Just a quick reminder today that the early registration period for August's all-digital GDC Summer event ends Wednesday, June 17th at 11:59 PM Pacific, so conference organizers encourage anyone interested in attending to register now at a discounted rate!
This is one of the best opportunities to save money on your pass to GDC Summer, which takes place August 4th through 6th in a new, completely online format that will be accessible to our global audience of game developers.
This new, all-digital GDC event will offer a smorgasbord of the same high-quality game development lectures, panels, and tutorials that GDC attendees are accustomed to, and the GDC Summer schedule is already filling up with great content.
In a GDC Summer Programming track talk on "Physical Animation in 'Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order'", for example, Respawn's Bartlomiej Waszak will show you how Fallen Order's physical animation system improves motion fluidity, smooths out transitions and provides a nuanced character performance.
Waszak will provide practical examples of hero traversal mechanics, stormtrooper death performances, and the companion droid BD-1. He'll also share several solutions for blending physics with target animations, discuss the control parameters and tradeoffs associated with each technique, and show implementations achieved using Unreal Engine 4 and PhysX.
And in a Production & Team Management talk on "Diversify Your Kingdom: A Toolkit for More Women in Leadership" King senior producer Sabrina Carmona will show you how King has worked to remove barriers keeping women from leadership roles in games via recruitment best practices and a tailored development program for women leaders.
By broadening the pool and diversifying leaders for the future, Carmona will reveal how King has tried to create a culture that is inclusive to everyone and integrates D&I into core people processes, removing barriers preventing the hiring of diverse candidates and the development of women into leading, influential roles.
Plus, veteran composer Wilbert Roget will be presenting a GDC Summer Audio track talk on "A Bloody Symphony of Characters: Music and Leitmotiv in 'Mortal Kombat 11'" in which he'll walk you through the process of writing and developing these unique character themes.
Roget is an award-winning composer, and those who attend his virtual talk can expect to walk away with tips and advice on effectively using leitmotivs in your own work. You'll also get a clear breakdown of the differences between leitmotivic and thematic melody, and learn the contextual advantages of diverse leitmotivs and signature sounds over thematic orchestral melodies when scoring for cinematic games.
And of course, King's Lucien "Yen-Chu" Chen will present "Blockers: Analyzing Difficulty Drivers in Candy Crush Games", a new method of analyzing blockers in match-3 games which creates a common language for designers.
Part of the GDC Summer Design track, this talk promises to teach you how this method is used to create a new set of stats for blockers that can used as a common design language across all of King's studios. The new set of stats helps designers, artists, producers, developers, and even players to better understand a blocker's behavior, and Chen will show you how it also helps King design better blockers.
This talk promises practical, actionable advice on designing games in the hyper-popular match-3 genre, and you can reserve your seat to attend it and many more at a discounted rate when you register for GDC Summer by Wednesday, June 17th!
For more details on GDC Summer, scheduled to take place virtually August 4th through the 6th, visit the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.
