Game Developers Conference organizers have announced new talks for the upcoming March 2013 conference, including Pixar's 5 key plot points for great stories, Creative Assembly's Total War strategy design, and Activision Blizzard's next-gen programming tips for photo-realistic characters.
These talks are part of the Main Conference, encompassing the Design and Programming tracks, to be held Wed-Fri, March 27-29 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, CA.
For the Design track, Pixar's Matthew Luhn will make a rare video game conference appearance to present the lecture 'The 5 Key Plot Points to Creating a Great Story.'
Luhn, a story supervisor who has worked on standout Pixar titles such as Up and Monsters Inc., will explain how to create great stories and characters for animation, live action, and games. Using his tips, attendees will spend part of the session developing their own stories and characters with others.
Also part of the Design track, Creative Assembly's lead designer James Russell will provide insight into the dilemmas faced in 'Designing Grand Strategy: Making the Mechanics of Total War.' The acclaimed strategy game series evolved through internal debates on "realism, simulation versus game rules, mystery versus clarity, decisions and counterpoint, gameplay depth versus micromanagement, gameplay system dynamics, and more," which Russell will discuss in depth.
Lastly, for the Programming track, Activision Blizzard's Jorge Jimenez will share the developer's first steps toward creating photo-realistic characters for next-generation games and hardware in 'Next Generation Character Rendering.'
Aiming to "overcome the uncanny valley with next-gen run-time techniques and good artistic direction," Jimenez's talk "will show high-quality next-generation shading driven with a plausible game rig." His presentation will include Activision Blizzard's current techniques for subsurface scattering rendering, eye shading, anti-aliasing, depth of field, and film grain.
For more information on these or others in the show's growing lineup, check out GDC 2013's official Schedule Builder, which continues to add new talks every week.
Discounted early registration for GDC passes ends February 13, and GDC 2013 itself will take place March 25-29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
For more information on GDC 2013, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.
