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Make room in your GDC 2015 schedule for these standout talks

February 26, 2015

Are you ready for the 2015 Game Developers Conference next week? As everyone finalizes their conference schedules, we'd like to take a moment to highlight some standout sessions that you should keep on your radar.

First, make time to see cartoonist and animator Graham Annable (responsible for Puzzle Agent while working at Telltale Games) discussing what game developers can learn from animated filmmakers during his "The Making Of The Stop Motion Film 'The Box Trolls'" GDC talk. As director of the film (pictured), Annable will offer attendees an overview of storytelling, puppet making, costume designing, and shooting a miniaturized movie on the big screen.

Level Design In a Day: An expert roundtable Q&A

February 26, 2015

Joel Burgess is a senior designer at Bethesda Game Studios.

On Tuesday, March 3rd, Level Design in a Day returns to Game Developers Conference for its fifth consecutive year. 

Since its inception, the session has served to gather level designers and developers of all stripes to discuss all aspects of their LD work, large and small. 

This year's edition brings with it a roster of new and veteran LDiaD speakers, representing a broad variety of backgrounds, topics and ideas.  

These are your GDC 2015 Game Narrative poster session winners

February 25, 2015

Organizers of GDC 2015 and its Game Narrative Summit are proud to announce the winners of the 2015 edition of the annual Student Narrative Analysis Competition, who will all receive passes to attend the conference next week.

Curious about the award? Here's how it works: Every year, leading game design programs at universities across the country integrate the competition into their academic curricula. Each participating student conducts a detailed structured analysis of the narrative elements of a game title of their choice.

The resulting papers are submitted to the GDC Game Narrative Summit advisors for review, and the entrants with the most promising submissions are then invited to present poster sessions of their work to their future professional peers at the Game Narrative Summit.

Learn how roguelike design can level up your game at GDC 2015

February 25, 2015

Games that emulate the punishing design of Rogue are in vogue, but you don't have to be working on a roguelike to benefit from the genre's lessons learned.

At GDC 2015 next week, Riot Games VP of Game Design Tom Caldwell will break down what the League of Legends company has learned about roguelike appeal in its game design R&D work during a talk entitled "Level Up Your Game: The Untapped Potential of Roguelikes."

Focusing on the roguelike genre and how it has incredibly strong long-term replayability driven by the pursuit of mastery. Caldwell will discuss how the roguelike approach to designing for mastery can cross-pollinate other game genres and drive innovation.

Remember: GDC 2015 online registration closes tomorrow

February 24, 2015

With GDC 2015 less than a week away and the session schedule finalized, we've taken the liberty of highlighting show events you must not miss alongside a gentle reminder that if you haven't registered yet, now is the time!

Online registration for GDC 2015 will close tomorrow, February 25th at 11:59 PM Pacific. If you miss your chance to register online before the window closes, you'll have to pay extra to register onsite.

Register now for access to a wide variety of talks, roundtable discussions, postmortems and workshops. All passholders also have access to the GDC Expo Floor, located within the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, which will once again showcase cutting-edge technology from some of the industry's biggest and most influential companies.

Reminder: Know your GDC Code of Conduct

February 24, 2015

[GM of GDC events and all-around Boss Lady Meggan Scavio takes a moment to detail the official code of conduct for GDC and all of its related events.]

With Game Developers Conference 2015 just around the corner, there is no better time to remind everyone of a certain set of rules we have established for the event. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the GDC Code of Conduct, now in its third year, as these rules will be strictly enforced.

Our intention is for GDC to be a friendly, safe, and welcoming environment for all regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, or religion.

GDC 2015: Don't miss these standout Summit sessions

February 24, 2015

The 2015 Game Developers Conference is next week! Today, show officials are highlighting a few more noteworthy Summit sessions that you should keep on your radar as you prepare for the show.

These talks are part of the eight GDC Summits that will take place Monday, March 2nd and Tuesday, March 3rd at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA during the first two days of the conference.

First, don't miss indie developer Adriel Wallick explaining the positive value of limits in "A Year of Constraints: How Limitations Improved My Development Process" during the Indie Games Summit. After trying to develop a game a week for a full year, Wallick will try to break down the difference between constricting self-constraints and constructive limitations -- and how the latter can improve your creativity, motivation and development practices.

Introducing GDC's 'Curated Spaces'

February 23, 2015

[Game Developers Conference EVP Simon Carless details and explains all of the super-neat interactive exhibits dotted around GDC 2015, from Indie MEGABOOTH through iam8bit and far beyond.]

As you folks may have spotted, there's just a week to go 'til we hit Game Developers Conference 2015 - and there'll likely be 25,000+ game developers converging on the Moscone Center to check out talks, Expo, and everything in between, yay!

And actually, it's the 'everything in between' I wanted to talk about in this post. When the organizers looked at GDC, 3 or 4 years ago, we realized we were providing lotsa neat stuff in the conference rooms, and on the Expo Floor. But some of the larger 'common spaces' when walking around Moscone felt, well, a bit empty.

So we started putting a lot more seating/hangout spaces in there, plus commissioning, paying expenses and giving free space to awesome people who were curating and showing 'interesting things'. Best of all, these spaces are viewable and interactable by any GDC pass holder, from Expo to Exhibitor to All-Access. And we do them _solely_ to make your experience a lot more fun, thought-provoking, and social.

See Guilty Gear Xrd's striking 2D/3D art deconstructed at GDC 2015

February 23, 2015

The remarkable 3D-as-2D art design of Arc System Works' Guilty Gear Xrd is best understood by watching it in action, as the developers have managed to make a game that can transition seamlessly between equally beautiful 2D and 3D perspectives.

At GDC 2015, we're proud to have Arc System Works' Junya Christopher Motomura speaking about RED team's mission to rebuild a classic 2D fighting game within a modern full-3D graphical framework, while maintaining all of its old-school 2D charms.

Check out his talk, "Guilty Gear Xrd's Art Style : The X Factor Between 2D and 3D", to learn more about the art and programming R&D, as well as all the artistic decisions that led to the award-winning results.

Ten expert speakers tackle big ideas in the GDC 2015 Microtalks

February 20, 2015

Heads up, game developers: GDC 2015 is just over a week away, so it's time to gather your business cards, get your pre-GDC haircut and plan out out your conference schedule.

While you're at it, show organizers want you to know that the perennially popular GDC Microtalks returns with ten brief, rapid-fire talks about the philosophy, history and futures of the design, art and culture of games and play, all packed into a single hour.

The concept is simple: during the "GDC Microtalks 2015: One Hour, Ten Speakers, Games and Play, and Us" each speaker gets 20 slides, each of which will be displayed for exactly 16 seconds before automatically advancing, giving the speaker exactly five minutes and 20 seconds to make their point.

GDC 2015 Art Direction Bootcamp: An expert roundtable Q&A

February 20, 2015

Andrew Maximov is a senior artist at Naughty Dog.

Art direction is not just something art directors do. Art direction is in every brush stroke we lay down and in every vertex we move. It is the idea that you're trying to communicate and the emotion you put into it. It is the dialog that you're having with your audience, while the tools are just means for delivery. 

If you care about art, we would be privileged to see you join us in San Francisco on March 2 for an entire day of deep and thought-provoking art discussion from the absolute best in the business, during GDC's Art Direction Bootcamp. If you're going to Game Developers Conference -- don't miss it!

In the meantime, I've gathered some of the most experienced and talented senior artists in the game industry to answer a few questions from Twitter, Polycount, and from one another:

  • Andrew Maximov, Senior Artist - Naughty Dog
  • Neil Thompson, Director of Art & Animation - BioWare
  • Grant Duncan, Art Director - Hello Games
  • Keith Self-Ballard, Principal Artist - Deep Silver Volition
  • Robh Ruppel, Art Director - Naughty Dog

Let's begin!

Business Matchmaking returns for GDC 2015 All Access passholders

February 19, 2015

We're less than two weeks out from the 2015 Game Developers Conference, and that means now is a great time for All Access pass holders, GDC Play exhibitors and Expo exhibitors to set up onsite meetings with each other using GDC's Business Matchmaking website.

This online tool allows GDC 2015 All Access Pass attendees to identify, contact, and request and receive meetings with GDC exhibitors of all kinds.

Meeting possibilities also include those in the GDC Play Pavilion, a separate area of the San Francisco show that showcases emerging and independent developers with a series of kiosks and meetings rooms. In addition, GDC Play exhibitors are able to contact notable distributors, publishers and funders in a special 'VIP' pool.

Deconstruct the art design of leading AAA and indie games at GDC

February 19, 2015

Designing beautiful, visually stimulating games is no easy feat, and as a developer there's no better way (other than years of experience) to sharpen your aesthetic design skills than swapping stories and techniques with your peers. 

With that in mind, Game Developers Conference 2015 officials are excited to highlight another great set of sessions on the process of art design that you'll want to keep on your radar.

First, don't miss Hello Games art director Grant Duncan leading a "Do Artists Dream Of Electric Sheep?" talk at the conference about how a tiny indie team went about crafting the visual aesthetic of No Man's Sky (pictured), from early concept to finalised art. Duncan will cover inspirations, pre-production and the complicated, rewarding (and sometimes messy) union between programmers and artists, replete with plenty of pictures illustrating the process.

Play games, meet creators and find jobs on the GDC expo floor

February 18, 2015

This year the Game Developers Conference takes place March 2-6 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, which means we're less than two weeks away from the year's premiere conference for game industry professionals.

We're getting close to the wire, but you still have time to register for a GDC 2015 pass.

While you're putting together your session schedule in the Schedule Builder, don't forget to set some time aside to stop by the Expo Floors. Highlights include:

Connecting the Global Game Development Community

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