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GDC Next's first talks: Disney, thatgamecompany, Google, Adam Orth

GDC Next organizers have announced the first talks for its inaugural 'what's next?' game conference in Los Angeles this November, revealing a 30% event discount limited to the first 500 online registrants.
The first talks revealed for GDC Next, illuminating the future-leaning plans for the new event, are Google on the first six months of its Play service, thatgamecompany on its design philosophy & future, Disney on theme park design lessons for game developers, and Adam Orth on reforming toxic online behavior.
As evinced in these selections, GDC Next, the spiritual successor to GDC Online, aims to highlight the future of video games, and is taking place alongside the App Developers Conference on November 5th-7th, 2013 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
Throughout the months leading to GDC Next, organizers will announce exciting talks selected for the conference's six tracks: The Future of Gaming, Next Generation Game Platforms, Free-to-Play & New Business Models, Smartphone and & Tablet Games, Cloud Gaming, and Independent Games.
First up, Thatgamecompany (Journey) studio manager Sunni Pavlovic will discuss the award-winning team's underlying design philosophy in 'An Experimental Approach to Interactive Entertainment.' Pavlovic will explore how to engage first-time and hardcore players and "everyone in between," while being mindful of changes in input technology and social dynamics.

GDC Europe's Indie Summit adds Ridiculous Fishing, Badland postmortems

Organizers have confirmed a triple pack of postmortems for the Independent Games Summit at August's GDC Europe in Cologne, featuring the tales of two indie iOS games that went on to receive Apple Design Awards and one that boldly took on being a Wii U eShop launch title.
These talks are part of GDC Europe 2013's Independent Games Summit, which will take place Tuesday, August 20th, during the three-day conference at Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany - just ahead of (and co-located with) the massive 275,000 person Gamescom event.
These talks are accessible via the reduced-price Independent Games Summit pass for the show, but also available for all GDC Europe passholders via their All Access or VIP Passes.
In the first highlighted session, Vlambeer's 'Cloned at Birth: The Story of Ridiculous Fishing' is one with a happy ending, as the studio has recently received the highly prestigious Apple Design Award for the game.
Here, the Super Crate Box and LUFTRAUSERS developers Rami Ismail and Jan Willem Nijman will discuss the long road their unconventional fishing game faced since 2010, including the highs and lows of working remotely during stressful times and their approach to the sensitive subjects of cloning and IAP.

GDC Europe 2013 adds Kick Off classic postmortem

Organizers have confirmed a classic postmortem of Kick Off from Dino Dini for August's GDC Europe in Cologne, also adding talks on Warface's optimizations for low-end PCs and Heidi McDonald on stirring up romance games.
These talks are part of the visual arts, programming, and design tracks in GDC Europe 2013, which will take place Monday through Wednesday, August 19th-21st at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany - just ahead of (and co-located with) the massive 275,000 person Gamescom event.
Notably, organizers are revealing an in-depth postmortem of seminal soccer game Kick Off from original creator Dino Dini as this year's European-centric Classic Postmortem, following last year's classic postmortem of GoldenEye.
Much beloved among European players and developers, Dino Dini's top-down arcade soccer games Kick Off 1 & 2 were released by Anco in 1989 and 1990 respectively, and were made available for a host of platforms, including the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST.
In the talks, Dino Dini himself will explore the making of the entire series of soccer-related games he made in the '80s and '90s. He'll include analysis into the design evolution that made the original game, including the 'kick ahead' mechanic, so successful, and add insight into its sequels and related titles. These include Player Manager (the first soccer game to twin management and a soccer game engine) and his later title Dino Dini's GOAL!.

GDC Europe adds Tomb Raider, Schneider-Johne, Sproing talks

GDC Europe 2013 organizers have announced new talks on the relationships between customers, publishers and media; Tomb Raider's emotionally engaging camera system; and Sproing's research to speed up C++ compile times.
These talks are part of the business, marketing & management, programming, and design tracks in GDC Europe 2013, which will take place Monday through Wednesday, August 19th-21st at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany - just ahead of (and co-located with) the massive 275,000 person Gamescom event.
Boris Schneider-Johne, a well-known German game industry veteran who has worked as a notable game journalist (Power Play/PC Player) and LucasArts translator (Maniac Mansion, Loom, Monkey Island 1 & 2), will explore the new marketing landscape in 'Opinion Leaders - The Changing Relationships Between Customers, Publishers and Media.'
Highlights of his talk will include the psychology of app store ratings, how to persuade consumers to try developers' games, and how to handle consumers who are vocal about their distaste for developers.

GDC Europe 2013 adds Sony Online community, Ages of Empire Online F2P talks

GDC Europe 2013 organizers announce new talks for the event, including an overview of Sony Online Entertainment's approach to communicating with players about MMOs, the fall and rise of Microsoft's free-to-play model for MMO Ages of Empire Online, and Applifier's survey on what drives virality for top mobile games.
These talks are part of the business, marketing & management track in GDC Europe 2013, which will take place Monday through Wednesday, August 19th-21st at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany - just ahead of (and co-located with) the massive 275,000 person Gamescom event.
In 'F2P the Wrong Way: Age of Empires Online,' Microsoft executive producer Kevin Perry will explain why the MMORTS' free-to-play business model suffered from a disastrous launch. Perry will also detail "how his team changed the model and the product into a successful game as a service, while the game was still live."
Sony Online Entertainment global community relations director Linda Carlson will offer a broad look at the company's approach to player communication with MMO games such as PlanetSide 2 and the EverQuest franchise in 'A Perfect Storm - Managing Community Through Sea Change.' She will examine over 15 years of player history events and SOE's management of the player base, which resulted in "good or spectacularly bad effects."

Halo 4 co-op, Top Eleven talks added to GDC Europe 2013

GDC Europe 2013 organizers have added new lectures for its August event, covering Halo's first episodic multiplayer content, Top Eleven's emerging market efforts that led to 11 million monthly active users, and Bigpoint's C++-to-web tech overview.
These talks are part of the programming, design and business tracks in GDC Europe 2013, which will take place Monday through Wednesday, August 19th-21st at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany - just ahead of (and co-located with) the massive 275,000 person Gamescom event.
In 'The Making of Halo 4's Episodic Co-op Adventure: Spartan Ops,' 343 Industries' lead designer Chris Haluke will share his design details behind Xbox-exclusive franchise Halo's first ever episodic multiplayer content.
This talk will outline some of the key pillars Haluke stood by, including maintaining accessibility, creating compelling but bite-sized chunks of gameplay, and ensuring that fiction is continually tied to the adventure.

Final reminder: GDC Next, ADC talk submissions due Wednesday

Talk submissions are due Wednesday, May 29th for the inaugural App Developers Conference (ADC) and the inaugural Game Developers Conference Next (GDC Next), officials are reminding.
ADC and GDC Next, which aim to highlight the 'state of the art' for apps and the future of video games, are taking place simultaneously on November 5th-7th, 2013 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
The inaugural GDC Next will feature detailed content about creating the game experiences of the future.
Those who submit talks are being asked to present best practices across six tracks: The Future of Gaming, Next Generation Game Platforms, Free-to-Play & New Business Models, Smartphone and & Tablet Games, Cloud Gaming and Independent Games.
GDC Next organizers and its esteemed advisory board, separate and unique from the ADC advisory board, are providing a final reminder for talk submissions, which are due May 29th, 11:59 pm PST.

GDC Europe adds Assassin's Creed III, Daglow, Epic level design talks

GDC Europe 2013 organizers have announced new talks for its August event, with Steven Masters on Assassin's Creed III's design, luminary Don Daglow on the 'treasures and traps' of next-gen, and Epic's James Brown on empowering the player in storytelling.
These talks are part of the design and business tracks in GDC Europe 2013, which will take place Monday through Wednesday, August 19th-21st at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany - just ahead of (and co-located with) the massive 275,000 person Gamescom event.
For the Design Track Keynote, Ubisoft Montreal's Steven Masters will discuss how he organized the work of 600 people across 3 years in 'Designing Assassins Creed 3.'
Ubisoft's GDC 2013 production panel, 'Three Years of Collaboration on Assassin's Creed III' focused on handling the large-scale collaboration for the massive hit franchise. However, Masters' talk at GDC Europe 2013 will detail how Ubisoft reinvigorated the core gameplay, including the use of frequent playtesting to refine the multi-million selling title.

GDC Europe 2013's first talks feature Broken Age, Remember Me

Organizers of GDC Europe have announced their first set of selected talks, which include lectures on Capcom & Dontnod's Remember Me (pictured), scalability for Double Fine's upcoming Broken Age, and insight from streaming game video provider Twitch.tv.
These talks are part of the programming and business tracks in GDC Europe 2013, which will take place Monday through Wednesday, August 19th-21st at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany - just ahead of (and co-located with) the massive 275,000 person Gamescom event.
First revealed is Oliver Franzke of Double Fine Productions' talk, 'Broken Age's Approach to Scalability.' It will focus on authoring and rendering techniques for characters and environments used to target five platforms simultaneously, including PC and mobile.
The talk about the much-anticipated, multi-million dollar funded Kickstarter project will also cover run-time techniques such as rendering tricks and fast deployment for rapid iteration and debugging.

GDC Europe sees 25% submission boost, adds Crytek, CD Projekt board members

Organizers of this August's GDC Europe, the leading and largest European game development conference, have announced a record number of talk submissions for the 2013 show, with more than 275 talks, up 25% on last year's total.
GDC Europe continues to expands, covering vital trends in free to play, new game hardware and the very best design, business, programming and art talks - many of them debuting for the first time at the show.
The submissions, from many of Europe and the world's leading companies, were evaluated over the past few weeks by the GDC Europe advisory board.
This active board is filled with practitioners and influencers from Europe's top game firms. Using GDC's custom-created submission system, each talk was rated multiple times by the advisory board and ranked.
Following this, a special in-person Advisory Board meeting took place in The Netherlands last week, talks were discussed and approved in person, and tens of submitted talks are in the process of being approved, with approvals and declines going out over the next couple of weeks.

All GDC 2013 content live and mobile-ready on the Vault

GDC Vault, the most comprehensive collection of talks and slides from game industry thought leaders, has gone live with all Game Developers Conference 2013 content on the newly-redesigned website.
Updates to GDC Vault include mobile compatibility and features that will help users find content more easily within the online archive, which contains material from over 20 years of the worldwide Game Developers Conferences.
Easier to enjoy, share
New features and functionality make casual exploring of GDC Vault easier and more elegant than ever before. The site now incorporates a vastly-improved interface that gives users the option to browse by event, media type, and category, while a search function allows visitors to find specific tracks. Along with these options, GDC Vault will recommend additional videos listed by session.
The GDC Vault website is also more appealing for frequent visits, as it now features an animated carousel that will dynamically change throughout the year, highlighting featured sessions that have been curated by the organizers of GDC.
Sharing content on Vault is greatly simplified, with integrated social media sharing options for free videos. Visitors can use the new widgets below each video to share interesting lectures on Facebook and Twitter, so followers, friends, and co-workers can learn along with you.

Reminder: GDC China 2013 talk submissions due Friday

The call for English and Mandarin submissions to present talks for the 2013 Game Developers Conference China ends May 10, officials are reminding.
Organized by UBM Tech Game Network, GDC China, now in its sixth year, will run September 15-17 at the Shanghai International Convention Center in Shanghai, China.
Submissions will be accepted until May 10th for papers on Game Design, Production, Business & Marketing, Smartphone & Tablet Games, and Independent Games.
As always for the GDC shows, organizers are looking for leading industry practitioners to propose lectures and panels with significant, applicable takeaways for today's video game community.
GDC China continues to be the premier professional conference for the creators of games and interactive entertainment in Asia. Chosen speakers can join the world's leading developers to exchange ideas, be inspired, and to further advance the business, knowledge and technology behind game creation in Asia.

November's GDC Next, App Developers Conference open for talk submissions

UBM Tech is announcing a call to present lectures, roundtables and panels at the inaugural App Developers Conference (ADC) and the inaugural Game Developers Conference Next (GDC Next) - with submissions open from now through Wednesday, May 29th.
ADC and GDC Next, which aim to highlight the 'state of the art' for apps and the future of video games, are taking place simultaneously on November 5th-7th, 2013 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.
The inaugural Game Developers Conference Next (GDC Next) will feature detailed content about creating the game experiences of the future.
The conference organizers and advisory board are programming this spiritual successor to the long-running GDC Online shows, and are striving to bring the creators of tomorrow's biggest and most innovative video games and game platforms together in one location.
Those who submit talks are being asked to present best practices across six tracks: The Future of Gaming, Next Generation Game Platforms, Free-to-Play & New Business Models, Smartphone and & Tablet Games, Cloud Gaming and Independent Games.
GDC Next organizers and its esteemed advisory board, separate and unique from the ADC advisory board, will be accepting submissions now through May 29th.

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