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GDC 2013 adds Hitman: Absolution, Mass Effect 3, and Kingdom Age talks

GDC organizers have revealed new talks for the upcoming March 2013 conference, including those on programming AI and NPCs for Square Enix's Hitman: Absolution, reinforcing and strengthening the narrative for Commander Shepard in BioWare's Mass Effect 3, and analyzing the numbers behind GREE's Kingdom Age for the mobile market.

These talks are part of the Main Conference, encompassing Business, Marketing & Management, Production, Programming, Visual Arts, and Design tracks, to be held Wed-Fri, March 27-29 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, CA.

For the Programming track, Mika Vehkala and Maurizio De Pascale of IO Interactive will discuss 'Creating the AI for the Living, Breathing World of Hitman: Absolution'. Along with AI, the pair will explore creating NPC animation that adapts to gameplay situations and player actions in a believable way.

Attendees will learn about building systemic AI for a sandbox game that offers a cinematic experience. Lessons include "an overview of the general architecture, details about multi-agent coordination, behavior trees usage, and discretized world representation for reasoning decisions."

For the Design and Visual Arts tracks, Dave Feltham will share his team's 'Emotional Journey: BioWare's Methods to Bring Narrative into Levels' for the acclaimed Mass Effect 3. Feltham's team realized it needed new ways to reinforce the narrative in Commander Shepard's missions for the end of this trilogy. In his talk, he will discuss "some of the methods they used to bring narrative to some of the levels' pacing and flow, measure it, and how it helped increase the level of player engagement."

GDC 2013 reveals Game Narrative Summit addition; Diablo III and education manifesto sessions

Organizers of March's Game Developers Conference 2013 have revealed additional summit talks on Diablo III translation, two Parsons The New School for Design professors' education manifesto, and Microsoft Game Studio's writing for moral games.

These talks are part of the GDC Education, Localization, and new Game Narrative Summits held at GDC on Monday and Tuesday, March 25-26, 2013 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California.

The Game Narrative Summit is new to the GDC after seven years at GDC Online and will cover interactive narrative on all types of titles, including AAA hits, indie games, and transmedia projects. The advisory committee includes Tom Abernathy of Microsoft Studios, Lev Chapelsky of Blindlight, Richard Dansky of Ubisoft/Red Storm, Mary DeMarle of Eidos Montreal, and independent writer Susan O'Connor.

Part of GDC's first Game Narrative Summit is Microsoft Game Studios senior game designer and 'Game Design: Theory & Practice' author Richard Rouse III with 'Seven (Or So) Techniques for Writing a Moral Game.'

Following up on Rouse's Seven Ways a Video Game Can Be Moral talk from GDC 2011, he will discuss techniques writers can use "to emphasize morality within their game world while working to the strengths of [the] medium," covering topics such as "morally diverse character creation, integrating moral themes into gameplay systems, the importance of moral quandaries, and moral choice design on a budget."

GDC 2013 announces the return of GDC Play showcase space

Organizers of the 2013 Game Developers Conference have announced the return of its emerging and independent developer showcase GDC Play, with early, discounted exhibit space now available.

This will be the second main GDC Play showcase, after a successful 2012 debut, and will take place Tuesday, March 26 - Thursday, March 28 at San Francisco's Moscone Center during the 2013 Game Developers Conference.

In a new, expanded onsite location this year, GDC Play 2013 will be in the South Hall's Gateway Ballroom, in a prominent position directly opposite the main GDC Expo floor - providing enhanced opportunities to target the more than 20,000 attendees at the show.

GDC Play itself was inspired by the success of the Independent Games Festival Pavilion at GDC and allows exhibitors to display their games to key distributors, publishers, press and investors visiting the conference. (All passholders, including Expo Pass attendees, can visit GDC Play.)

The showcase remains a simple, lower-cost opportunity to exhibit titles to prospective business partners, investors and the press. When signing up for GDC Play, game creators will be given a standalone kiosk with a monitor, keyboard, and speakers. An internet connection can be provided at an additional charge.

GDC 2013 reveals Assassin's Creed III, SSX, and Dead Space 3 talks

Organizers of the 2013 Game Developers Conference have revealed more talks revolving around industry-leading hits, including Assassin's Creed III, SSX, and the Dead Space franchise.

These three talks are part of the Production, Audio, and Visual Arts tracks of the GDC 2013 Main Conference, taking place March 27-29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

From the production track, five Ubisoft studio leads - Damien Kieken, Marc-Alexis Cote, Hugues Ricour, Francois Pelland and Alexander Hutchinson - will speak about cross-studio collaboration for its multi-million selling IP in 'Three Years of Collaboration on Assassin's Creed III.'

Focusing on "issue and game management, communications and creative processes, and real anecdotes," the panel will discuss the challenges and rewards of maintaining a production model with hundreds of people across international waters.

In the visual arts track, Electronic Arts-owned Visceral Games' lead user interface designer Dino Ignacio will dissect the diegetic UI of their survival horror shooter in 'Crafting Destruction: The Evolution of the Dead Space User Interface.'

Along with Dead Space trivia and Easter eggs, Ignacio will explore the "philosophy, evolution, and development of one of the industry's most innovative user interfaces" and "key elements of the UI such as the RIG, the Frontend, and the BENCH."

IGF 2013 highlights Visual Art, Audio Award jurors

Organizers of the 2013 Independent Games Festival are pleased to announce the latest additions to its discipline-specific jury panels that will determine the finalists and winner of its various awards.

The jury announcements for this year are beginning with some of the industry professionals, independent game notables and former IGF award winners that will make up its Excellence in Visual Art and Excellence in Audio Awards.

The latest jury rundown following prior announcements of its Nuovo and debut Narrative Award jurists, as well as this year's Design and Technical Excellence juries.

The Excellence in Visual Art Award

The Visual Art award is a category which seeks to highlight the innovation and quality in visuals for indie games.

Prior finalists and winners of the IGF Visual Art award have been entrants which featured impressive displays of the craft of games, including The Behemoth's vibrant cartoon-ish beat-em-up Castle Crashers, Polytron's 2D/3D "trixel"-based puzzle platformer Fez, Amanita Design's hand-painted adventure game Machinarium, Playdead's equal parts soft and stark monochromatic puzzler Limbo, and thechineseroom's ambient first-person exploration game Dear Esther.

GDC 2013 debuts QA Summit, including talks from BioWare, Riot

GDC organizers have revealed sessions for the first ever QA Summit at the March 2013 conference that include Riot Games on rapid test iteration, BioWare on QA and development team integration, and a panel on test automation with VMC Game Labs, Sony Computer Entertainment America, and The Walt Disney Company.

These talks all fall within the QA Summit, which will take place alongside seven other summits on Monday and Tuesday, March 25-26, 2013 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California.

The debut summit based around Quality Assurance in games will discuss "new and/or current tools, processes and organization methods being used in in QA today and to show how QA is an integral part of development", and is advised by notables including Double Fine's Daniel Pangelina, EA's Mario Vasquez, and VMC Game Labs' Ben Wibberley.

Taking an in-depth look at these sessions, BioWare's Tulay Tetiker McNally and Arone Le Bray will explore the working relationship of their QA and development teams in 'BioWare QA - Partners in Development (Embed Model).'

In particular, the BioWare team will show how this QA model applies to the narrative creation process in Mass Effect 3 and how QA spot issues early on. "This made it easier to avoid costly changes in content at later stages of development, and ultimately provided the end user with a better experience."

Riot Games' Benjamin Seifert will pour out a torrent of QA information in It's Raining New Content: Successful Rapid Test Iterations.'

Riot's League of Legends faces an ongoing QA challenge, since it continuously delivers new content and features to its player base. Seifert will show that while traditional QA models may fail to adapt, Riot tackles this problem with "a three pronged approach: utilizing our specialized skills and knowledge, having diverse and frequent feedback loops, and automation."

13th annual Game Developers Choice Awards open for nominations

The Game Developers Conference has opened nominations for the 13th annual Game Developers Choice Awards through January 4, 2013. Produced by GDC parent company the UBM Tech Game Network, the Choice Awards are the most prestigious honors in the world of video game development.

The Game Developers Choice Awards recognize the artistry and technical genius of leading industry professionals across multiple game development disciplines. The 13th Annual Awards ceremony will take place the evening of March 27, during GDC 2013 in San Francisco, CA.

Awards in 10 categories are open for nominations for games that launched to retail or debuted online during the 2012 calendar year.

Nominations are also open for three special awards: the Pioneer Award (previous winners), which celebrates those individuals who developed a breakthrough technology, game concept, or gameplay design at a crucial juncture video game history - paving the way for the myriads who followed them.

Also up for nominations is the Ambassador Award (previous winners), which honors an individual who helped the game industry advance to a better place, either through facilitating a better game community from within, or by reaching outside the industry to be an advocate for video games, and the Lifetime Achievement Award (previous winners). All three special awards are open to anyone not previously recognized.

In addition, the Choice Awards will be adding the new Audience Award category for the first time. Fans will have the opportunity to vote on their favorite video game that was released in the previous calendar year. Voting for the audience award will open on February 4, 2013 and will be completely open to the public to cast votes.

GDC 2013 reveals Halo 4, Kixeye, Hitman: Absolution talks

Organizers of Game Developers Conference 2013 are adding talks involving industry-leading IP for its March 2013 conference - including the design of the Promethean enemy for the Xbox 360 exclusive Halo 4, Kixeye on its rise to social game prominence, and IO Interactive's novel approach to animation used in Square Enix's multiplatform Hitman: Absolution.

Specifically, in 'The Design of New Enemies for Halo 4', 343 Industries' lead game designer Scott Warner will dissect the development of the new Promethean enemies. The studio had just taken over the legendary shooter franchise, and 343 knew every detail of its Prometheans would receive heavy scrutiny from Halo's dedicated fans.

Warner will present insights into "design philosophies, creative inspirations, gameplay prototyping, logic around iterative decision making for final characters, and key challenges faced along the way" of creating these alien antagonists.

Kixeye CEO Will Harbin, developer of Facebook titles War Commander and Backyard Monsters, will argue 'Death to Downloads' and will, instead, champion browser-based games for immersive experiences. Harbin's talk will include lessons on achieving long-term player retention and engagement. Kixeye's evolution, successes, and failures will exemplify these lessons, while Harbin reveals the secrets of highly monetizing free-to-play browser games.

IGF 2013 highlights initial Design, Technical Award jurors

Organizers of the 2013 Independent Games Festival are pleased to announce the latest additions to its discipline-specific jury panels that will determine the finalists and winner of its various awards.

The jury announcements for this year are beginning with some of the industry professionals, independent game notables and former IGF award winners that will make up its Excellence in Design and Technical Achievement Awards, as well as high-profile additions to its Nuovo and Narrative awards, the first members of which were recently announced.

Former Journey producer and designer and current Funomena co-founder Robin Hunicke will be joining both the Nuovo and Narrative juries. Also joining the Narrative jury is Telltale writer and designer Sean Vanaman, notable for his work co-writing the recent award-winning Walking Dead adventure series. And the Nuovo Award jury will also see the inclusion of designer,
curator and Kokoromi art collective co-founder Heather Kelley and Lea
Schoenfelder, creator of former IGF finalist Ulitsa Dimitrova.

While the juries continue to be assembled in advance of the kick-off of our next phase of the finalist selection process, we're happy to announce the following confirmed jurists.

The Excellence in Design Award

The Excellence in Design award is a category which seeks to highlight the innovation and quality of the underlying blueprint of each entered game -- component parts like its mechanic design, level design, and difficulty balancing.

Prior finalists and winners of the IGF Excellence in Design Award have included 2D Boy's cartoon construction puzzler World of Goo, Pocketwatch Games' abstracted multiplayer heist game Monaco, QCF's rogue-like puzzler Desktop Dungeons and procedurally-generated platformer Spelunky.

The confirmed jury to date consists of the following:

GDC 2013 reveals League Of Legends, Infinity Blade: Dungeons Summit talks

Organizers of next March's Game Developers Conference 2013 are highlighting the first summit talks behind some of the industry's biggest games in the free-to-play, smartphone and tablet, and indie arenas.

Firstly, Epic's upcoming Infinity Blade: Dungeons will serve as an example of how to design touch-based controls for both hardcore and casual markets. Exploring the free to play market in China, Tencent will discuss its best business and design practices for handling the multiple Game Developers Choice Online Awards winner League of Legends. And Indie Fund co-owner Aaron Isaksen will examine in-app purchases for indies 'without shame' in the Independent Games Summit.

For the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit, Nick Cooper will share Epic Games' design process in 'The Iterative Touch: Crafting the Controls for Infinity Blade: Dungeons'. Epic aimed for touch-based input that appealed to casual and hardcore gamers for its action-RPG/dungeon crawler. Here, Cooper will discuss the design and implementation of Infinity Blade: Dungeons' touchscreen input, along with the iterative process by which it was developed.

For the Free to Play Design & Business Summit, Tencent's Jim Feng will discuss bringing Riot Games' League of Legends to China in his 'Operating Western Games in China' talk. Feng will highlight best practices for the operation and development of games for the massive Chinese market and will illuminate processes of working with Chinese game operators.

IGF 2013 debuts initial Nuovo, Narrative Award jurors

Organizers of the 2013 Independent Games Festival are pleased to announce the first discipline-specific jury panels that will determine the finalists and winner of its various awards.

The jury announcements for this year are beginning with some of the industry professionals, independent game notables and former IGF award winners that make up its Nuovo award, as well as its first ever Excellence in Narrative Award.

While the juries are still being assembled in advance of the kick-off of our next phase of the finalist selection process, we're happy to announce the following confirmed jurists.

The Excellence in Narrative Award

The following jurists are among those chosen to lead the IGF's debut Excellence in Narrative award, which is intended to recognize innovation, quality, and impressiveness of storytelling in a game, including, but not limited to, scenario, plot construction, story, and dialogue.

The Excellence in Narrative jury will include the following:

GDC 2013 reveals talks from Amnesia's Grip, Epic's Mielke

The organizers behind March's Game Developers Conference 2013 have highlighted the next batch of Main Conference lectures, which feature industry leaders from Epic, Frictional Games, and Microsoft. They collectively offer cutting-edge discussions in the areas of visual arts, design, production, and audio.

Gears of War creator Epic Games will analyze how it overcame the challenges of outsourcing art for its leading IPs. Amnesia: The Dark Descent developer Frictional Games will examine a new way of designing games, based around creating a sense of presence that stimulates players' imaginations.

Finally, Microsoft's Advanced Technology Group will dissect several audio innovations - while laying out ways to make audio more a part of the game itself rather than being merely ancillary to it.

The full details on these new lectures are as follows:

- In Building Epic Worlds through the Strengths of Artsourcing, Epic Games producer Chris Mielke will share the secrets to outsourcing the art talent behind the Gears of War, Infinity Blade, and Fortnite universes. Mielke will highlight some of the obstacles Epic overcame in production, while explaining how outsourcer integration can go smoothly across console, PC, and mobile platforms.

- Frictional Games' creative director Thomas Grip will explore The Self, Presence and Story-Telling in his game design lecture. As an alternative to traditional game mechanics, Grip will argue that a game should create a sense of presence and allow players' imagination do the work, much how the company's own Penumbra and Amnesia: The Dark Descent (pictured) evoked strong and often terrifying emotions.

GDC 2013 debuts 'Schedule Builder', highlights new roundtables

With planning for March's GDC 2013 in San Francisco now underway, the show's organizers have debuted more than 20 sessions via the initial Schedule Builder, with hundreds more due over the next few weeks.

As always, prospective GDC speakers are working closely with the advisory board, who are individually mentoring talks through multiple submissions stages and into the official program.

As part of this process, GDC 2013's very first announced talks are now available online via its official Schedule Builder - with highlights to be further explored soon including a 'poster session' on Metacritic scoring, plus talks from Double Fine, Frictional Games and Microsoft.

Alongside the Schedule Builder, GDC organizers have also added this week a pair of roundtable talks focusing on managing art teams and incorporating designers into your production processes.

Unlike GDC's standard lectures and panels, these roundtable sessions allow attendees to sit down with the host to engage in face-to-face discussions, share their personal experiences, and learn from their fellow developers.

First, Keith Self-Ballard, an art director at Blizzard Entertainment on the company's unannounced next-gen MMO, will host the "Art Director and Lead Artist Roundtable," which will provide an open forum for artists and art directors to exchange ideas regarding how studios should manage, lead, and direct their art teams.

This session will address the most pressing issues facing today's game artists, and attendees will walk away with a better understanding of how to overcome these challenges.

In the second new roundtable, storied developer and University of Advancing Technology professor David Wessman (TIE Fighter, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, Saints Row) will help attendees look at how designers should interact with developers from other disciplines.

His roundtable, dubbed "Whose Design Is It Anyway? Game Designers and Development Teams," will help designers and other developers understand each other's roles, improve cross-studio communication, and create a more collaborative atmosphere across their entire studio.

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