of consoles."

In addition, the full Visual Arts Track line-up to date includes many more notable lectures and roundtables, including modular procedural rigging, real-time tessellation and displacement mapping, 'lighting with purpose', making your project look better "without bloom and motion blur", and more.

Posted by Staff at 7:11 AM | Permalink

[In her latest Bosslady Blog update, Game Developers Conference event director Meggan Scavio discusses some of the newly-confirmed lectures, revealing the art and science of games like Killzone 2, Brutal Legend, and the newest Fable and Far Cry titles.]

Happy 2009, everyone! While the holidays tend to disrupt the workflow of a good portion of the world, the Game Developers Conference team never takes a break. It’s like a coal mine over here. In a good way! A good coal mine.

So what have we been working on? More sessions, of course, and here are some of the newly-confirmed highlights coming to our March 23rd-27th event:

- Freshly added to the Programming Track is 'The Rendering Technology of Killzone 2'. Michiel van der Leeuw and Michal Valient from Guerilla Games will present an overview of the extremely pretty rendering techniques used in their highly anticipated 2009 PlayStation 3 shooter. As they explain in the session description: “We put the main focus on the lighting and shadowing techniques of our deferred shading engine and how we made them play nicely with anti-aliasing.”

- The Production Track has added “'Producing Fable II', presented by Louise Copley and Jonathan Taylor from Lionhead Studios. This likely to be enlightening postmortem looks into the timeline, production methodology, team structure and organization of one of 2008's best-received games, revealing what went right, as well as their biggest challenges building the major project.

- Just announced in the Game Design track is a talk from Ubisoft Montreal’s Patrick Redding, who was most recently narrative designer on the critically acclaimed Far Cry 2. It's entitled “'Read Me: Closing the Readability Gap in Immersive Games'. His lecture argues, provocatively: "Game output appears information-rich, but how much of that information can the player actually use to play better, and how much of it is just there to be spectacular or cinematic?" - and then goes on to suggest some solutions to make games more 'readable'.

- To round out this week's update, we head down the street to Double Fine Studios to bring you 'The Brutal Art of Brütal Legend', as part of the Visual Arts track. Double Fine art director Lee Petty gives us a behind the scenes look at creating the art for their (pictured) "lovingly-crafted", Jack Black-starring original IP. He'll also touch on how the Tim Schafer-headed small, independent studio has evolved with the current generation of game development.

More soon!

[Meggan and her colleagues will be posting regular updates from behind the scenes through the lead-up to this March's Game Developers Conference 2009, including content reveals and other helpful information. You can subscribe individually to the GDC News blog via its RSS feed.]

Posted by at 5:30 PM | Permalink

The 2009 Independent Games Festival (IGF) has revealed the finalists for this year's ninth installment of the pre-eminent indie game competition, with finalists showcased at the 2009 Game Developers Conference. From a record field of 226 entries, 30% over last year’s totals, a number of notable games scored multiple nominations this year.

These include orbital osmosis sim Osmos (3 nominations), abstract PSN action-er PixelJunk Eden (3 nominations), time-reversing guitar-compatible antishooter Retro/Grade (2 nominations), and atmospheric ball-ambulator Night Game (2 nominations).

Other examples of the finalists, which are viewable on the official IGF website, include charming exploration-game Blueberry Garden and music-based block puzzler Musaic Box, both double nominees, and several of the finalists for the new Innovation award, including Ratloop’s Mightier, Jason Rohrer’s Between and Tale Of Tales’ The Graveyard.

Finalists were decided by a panel made up of over 40 industry-leading game creators and journalists, including the makers of previous IGF honorees World Of Goo, Braid, Aquaria and N+; industry veterans from studios including Maxis, Big Huge Games, and SuperVillain Studios; and noted writers from Wired, Newsweek, and MTV.

In addition to the announcement, digital download store Direct2Drive has aligned with the Independent Games Festival to serve as the festival’s official download partner this year.

This includes a new Direct2Drive Award given out at the IGF Awards this March, and the service has opened dedicated Direct2Drive indie game area, including many previous IGF finalists and winners and other notable independent games.

The finalists for the 2009 Independent Games Festival are:

Seumas McNally Grand Prize:
Blueberry Garden (Erik Svedang)
Osmos (Hemisphere Games)
Carneyvale Showtime (Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab)
Night Game (Nicalis)
Dyson (Rudolf Kremers/Alex May)

Excellence In Visual Art:
Zeno Clash (ACE Team)
PixelJunk Eden (Q-Games)
Machinarium (Amanita Design)
Cletus Clay (TunaSnax)
Feist (Filthy Grip)

Excellence In Audio:
Musaic Box (KranX Productions)
Blueberry Garden (Erik Svedang)
BrainPipe (Digital Eel)
PixelJunk Eden (Q-Games)
Retro/Grade (24 Caret Games)

Excellence In Design:
Retro/Grade (24 Caret Games)
Snapshot (Six AM)
Night Game (Nicalis)
Musaic Box (KranX Productions)
Osmos (Hemisphere Games)

Innovation Award:
Between (Jason Rohrer)
Mightier (Ratloop)
The Graveyard (Tale Of Tales)
Coil (From The Depths)
You Have To Burn The Rope (Mazapan)

Technical Excellence:
PixelJunk Eden (Q-Games)
Cortex Command (Data Realms)
Osmos (Hemisphere Games)
The Maw (Twisted Pixel Games)
Incredibots (Grubby Games)

Nominated games will available in playable form on the 2009 Game Developers Conference show floor, and will compete for nearly $50,000 in prizes, including awards for Innovation, Excellence in Design, and the coveted $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize, as well as the new Direct2Drive prize.

Winners will be announced on stage at the prestigious Independent Games Festival Awards on Wednesday, March 25, 2009, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The Independent Games Festival Awards are held along the Game Developers Choice Awards at GDC, which is run by Think Services.

A separate set of finalists for the Student Showcase award, will be announced during the week of Jan. 19th, with the finalists for the IGF Mobile competition following in late January. Full festival information, including more details on these finalists and winners, is available at the official IGF website.

Posted by Staff at 7:19 AM | Permalink

The organizers of the inaugural Localization Summit at the 2009 Game Developers Conference have announced initial speakers and sessions for the innovative two-day localization summit, including a keynote from Electronic Arts VP Jaime Gine and notables from BioWare, Sega, Babel, and more.

The GDC Localization Summit will take place on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco as part of Game Developers Conference 2009. Englobe’s Tom Edwards and Roehampton University’s Miguel A. Bernal-Merino are the Summit's principal advisors.

The recently confirmed keynote for the Summit will be 'Localization: The Pathway to Truly Global Game Development' from Jaime Gine, VP of International Development Services at Electronic Arts.

Gine runs EA's worldwide localization efforts, including the company's Multilingual European Development Centre and the Singapore Integration Studio, translating the publisher's titles into more than 23 languages.

He will talk on "the key decisions and processes that contribute to a successfully localized game title and in turn, a strong return on investment and a more globally-inclusive game development process."

Another key panel is 'Localization Tools', with speakers including BioWare localization producer Jenny McKearney, Babel Media VP Ben Wibberley, XLOC president Stephanie O'Malley and Binari Sonori localization manager Andrea Ballista.

Having been posed the statement that "localization has been a neglected part of development, resulting in a lack of standardized formats, strategies, and tools at every level", the panel will discuss the ideal localization tools for the job.

Also now confirmed is a 'Risks and Rewards of New Territories' panel, with CD Project co-founder Marcin Iwinski and Sega localization producer Rio Hasegawa discussing "the advantages of opening new territories and the challenges associated with localizing game content for [emerging] markets."

Outlining the importance of these lectures and the others that make up the inaugural GDC Localization Summit, Roehampton's Bernal-Merino explains: "Localization can preserve or strip the soul of a game. It is easy to mistake similar words, objects, and habits with direct equivalents in other cultures. Think for example of coffee; if you order 'a cup of coffee' in the U.S. it is different from what you get in Italy, Spain, or Japan -- not only the beverage itself, but the rituals around it, and its impact on language and culture."

"In order to truly appeal to and capture a particular audience, you cannot simply code a few translated phrases from a glossary. A more robust approach is needed to create the right experience for players in each locale."

Englobe's Tom Edwards adds: “As awareness improves, localization efforts are ever-increasing across game companies. This essential step, along with a growing realization of the need for the ‘culturalization’ of content, is the key to pushing global growth strategies and maximizing the revenue stream of your game.”

More information on the full line-up for the Summit is available at the official GDC Localization Summit webpage, with many new details on the entire March 23rd-27th GDC event also now available.

Posted by Staff at 8:08 AM | Permalink