This month's GDC Europe has debuted a new track keynote from Crytek's Cevat Yerli, as well as talks from Ninja Theory on performance capture, plus the IGF's Brandon Boyer on how indies will drive the future.
Taking place Monday through Wednesday, August 15-17, 2011 at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost, Germany, alongside the major gamescom trade show, GDC Europe will again provide the essential pan-European perspective of game development and business trends.
The new highlights from the Main Conference, which features tracks on Business & Marketing, Game Design, Production, Programming and Visual Arts, include the following:
- Crytek president and CEO Cevat Yerli will give a track keynote in the conference's Game Design track titled, "An Old Horse Learning New Tricks - From AAA Retail to AAA Online." Here, Yerli will examine Crytek's history as a traditional, retail game developer and its experience transitioning to the online space with its upcoming shooter Warface.
Looking back at the company's previous retail offerings such as FarCry and Crysis, Yerli's keynote will also outline the biggest challenges Crytek faced when adapting to online game development, noting the "insurmountable differences" that forced the studio to learn new approaches to game production.
- Also in the Game Design track, UK-based Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antoniades will offer a in-depth look at cut scene production in, "Performance Capture: A Creative Primer." This talk will detail how Ninja Theory cooperated with movie studios such as Weta Digital (Lord of the Rings), actor Andy Serkis, and numerous other movie professionals to create believable, high-fidelity scenes in titles such as Enslaved and Capcom's DmC: Devil May Cry.
In addition to the above Main Conference sessions, GDC Europe has debuted a new talk in the Independent Games Summit from Independent Games Festival Chairman and indie scene veteran Brandon Boyer.
Boyer's talk, dubbed, "What I Mean When I Say Game," will look back at the history of the industry, noting how video games have become "almost unrecognizable compared to just a decade ago, while at the same time surprisingly similar to that of the art form's earliest days." Looking forward, Boyer will also "[chart] the course that has brought us to where we are today, and [make] the case for independent creators leading the form into the future."
Other recent announcements for GDC Europe include additional Main Conference talks including a session on the art of Driver: San Francisco, a panel on how to appeal to major publishers, and a look at how Supercell's browser-based Gunshine combines social and hardcore appeal. Conference organizers also recently debuted a keynote from Epic Games president Mike Capps, who joins previously announced keynote speakers such as Ultima creator Richard Garriott and Wooga founder Jens Begemann.
In addition, GDC Europe has also released several interviews with some of the show's notable speakers, such as Ubisoft creative director Jason VandenBerghe, B.U.T.T.O.N. developer Douglas Wilson, Ubisoft Blue Byte's Teut Weidemann, CCP's David Press, and industry vet Ernest Adams.
For more information on GDC Europe as the event takes shape, please visit the official GDC Europe website, or subscribe to updates from the new GDC Europe-specific news page in RSS form, official Twitter page, or official Facebook page. GDC Europe is owned and operated by UBM TechWeb.
