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Why Now Is the Best Time Ever to Be a Game Developer

Ingress: Design Principles Behind Google's Massively Multiplayer Geo Game

Playing with 'Game'

Gathering Your Party with Project Eternity (GDC Next 10)

D4: Dawn of the Dreaming Director's Drama (GDC Next 10)

Using Plot Devices to Create Gameplay in Storyteller (GDC Next 10)

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Making CounterSpy (GDC Next 10)

Luck and Skill in Games

Minimalist Game Design for Mobile Devices

Broken Age: Rethinking a Classic Genre for the Modern Era (GDC Next 10)


GDC 2011 Category

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Scaling Social Games: What Game Development Can Learn from the Cloud [SOGS Tech]
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SKU#: GDC11-12289
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Description: Scaling Social Games: What Game Development Can Learn from the Cloud [SOGS Tech]
SPEAKER/S: Dan Borthwick (Playfish)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Tuesday 11:15-12:15 Room 132, North Hall
TRACK / FORMAT: Social & Online Games Summit / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: As a leader in the rapidly evolving social gaming market, technical innovation has been a constant and driving force in Playfish's legacy of success. Dan Borthwick, a lead developer for Playfish, will discuss the lessons the company has learned as it moves increasingly closer to the world of web development in the creation of its category-defining games.
TAKEAWAY: Attendees will learn best practices for web development and how to apply these insights to social games, no matter what the platform.


The Game Design Challenge 2011: Bigger than Jesus
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SKU#: GDC11-12287
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Description: The Game Design Challenge 2011: Bigger than Jesus
SPEAKER/S: Eric Zimmerman (Independent), Jenova Chen (thatgamecompany), John Romero (Loot Drop) and Jason Rohrer (Independent)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Friday 12:30- 1:30 Room 3014, West Hall 3rd Fl.
TRACK / FORMAT: Game Design / Panel
DESCRIPTION: Welcome back for another Game Design Challenge, where leading designers are handed a difficult design problem and must create an original game concept to solve it. This year, returning champion Jenova Chen faces two new competitors. In the past, designers have taken on a range of challenges, from creating a game using the poetry of Emily Dickenson to last year's challenge of designing a game that incorporated real-world death. The design challenge this year? Each designer must create a game that is also in some way a religion - or a religion that is in some way a game. Every year the design challenge is an opportunity to address a wider issue around games and the larger culture. Increasingly, games are becoming part of players' lives - through handheld and mobile devices as well as the lifestyle invasion of social network games. Religion can be seen as humanity's oldest model for a social network, connecting people through time and space by way of community, philosophy, and social ritual. Is designing a game-as-religion really so far-fetched? Perhaps not. Many ancient rituals of divination and devotion, from the I-Ching to the Kabbalah, have extremely game-like elements. And some credit the birth of Scientology with the bet that a science-fiction author couldn't create a new religion. How will our game designers cope with this holy hand grenade of a design challenge? You'll just have to find out for yourself. At the session, the panelists will present a unique solution to this game design problem. And the audience plays an important role as well - by voting in the winner of the Game Design Challenge 2011. Expect a free-wheeling session of brave new game design ideas, along with unpredictable debate and dialog.
TAKEAWAY: More than just a design exercise, the Game Design Challenge asks expert game designers to think on their feet as they address important game design dilemmas, offering a sneak peek into their game design process. Strap yourself in and get ready for a session that promises to be full of innovative and provocative game design thinking.


Approximating Translucency for a Fast, Cheap and Convincing Subsurface Scattering Look
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SKU#: GDC11-12285
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Description: Approximating Translucency for a Fast, Cheap and Convincing Subsurface Scattering Look
SPEAKER/S: Colin Barre-Brisebois (Electronic Arts Montreal)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Friday 4:05- 4:30 Room 3006, West Hall 3rd Fl.
TRACK / FORMAT: Programming / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: In real-time computer graphics, the interaction of light and matter is often reduced to local reflection described by Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Functions (BRDFs). While this mathematical model is valid for describing surface reflectance of opaque objects, many objects in nature are partly translucent: light travels within the surface. To simulate translucent properties of objects in real-time, such as subsurface scattering (in human skin and other surfaces), developers rely on complex and expensive techniques. Conversely, this talk presents a fast and scalable approximation of translucency for a convincing subsurface scattering look which can be implemented on current and next generation video gaming systems.
TAKEAWAY: Developers attending this session will be able to improve their game's visuals by adding real-time translucency to their scenes with minimal impact on the run-time, as demonstrated using EA DICEs Frostbite engine. Moreover, this effect, once limited to offline rendering, will undeniably help developers in creating a more complete and immersive gaming experience.
INTENDED AUDIENCE: Reaching stakeholders from several disciplines of video game development, this talk is intended for all individuals that share common goals in terms of real-time graphics and that strive towards improving the visual quality of tomorrow's games: rendering programmers, technical artists, art directors and technical art directors.


Intuition vs Metrics: How Social Game Design Has Evolved [SOGS Design]
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SKU#: GDC11-12284
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Description: Intuition vs Metrics: How Social Game Design Has Evolved [SOGS Design]
SPEAKER/S: Brenda Brathwaite (Loot Drop) and Laralyn McWilliams ()
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Tuesday 3:00- 4:00 Room 134, North Hall
TRACK / FORMAT: Social & Online Games Summit / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: Traditional game design meant placing your bets: create a game you think will be successful, then see what happens after launch. Designing a social or online game means you have almost instant access to player data, and you can make quick changes. Its easy in that environment to let data drive game design, at the cost of originality. Veteran game designers Brenda Brathwaite and Laralyn McWilliams discuss how their designs have changed after both transitioned from traditional to online games. Using real-world examples, they discuss (and debate) when to go with your gut, and when to look at the numbers.
TAKEAWAY: Attendees gain insight into balancing todays data-driven design environment against creativity and originality, against a backdrop of real-world examples.


Top 7 Social Metrics for 2011 [SOGS Essentials]
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SKU#: GDC11-12283
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Description: Top 7 Social Metrics for 2011 [SOGS Essentials]
SPEAKER/S: Albert Lai (Kontagent)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Monday 1:45- 2:10 Room 130, North Hall
TRACK / FORMAT: Social & Online Games Summit / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: The presentation will revolve around a simple 3-step framework: User Acquisition, Retention and Monetization. Acquisition: How have game studios changed their user acquisition strategies given changes in the ecosystem? Engagement: How are game developers optimizing engagement events to increase viral messaging? Monetization: How have virtual goods and FB credits affected user monetization? How are game studios measuring the success of their virtual economies? To this end, we will deliver social metric benchmark ranges in our industry that fit within this framework. More importantly, reasons behind why the metrics are so important to a social games lifecycle development will be outlined.
TAKEAWAY: Kontagent will present the top social gaming metrics of 2011. This will enable the audience to gain insight into prevailing game mechanic shifts and social metric benchmarks.


INFINITY BLADE: How We Made a Hit, What We Learned, and Why You Can Do it Too!
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SKU#: GDC11-12280
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Description: INFINITY BLADE: How We Made a Hit, What We Learned, and Why You Can Do it Too!
SPEAKER/S: Donald Mustard (ChAIR Entertainment Group)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Tuesday 11:15-12:15 Room 305, South Hall
TRACK / FORMAT: GDC Smartphone Summit / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: The design and implementation of the acclaimed INFINITY BLADE helped set a new benchmark for what can be expected of a mobile game. In this session, we will share the methodologies we have learned that are unique to the process of creating a critically and commercially successful mobile title. We will discuss how to take the limitations of the platform and turn them to your advantage, how to quickly and successfully find the fun in your title, and most importantly, how to make your game stand out from the crowd and shine!
TAKEAWAY: Attendees will learn the techniques, strategies, and decision paradigms that were key to the success of INFINITY BLADE - giving insight into hard lessons learned, and helping them to design and create their own mobile successes!


Essential Steps to Starting a New Dev Studio
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SKU#: GDC11-12279
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Description: Essential Steps to Starting a New Dev Studio
SPEAKER/S: Jim Charne (Law Offices James I Charne)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Friday 11:00-12:00 Room 130, North Hall
TRACK / FORMAT: Business and Management / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: Opportunity rears its head in difficult times. New studios are emerging from dissolution or downsizing of captive publisher facilities, and from recent grads of game programs at universities and colleges. But new studios must take certain organizational steps to be more than friends and colleagues working together. This program will guide you through the process, from leaving the former employer, through setting the relationship of the founders, finding office space, to securing rights in work, ideas, and even the studio name, to preparing for adding employees, and even identifying the time to set up the new studio entity -- whether corporation or LLC.
TAKEAWAY: Becoming a company is a process, where attention to detail is what separates a reliable developer-partner, from a band of friends. This program will take attendees through the earliest steps that can show the world you are serious about becoming a real company.
INTENDED AUDIENCE: New studios, students, creative and technical persons whose goal is to become an independent studio, and business persons who want to be part of a successful game dev studio start-up.


10 Lessons from 20 Years as an Entrepreneur: A Post-Mortem
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SKU#: GDC11-12278
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Description: 10 Lessons from 20 Years as an Entrepreneur: A Post-Mortem
SPEAKER/S: Don Daglow (Don Daglow Interactive Entertainment)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Friday 11:00-12:00 Room 304, South Hall
TRACK / FORMAT: Business and Management , Production / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: Our industry changes constantly and we've all read the statistics about how many start-ups fail in their first few years. Where teams must re-invent themselves to adapt to new technology, new kinds of games and new ways of doing business. In this session Don Daglow will share 10 lessons he's learned about design and entrepreneuring both mistakes and successes from 20 years as the CEO of Stormfront Studios. Whether you're working solo on your great idea, founding a new company, considering a start-up or working in a mature team, this post-mortem will give you perspective on the long-term issues of designing games and growing new development companies.
TAKEAWAY: 1. Passion and Profit: Decide on your short and long term goals on Day 1.
2. Creatives, Investors and Entrepreneurs all have different styles and objectives, and you need to plan ahead for those conflicts.
3. What to keep constant in a world of endless changes.

INTENDED AUDIENCE: People involved in start-ups or who are considering being doing or joining a start-up. Anyone looking for perspective on the life cycle of game industry companies.


Strategy Games: The Next Move
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SKU#: GDC11-12277
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Description: Strategy Games: The Next Move
SPEAKER/S: Ian Fischer (Robot Entertainment), Soren Johnson (EA2D), Dustin Browder (Blizzard Entertainment), Jon Shafer (Stardock) and Tom Chick (Quarter to Three)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Friday 11:00-12:00 Room 134, North Hall
TRACK / FORMAT: Game Design / Panel
DESCRIPTION: Strategy games have one of the longest traditions within the industry, including two of last year's biggest games, STARCRAFT II AND CIVILIZATION V. In what direction is the genre heading? What are some of most important, and possibly overlooked, gameplay innovations of the last few years? How has the growth on online, persistent play affected the way strategy games are developed? Has the rapidly expanding mainstream audience changed how strategy games are targeted, or is the genre at risk of turning into a ghetto? As the market moves towards free-to-play, micro-transaction-based gaming, how will strategy gaming adapt while maintaining fairness of play? Is there still room for traditional, boxed strategy games?
TAKEAWAY: Several experienced strategy developers will share their own perspectives on the future of the genre, offering insights on both game design and the challenges facing the genre in the coming years.
INTENDED AUDIENCE: Although primary of interest to strategy game developers, the session will also be relevant to anyone interested in how a game genre evolves and reinvents itself in the face of a changing market.


CRYSIS 2: Getting More Interactivity out of Animation-Data
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SKU#: GDC11-12276
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Description: CRYSIS 2: Getting More Interactivity out of Animation-Data
SPEAKER/S: Ivo Herzeg (Crytek)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Thursday 1:30- 2:30 Room 3006, West Hall 3rd Fl.
TRACK / FORMAT: Programming , Visual Arts / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: This presentation is based on the skeleton animation technology we implemented for the CRYSIS franchise and several unannounced titles. As we moved our technology from PC to PS3 and 360 we had to refine and redesign large parts of the code-base in order to cope with the massive amount of data that we were used to working with on a PC title. Our goal was to get maximum leverage out of canned animation data while keeping the asset count as low as possible. In this talk we will focus on parametric animations. We will discuss the necessity and requirements of this technique from the viewpoint of a game-developer and show in detail how to use these techniques for precise locomotion-control and full-body IK for arbitrary skeleton topologies. We will present a step-by-step approach how to create parametric animations and propose our own solutions for feature-extraction, blend-space construction, scattered-data interpolation and several techniques to generate animations that go beyond the range of the captured assets. Along the way, we will cover the blending, time-alignment and warping techniques that we developed, and the procedural modifications and physical simulations we used to make motion clips as interactive as possible, while preserving the original artistic style of the assets. Our own technique for parametric animations is based on academic-research (RBFs, KNNs, Geostatistics), but not much has been published on how good or bad these methods perform in game production scenarios. In that context we will discuss the pitfalls we encountered with the implementation of these methods and present a video comparison between different techniques.
TAKEAWAY: Attendees will get an overview of different techniques to parameterize and combine motion-clips, the limitations, benefits and challenges with these methods, and how to use them for AI- and/or player-controlled characters.
INTENDED AUDIENCE: This session is geared towards anybody involved in the creation of interactive animation (animators, designers, programmers). Experience in working with motion-capture data is helpful.


Lighting the Apocalypse: Rendering Techniques for RED FACTION: ARMAGEDDON
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SKU#: GDC11-12275
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Description: Lighting the Apocalypse: Rendering Techniques for RED FACTION: ARMAGEDDON
SPEAKER/S: Mike Flavin (Volition, Inc.)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Thursday 3:00- 4:00 Room 3002, West Hall 3rd Fl.
TRACK / FORMAT: Programming / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: Combining an advanced real-time environmental destruction system with a world of rich, colorful visuals introduces a suite of new technical challenges. This session describes the technical challenges which arose from the design of RED FACTION: ARMAGEDDON, and how these constraints led to the design of the inferred lighting technique developed for the title. The design and implementation of this new lighting system will be discussed in detail, including insights gleaned over the course of development, and suggestions for others attempting a similar approach.
TAKEAWAY: Attendees will learn the concept behind the new inferred lighting technique which debuts with RED FACTION: ARMAGEDDON, as well as implementation details and insights. Additional features of both the lighting system and associated tools and artist workflow will also be covered.
INTENDED AUDIENCE: Target audience is specifically graphics programmers, but also others with an interest in lighting techniques and a moderate amount of technical savvy. Knowledge of basic real-time graphics algorithms as applied to games, specifically related to lighting, could be helpful, but is not a strict prerequisite.


SPU-Based Deferred Shading in BATTLEFIELD 3 for Playstation 3
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SKU#: GDC11-12273
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Description: SPU-Based Deferred Shading in BATTLEFIELD 3 for Playstation 3
SPEAKER/S: Christina Coffin (DICE)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Wednesday 10:30-11:30 Room 3002, West Hall 3rd Fl.
TRACK / FORMAT: Programming , Visual Arts / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: This session presents a detailed programmer oriented overview of our SPU based shading system implemented in DICE's Frostbite 2 engine and how it enables more visually rich environments in BATTLEFIELD 3 and better performance over traditional GPU-only based renderers. We explain in detail how our SPU Tile-based deferred shading system is implemented, and how it supports rich material variety, High Dynamic Range Lighting, and large amounts of light sources of different types through an extensive set of culling, occlusion and optimization techniques.
TAKEAWAY: Attendees will learn how SPU based shading allows a rich variety in materials, more complex lighting and enables offloading of traditional GPU work over to SPUs. Optimization techniques used to minimize SPU processing time for various scenarios will also be taught. Attendees will understand how to technically design, balance and analyze the performance of a game environment that uses an SPU based shading system. Attendees will learn key points of creating and optimizing code and data processing for high throughput shading on SPUs.
INTENDED AUDIENCE: This session is intended for advanced programmers with an understanding of current forward and deferred rendering techniques, as well as console development experience. Knowledge of lower level programming in vector instrinsics, assembly language, and structure-of-arrays versus array-of-structures data processing is recommended.


AI Navigation: It's Not a Solved Problem - Yet
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SKU#: GDC11-12269
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Description: AI Navigation: It's Not a Solved Problem - Yet
SPEAKER/S: James Anhalt (Blizzard Entertainment), Alexander Kring (Nihilistic) and Nathan Sturtevant (University of Denver)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Monday 1:45- 2:45 Room 3002, West Hall 3rd Fl.
TRACK / FORMAT: AI Summit / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: Every so often, we hear the question asking whether pathfinding in games is a solved problem, and yet there is a continuous stream of new techniques to help improve it or address a particularly knotty problem. This session will demonstrate and explain some new techniques used in three different games. These include how STARCRAFT 2 handled massive numbers of simultaneous units (think hundreds of zerglings), how DRAGON'S AGE: ORIGINS gained increased navigation efficiency by abstracting their paths, and the myriad benefits that hierarchical navmeshes provided in the upcoming PS3 title, HEROES ON THE MOVE.


Staffing the Extras: Creating Convincing Background Character AI
Price:$3.95

SKU#: GDC11-12268
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Description: Staffing the Extras: Creating Convincing Background Character AI
SPEAKER/S: Paul Kruszewski (Grip Entertainment) and Ben Sunshine-Hill (University of Pennsylvania)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Monday 4:15- 5:15 Room 3002, West Hall 3rd Fl.
TRACK / FORMAT: AI Summit / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: As processing power increases, game developers have been using much of it to bring the world alive with increasing numbers of background characters. Making dozens -- or even hundreds -- of these extras believable and yet keeping them computationally feasible poses significantly different challenges than traditional front line AI. This session will demonstrate how to simulate large populations of extras (including a peek at TRON: EVOLUTION) and explain the differences from creating regular NPCs. Additionally, it will show a technique to turn a background character into a foreground character by dynamically generating an alibi for their entire existence.


Biofeedback in Gameplay: How Valve Measures Physiology to Enhance Gaming Experience
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SKU#: GDC11-12267
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Description: Biofeedback in Gameplay: How Valve Measures Physiology to Enhance Gaming Experience
SPEAKER/S: Mike Ambinder (Valve Software)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Thursday 10:30-11:30 Room 3002, West Hall 3rd Fl.
TRACK / FORMAT: Game Design / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: This presentation discusses how Valve is making use of biofeedback - the measurement, display, analysis, modification, manipulation, and response of physiological signals - to both explore new avenues of gameplay and to improve in-house playtesting processes. Current control schemes - mouse and keyboard, gamepad, gestural remote - rely on the transformation of physical manipulations - button presses, hand and arm motions, etc. - into onscreen representations of player intent. These schemes are limited in the sense of providing input about a player's desired actions in-game while providing little information about player sentiment. The addition of physiological signals allows for a new dimension of transformation - using estimates of a players emotional state to tailor a more immersive, dynamic, and calibrated game experience; these signals enable the inclusion of a heretofore ignored aspect of player experience into a viable component of gameplay.

In particular, this session focuses on the positives and negatives of biofeedback measurement when applied to gaming and walks through specific examples of modified gameplay experiences in Valve games (LEFT 4 DEAD 2, ALIEN SWARM, PORTAL 2) that make use of this technology. The session begins with a primer on a variety of physiological measurements (skin conductance response, heart rate, eye movements, facial affect, and EEGs among others)walking through the pros and cons of their use as viable control mechanisms. It continues with examples of new gameplay mechanics implemented in Valve titles that are made possible or improved through the addition of biofeedback measures. One specific instance us the use of a players level of arousal to modify the actions of the AI Director in LEFT 4 DEAD 2 and the addition of a time-based constraint tied to a players ability to maintain calm in stressful situations in ALIEN SWARM. In addition, the application of these techniques to playtesting is discussed with relevant benefits and limitations placed in context. In summary, this talk provides insight into a compelling new method of acquiring information about player intent and state to create novel gameplay experiences.
TAKEAWAY: Attendees should leave the session with a greater understanding of how the measurement of physiological signals can be used to create more immersive gameplay experiences as well as a basic grasp of the relative merits (including cost, viability, stability, accuracy, and breadth of application) of a variety of biofeedback measurements. In addition, they should acquire the competency to immediately incorporate biofeedback testing procedures into their playtesting processes to take advantage of these technologies.


Faster, Better, Cheaper: Pushing the Artistic Bar in Portable Game Development
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SKU#: GDC11-12266
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Description: Faster, Better, Cheaper: Pushing the Artistic Bar in Portable Game Development
SPEAKER/S: Nathan Phail-Liff (Ready At Dawn Studios)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Friday 9:30-10:30 Room 3006, West Hall 3rd Fl.
TRACK / FORMAT: Visual Arts / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: Ready at Dawn has always strived to dispel the myth that portable game development means sacrifices of player expectations over their bigger console brothers. In this presentation, Nathan will give insight into the art and technology production philosophies at RAD, as well as concrete examples from their latest game, GOD OF WAR: GHOST OF SPARTA, of how the art team lies, cheats, and steals to push the limits of the portable platform.
TAKEAWAY: Attendees will gain an understanding of how our focus on creative, but very much low-tech, artist driven solutions to solving challenging visual problems allow us to both push the technical boundaries of our target platform as well as often spare our programming team from implementing more costly and time consuming technical solutions. We are very much fans of classic film visual effects ingenuity, and tapping into the creativity born out of limitations, so if attendees leave thinking of us as the 'Ed Wood' of video games, we will take it as the highest of compliments.
INTENDED AUDIENCE: Most applicable to artists working on portable platforms, with a focus on environment and fx disciplines, but the general concepts and production philosophies still may be of interest any artist in the industry.


Building Cloud Services for Mobile Titles with Minimum Effort
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SKU#: GDC11-12260
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Description: Building Cloud Services for Mobile Titles with Minimum Effort
SPEAKER/S: Allan Murphy (Microsoft)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Tuesday 11:15-12:15 Room 303, South Hall
TRACK / FORMAT: GDC Smartphone Summit / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: This session will present a ground up tracer bullet description of building simple web services and storage for use in games. An introduction to cloud computing with Microsofts Azure platform will be given, and then the presentation will cover cloud storage, hosted web services, hosted compute and connecting these to your game. Each section will be accompanied by example code designed to be minimal, simple to understand, and explained in detail.


AI Unplugged: How Experienced Devs Think Through AI
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SKU#: GDC11-12258
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Description: AI Unplugged: How Experienced Devs Think Through AI
SPEAKER/S: Dave Mark (Intrinsic Algorithm), Brian Schwab (Blizzard Entertainment), Borut Pfeifer (Independent), Chris Jurney (Double Fine Productions) and Brett Laming (Rockstar Leeds)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Tuesday 5:25- 6:00 Room 3002, West Hall 3rd Fl.
TRACK / FORMAT: AI Summit / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: Sometimes the hardest part of constructing game AI is not writing the code, tweaking the formulas, or even deciding on which technological framework to use. Often, designing good AI depends upon analyzing the specific behavior or problem that needs to be addressed and decomposing it in such a way that it can be dealt with in the first place. In this panel, we present experienced game AI designers and programmers with examples of typical (or odd!) game behaviors and watch as they walk through the process of tackling the problem -- long before the programming suite is ever opened.


Flirting with the Dark Side: Scripting and AI
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SKU#: GDC11-12257
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Description: Flirting with the Dark Side: Scripting and AI
SPEAKER/S: Damian Isla (Moonshot Games) and Mike Lewis (EGOSOFT)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Tuesday 4:15- 5:15 Room 3002, West Hall 3rd Fl.
TRACK / FORMAT: AI Summit / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: According to the conventional wisdom, scripting is not real AIit's faked, and fragile and contrary to the fundamental goals of real AI. This session will refute this conventional wisdom, and explode the false dichotomy between rich and dynamic AI versus static and fragile scripting. Additionally, the session will present tools and guidelines for building powerful and effective scripting systems to enable designers and programmers alike to craft highly engaging game characters and immersive gameplay experiences.


AI Pr0n: Maximum Exposure of Your Debug Info!
Price:$3.95

SKU#: GDC11-12256
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Description: AI Pr0n: Maximum Exposure of Your Debug Info!
SPEAKER/S: Brian Schwab (Blizzard Entertainment), Michael Dawe (Big Huge Games/38 Studios) and Rez Graham (Electronic Arts (Sims Division))
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Monday 11:15-12:15 Room 3002, West Hall 3rd Fl.
TRACK / FORMAT: AI Summit / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: Debugging complex AI is a very difficult task. Often the best approach involves visualizing the data and the relationships instead of staring at code. It can be challenging to find that balance between constructive information and simply visual clutter. In this session, several developers will discuss the creative and unique approaches they used to visualize the complexity of their AI for debugging and development.


Lay of the Land: Smarter AI Through Influence Maps
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SKU#: GDC11-12255
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Description: Lay of the Land: Smarter AI Through Influence Maps
SPEAKER/S: Damian Isla (Moonshot Games), Alex Champandard (AiGameDev.com) and Kevin Dill (Lockheed Martin)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Monday 3:00- 4:00 Room 3002, West Hall 3rd Fl.
TRACK / FORMAT: AI Summit / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: As an intelligent entity occupying a physical world, your AI needs to be able to reason about space in order to make better (and funner) spatial decisions -- decisions like where to stand, what to defend, where to search, when to flee, etc. This session features three perspectives on creating environmental awareness with influence maps, including their use for spatial analysis and position evaluation in both RTS and FPS games. Along the way, you will learn the promise and the pitfalls of this powerful technique, as well as the core truth that in the end, all behavior is spatial!


Using Randomness in AI: Both Sides of the Coin
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SKU#: GDC11-12254
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Description: Using Randomness in AI: Both Sides of the Coin
SPEAKER/S: Dave Mark (Intrinsic Algorithm) and Brian Schwab (Blizzard Entertainment)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Tuesday 11:15-12:15 Room 3002, West Hall 3rd Fl.
TRACK / FORMAT: AI Summit / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: Predictability in game AI has often been cited as a drawback to gameplay and especially replayability. In some genres sports games, for example randomness is a necessary component to generate believable results. Often, it simply provides needed variety. Sometimes, however, randomness in game behavior can cause problems if it fails to align with the player's expectations. This lecture will show examples of the sometimes quirky ways that people perceive randomness, show the pros and cons of using randomness in game systems, and give concrete techniques for mitigating some of the problems that truly random sequences can generate.


People in Your Pocket: High-Quality AI on Mobile Devices
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SKU#: GDC11-12253
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Description: People in Your Pocket: High-Quality AI on Mobile Devices
SPEAKER/S: Andrew Stern (ngmoco), Richard Evans (Little Text People) and Emily Short (Independent)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Tuesday 10:00-11:00 Room 3002, West Hall 3rd Fl.
TRACK / FORMAT: AI Summit / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: Simulating people on consoles and high-end PCs requires huge amounts of animation and graphic resources. People-simulators on mobile devices have lower graphic expectations, however. This provides room for focus on core behavioral issues rather than mere animation issues. As mobile gaming expands rapidly, there is a significant opportunity for AI-driven people simulators with low-fi graphical fidelity but hi-fi behavioral fidelity. By showing actual work-in-progress demos of techniques such as variable AI personality, dramatic situations, and dynamic, multi-player conversation, this session will show how to get the most life out of AI characters even under tight technological constraints.


Culling the Battlefield: Data Oriented Design in Practice
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SKU#: GDC11-12251
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Description: Culling the Battlefield: Data Oriented Design in Practice
SPEAKER/S: Daniel Collin (EA DICE)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Wednesday 3:00- 4:00 Room 3002, West Hall 3rd Fl.
TRACK / FORMAT: Programming / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: This talk will highlight the evolution of the object culling system used in the Frostbite engine over the years and why we decide to rewrite a system for BATTLEFIELD 3 that had worked well for 4 shipping titles. The new culling system is developed using a data oriented design that favors simple data layouts which enables very efficient computation using pipelined vector instructions. Concrete examples of how code is developed with this approach and the implications and benefits compared to traditional tree-based systems will be given.
TAKEAWAY: Attendees will learn how to apply data oriented design in practice to write simple but high throughput code that works well on all platforms. This is especially important for the current consoles.
INTENDED AUDIENCE: Intended for programmers on all levels but some background on vector math and basic threading would be beneficial.


HTML5: The New UI Library for Games
Price:$3.95

SKU#: GDC11-12250
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Description: HTML5: The New UI Library for Games
SPEAKER/S: Chad Austin (IMVU)
DAY / TIME / LOCATION: Friday 11:00-11:25 Room 3002, West Hall 3rd Fl.
TRACK / FORMAT: Programming , Production / Lecture
DESCRIPTION: The downloadable IMVU clients interface is written primarily in web technologies, including HTML. Chad Austin, technical lead at IMVU, will show that HTML is a fantastic technology for building game UIs. He will share IMVUs evolution from a custom C++ framework to Flash to HTML, and why IMVU believes HTML will supplant all of the above in the near future. We will then discuss integrating HTML into your application, including efficiently rendering UI atop a 3D scene. Finally, Chad will demonstrate developing UI in IMVU and give case studies on how we used browser technology to save months of effort while improving overall product quality.
TAKEAWAY: Attendees will come away with an understanding that HTML and browser technologies are viable and attractive for in-game UI development. Iteration is extremely fast, resulting in a higher-quality and richer experience. We will share IMVUs experiences with HTML UI and demonstrate a typical development flow.
INTENDED AUDIENCE: This talk is intended for programmers and architects developing Windows, Mac, and console games. In addition, HTML and web technologies apply directly to tools programmers.



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