The Independent Games Festival (IGF) Mobile, the premiere venue that celebrates creativity and innovation on handheld platforms, has opened submissions for its third annual festival.

The overall IGF Mobile winner will be awarded at the IGF Awards Ceremony, which precedes the Game Developers Choice Awards on March 11th, 2010. Both the IGF Awards Ceremony and the Game Developers Choice Awards are part of the 2010 Game Developers Conference, which takes place in San Francisco's Moscone Center in March.

This year's competition -- the sister event to the main Independent Games Festival -- will again feature independently-developed handheld games for all mobile devices including Apple's iPhone, other cellphone and smartphone OSes, Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, and other handheld devices.

IGF Mobile submissions are now being accepted at the competition's official website through December 1, 2009; finalists will be announced in January 2010, and will each receive one pass to attend the 2010 Game Developers Conference.

Finalists will compete for $5,000 in prizes, including notable awards for design, art, and technology innovation in mobile game development. This year, winners in each category -- with the exception of 'Best Game', will be announced before the show, on February 8th, 2010. Each category winner will receive $500 in spending money to come to the 2010 Game Developers Conference in March 2010 and showcase their mobile game.

The five category winners will exhibit their games in a special area of the main IGF Pavilion. The winners will then compete for the coveted IGF Mobile Best Game award, worth $2,500. The prize is presented on stage during the main Independent Games Festival Awards, preceding the Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony on March 11th, 2010. In addition, the winners in each category can take part in an IGF Mobile Finalist Showcase at GDC10, a session during which the five IGF Mobile main prize finalists will present their mobile games to the audience.

Now in its third year, IGF Mobile has blossomed into a major showcase of the handheld form. Last year's IGF Mobile 'Next Great Mobile Game' winner Reflection has been signed by Konami for Nintendo DSi, and Apple's App Store created a special Store section just to highlight the IGF-nominated iPhone games from 2009's IGF Mobile competition.

Submissions to the competition are now open to all independent developers working on mobile platforms, including game development for cell phones, iPhone, PSP, DS, and other handheld devices. The important dates for IGF Mobile in 2009-2010 are as follows:

September 28th, 2009 Submissions Open
December 1st, 2009 Submission Deadline
January 22nd, 2010 IGF Mobile Finalists Announced
February 8th, 2010 Category Winners Pre-Announced
March 9-13th, 2010 Game Developer's Conference 2010
March 11th, 2010 IGF Awards Ceremony

For a complete list of IGF Mobile 2010 information, please visit IGFMobile.com.

Posted by Staff at 6:41 AM | Permalink

Game Developers Conference China has announced its lineup of speakers from noted industry players including Blizzard Entertainment, Maxis, EA DICE and many more. Think Services, a division of United Business Media will present GDC China at the Shanghai Convention Center, October 11-13 of this year.

Chris Hecker will be presenting a session on the challenges and meaning of user-generated content in Spore, Colt McAnlis of Blizzard will be addressing the technical challenges of generating and affixing art to the massive terrains of World of Warcraft, and Tobias Dahl and Mikael Lagre of Dice EA will discuss the unique task of creating a robust perspective for Mirror's Edge, a game emphasizing fluid first-person movement and perspective.

Professionals from Activision, Take Two Asia, Volition and Ubisoft Chengdu will be among the full roster of speakers presenting varied and informative talks.

Headlining the solid roster of speakers is Jordan Mechner, the accomplished game designer, programmer, screenwriter, and creator of Prince of Persia who will be providing a keynote lecture titled "Prince of Persia: 20 Years From Game to Film."

The list of featured speakers at GDC China includes:

- From Evolution to Revolution: Upgrading the Graphics Engine of EVE Online -- Halldor Fannar (CTO, CCP)
- Texturing Massive Terrain -- Colt McAnlis (Programmer, Blizzard Entertainment)
- Meaning, Aesthetics, and User-Generated Content -- Chris Hecker (Formerly Technology Fellow at Maxis)
- Preparing a Leading Chinese IP for Videogame Development: The Daomubiji Case Study -- James Zhang (Chairman, Concept Art House), Xu Lei(Author, Daomubiji), Xuan Li (Development Director, Concept Art House), Ken Chou (Creative Director, Concept Art House)
- Workflow Methods for the Environment Artist -- Ray Tylak (Art Production Manager, Ubisoft Chengdu)
- Creating First Person Movement for Mirror's Edge -- Tobias Dahl (Senior Lead Animator, Dice EA), Mikael Lagre (Engineer, Dice EA)
- Dubbing Design and Setting Up the Auditory Atmosphere in Games -- Peng Meng (Sound Designer, Composer)
- Designing Sound for Games in China -- Jie Yang (Sound Director, Virtuos)
- Squeezing Every Drop Of Performance Out Of The iPhone Speaker: Noel Llopis (Founder, Snappy Touch)
- Panel Discussion: Chinese Indie Game Outlook and Opportunity -- Billy Hsu (CEO, DJL Worldwide), Tony Chen (Online Business Development Manager, Take Two Asia)
- How to Prepare Your Studio/Game to Attract Investors/Publishers -- Kevin Li(Exec. Director, Activision China)
- Agile Game Development with Scrum Tutorial & Certification -- Clinton Keith (Founder, Clinton Keith Consulting)
- Maximizing Art Production with Effective Art Pipelines
-- Kelly Snapka (Art Director, Volition, Inc.)

"GDC China approaches head-on the challenges and exciting opportunities of one of the world's most bustling and growing regions for games," says Meggan Scavio, GDC China event director. "We're honored to have a cross-section of local and international developers representing some of the most dynamic and influential studios and games today. GDC China is on the forefront of an exciting future for game development in the East."

Interested parties can find more information on GDC China at the event's official website.

Posted by Staff at 6:44 PM | Permalink

[In a regular column, Gamasutra publisher Simon Carless -- recently added as a member of the Game Developers Conference Advisory Board -- goes behind the scenes to explain some of the most frequently asked questions about how GDC 2010 is taking shape, from lecture submissions to rating and beyond.]

So it's only September, and the main 2010 Game Developers Conference is being held from March 9th-13th, 2010. How much work can actually go into the conference this early, you might be asking?

Well, those who noticed the Call For Papers that the GDC organizers already held, we get started pretty early with lecture submissions and grading. And that's a cue for me to boot up this column and explain what happens behind the velvet (iron? velcro?) curtain. I'll be updating regularly with the GDC Advisory Board's perspective over the next few weeks and months.

One initial point that is worth making strongly. I know that in some conferences (both outside the game industry and in), the Advisory Board can take a much smaller role in actually directly picking the content.

But one of the reasons that Game Developers Conference is so well respected, I believe, is that all of the talks are either empirically chosen from submissions, or carefully and specifically invited by the official GDC Advisory Board. The GDC organizers don't pick your talk -- key members of your own peer group pick your talk.

So rather than being hands-off 'advisors', multiple Advisory Board members grade every single submitted talk. They also discuss submitted and invited talk specifics via email, phone, and during the course of multiple in-person meetings. Finally, they coach and mold conditionally accepted GDC talks into a better end product.

It's a testament to how much they care about GDC that these people -- busy, senior staff from companies like Bungie, Blizzard, Pandemic, Media Molecule, Epic, and Ubisoft -- take time out from their busy schedule to rate talks, meet and discuss them, and coach speakers to be better.

The Submission Games

The first step of actually getting to speak at Game Developers Conference is submitting talks, via an open submissions call that ends in mid-August. (Sorry, guys, it's done already - we advertised it extensively via email, this website, and sister outlets.) In fact, the GDC 2010 Call For Submissions page has a really useful synopsis of how the entire submission process works.

The submission process has actually changed in the last couple of years. It now allows would-be speakers to submit less -- but more targeted -- information as a first pass. There are more than 700 lecture, panel, and roundtable pitches submitted to GDC this year, and the Advisory Board has to individually rate and rank each of them, picking just a fraction to be showcased at the conference. (The GDC Summits have a separate, although basically similar process.)

Once upon a time, we encouraged people to submit as much information as possible in the first round. But it both increased work for the Advisory Board, and made submitters more chagrined at the time they spent on submissions if they didn't get picked. Therefore, we've found it works better to start off submitters by providing a 400-word or less session description, biography, and audience takeaway specifics.

You'll also find a FAQ page which explains what submitters can do right -- and by extension, what some often do wrong. The selection criteria are particularly instructive. As a first-time GDC submission evaluator this year, looking at the Business, Production and Design tracks, I learned a lot about what makes a good submission, and we'll discuss that in a later blog post.

Running The Data Gauntlet

And what happens after you submit? Well, your biographical info and submission specifics get flowed into the main GDC database, which has information on thousands of lectures given over multiple years of both main GDC and sister conferences such as GDC Austin and GDC Europe. And we actually track audience lecture ratings and individual written feedback comments going back at least 5 years, since we manually enter the written comments handed in at the end of each GDC lecture into our database.

What does this mean? Well, if you haven't spoken before, then it's less of a help. The Advisory Board will still consider your submission and rate it accordingly. With less context on how you've spoken before, they may ask for the entire presentation up front to evaluate, instead of just an extended synopsis. But if you have spoken before, then the board can see how your ratings have ebbed and flowed over the years, and get a general idea of what you do well or less well from the comments.

All talks are rated out of 5, so if a submitter has scored a 4.5 and then a 4.7 in the previous two years -- well above the median -- then the Advisory Board has a sense of confidence that you can deliver. If, on the other hand, your scores and comments are dipping over time, they're going to be a little more careful in evaluating your talk. (We do look carefully to see if it was a panel appearance or a lecture, and whether this affected your score in ways partly beyond your control.) There's no hard and fast rule, but context is incredibly important. With robust data collection and careful collation, we need not evaluate in a vacuum.

After submissions close, the Advisory Board is given a couple of weeks to run through and rate all of the talks in their subject area. (There are also sub-Boards for focused areas such as Art and Audio, which have additional qualified members to make sure those sectors get robustly reviewed by leading creators for that sub-profession.) Depending on what they choose to grade, most Advisory Board members will evaluate between 200 and 400 submissions, providing a score and internally specific comments for each.

We've been lucky once again this year to get submissions from some of the top developers in the industry - from Naughty Dog through Bungie and beyond. And by the time you read this, all of the initial submissions have been rated. The next step is to get together in person at the main yearly GDC Advisory Board meeting -- this year held in Napa in late August -- and discuss the lectures in person.

It's not enough to be a top-rated submission -- everyone has to agree that your lecture will add value to Game Developers Conference, and provide a truly high degree of learning and inspiration. And we'll talk about what went on at this year's GDC Advisory Board meeting -- at least in broad terms -- in the next 'Notes From The Advisory Board' blog entry.

Posted by Staff at 7:12 AM | Permalink

GDC China organizers have announced that Prince Of Persia franchise creator, game designer, and screenwriter Jordan Mechner will deliver a keynote address at the 2009 Game Developers Conference China in Shanghai next month.

Mechner's keynote will explore the success of the Prince of Persia series, which first debuted in 1989 and has grown into a major multi-title game franchise, as well as his own work as a game designer, programmer, and finally director and screenwriter.

Following the release of seven chapters of the Prince Of Persia game series, Mechner wrote the script for the film version of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Mike Newell. The movie will be released by Walt Disney Pictures in May of 2010.

"We are so excited to welcome Jordan to the stage in Shanghai," said Meggan Scavio, GDC China event director. "He has a great story to share with the audience from a game design, artistic, and storytelling perspective; as well as the business acumen to succeed in maintaining a strong brand, building commercial success, and further transitioning games to film."

Mechner joins a prominent lineup of GDC China speakers including Kelly Snapka (Art Director, Volition, Inc.), Todd Coleman (Co-Founder, Wolfpack Studios Inc.), Chris Ulm (CEO, Appy), Billy Hsu (CEO, DJL Worldwide), Mack Growen (GM, Playfish China), Brad MacDonald (Art Director, Large Animal Games), Tony Chen (Online Business Development Manager, Take Two Asia), and more.

The 2009 GDC China event -- presented by Gamasutra parent Think Services -- will take place at the Shanghai International Convention Center, October 11-13 of this year, with early registration closing on September 15th. For more information, please visit the official GDC China website.

Posted by Staff at 7:22 AM | Permalink

The organizers of GDC Austin 2009 have announced a partnership with the Austin Museum of Digital Art to show two notable video game-related documentaries at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema during next week's Game Developers Conference in Austin -- one of them a U.S. cinema premiere.

To coincide with the first day of the Independent Games Summit at GDC Austin, the famous Alamo Drafthouse independent theater in downtown Austin will be showing 'Into The Night with Chris Crawford & Jason Rohrer' on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 10.15pm.

This documentary, originally shot for a European TV series featuring meetings between notable creators, and being shown in cinemas in the U.S. for the first time, "follows an extended conversation between the indie game designer Jason Rohrer and legendary game designer Chris Crawford. Filmed over the course of a day during GDC 2009, Crawford and Rohrer play and discuss various indie titles at the conference, show their games to one another, and talk about the past and future of game design." Selected indie game-related short films will also be shown before the main feature presentation.

Also playing during GDC Austin at a special AMODA and Alamo Drafthouse one-off showing at is the pinball-related doc, 'TILT: the Battle to Save Pinball', on Thursday, September 17th at 10.20pm. This Greg Maletic-directed documentary "tells the story behind one of entertainment's most mysterious failures" - the Pinball 2000 series of Williams pinball machines which twinned video game and pinball technology.

Plenty of behind-the-scenes interviews and footage illustrate the battle over Pinball 2000 at Williams, as "soon after its successful and highly-profitable launch, Williams pulled the plug, leaving behind unanswered questions and abandoning one of the world's great design organizations." The documentary tries to answer some of these questions by speaking to many of the principals involved. Selected short films will also play before this special GDC Austin screening.

More information on the screenings, which are open to the public and GDC Austin attendees alike at a standard admission fee, are available on the Alamo Drafthouse cinema homepage. (AMODA, an Austin-based organization that "engages the public and artists in the creation, understanding, and appreciation of digital art", is the facilitator of both showings.)

Posted by Staff at 5:42 PM | Permalink

The Game Developers Conference Austin (GDC Austin) features lectures, panels and roundtables for developers looking to release successful titles in the burgeoning connected gaming space, and this year's conference has added final sessions from notable game developers at Nexon, Bioware Austin, 2D Boy, Zynga, CCP Games and many others.

Presented by Think Services, GDC Austin returns with three days of main conference content focused on connected games, online games, virtual worlds, and social networking game play and four two-day summits -- the Game Writers, Game Audio, iPhone Games and Independent Games Summits. The event takes place at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas September 15-18, 2009. Conference goers wanting to take advantage of pre-registration discounts should register online by September 11.

This year's GDC Austin features three visionary keynotes from industry pioneers at Sony Online Entertainment, Blizzard Entertainment, and successful newcomer Playfish that address the technical knowledge and business advice necessary to create successful virtual worlds, massively multiplayer online (MMO) titles, and social networking games.

Four days of deep-dive sessions cover topics including designing games for non-traditional gamers, developing secure and profitable monetization systems, and leveraging the strengths of social networking platforms to make innovative games. Featured new sessions include:

- The Cat and Mouse Game of Fraud - Speaker: Arthur Chu (Fraud Manager, Nexon), Einar Hreidarsson (Team Lead-Customer Support, CCP Games)
- Twist, Touch & Travel: Harnessing the iPhone's Unique Features - Speaker: Glenda Adams (President & Lead Programmer, Maverick Software)
- Beyond the Finish Line of Shipping an Indie Game - Speaker: Ron Carmel (Co-Founder, 2D Boy)
- Wizard101 - Lions and Tigers and Ninja Pigs, Oh My! - Speaker: J. Todd Coleman (Creative Director, KingsIsle Entertainment)
- Going from Free to Pay in Free-to-Play - Speaker: Min Kim (Vice President, Nexon America Inc.)
- The Loner - Speaker: Damion Schubert (Lead Combat Designer, Bioware Austin)
- The Social Gaming Tipping Point - Speaker: Brian Reynolds (Chief Designer, Zynga)
- Facebook: Is the Cake a Lie? - Speaker: Blake Commagere (Independent Game Developer)

"With the number of connected game developers, titles, and players continuing to grow, attending GDC Austin is more important than ever," says Izora de Lillard, event director at Think Services Game Group. "The sessions will provide key insights into current and future business opportunities in games ranging from free-to-play casual games, viral Facebook apps, epic MMO adventures and those we haven't imagined yet in this evolving category of games."

Posted by Staff at 1:15 PM | Permalink