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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 2012 Category

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Tapping the Collective Creativity of Your Team
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SKU#: GDC12-3143
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Description: Tapping the Collective Creativity of Your Team

Speaker/s: Marcin Chady (Radical Entertainment)
Day / Time / Location: Wednesday 2:35- 3:00 Room 2022, West Hall, 2nd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Production / 25-Minute / Lecture / All
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: Large development teams face many challenges. The more obvious ones are things like planning and coordination, but among the less obvious, yet still critical problems is disenfranchisement. As the team gets larger, an individual member's perceived contribution to the final product becomes smaller. By specializing in one particular area they surrender their influence on others. Yet we all love making games and have an intuitive feel of what is and isn't right. All that creative juice that would have been flowing in a smaller team is left untapped in a large one. A studio can address this problem by establishing dedicated communication channels and processes. However, it requires effort to keep them running until a sustained culture develops around them, if at all. This talk will describe a software-based crowdsourcing approach developed at Radical Entertainment and used successfully during the development of [Prototype(R)2].

Tackling Large Scale Destruction FX: Lessons Learned From Raam's Shadow DLC
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SKU#: GDC12-3142
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Description: Tackling Large Scale Destruction FX: Lessons Learned From Raam's Shadow DLC

Speaker/s: Francois Antoine (Epic Games, Inc.)
Day / Time / Location: Thursday 12:05-12:30 Room 2006, West Hall, 2nd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Visual Arts , Game Design / 25-Minute / Lecture / Intermediate
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: This presentation will introduce the various types of destruction options used in Gears of War 3's DLC Raam's Shadow and explain their specific uses, with the focus ultimately being large scale destruction effects. We'll look at gameplay implications, various optimization techniques and efficiency cheats, followed by what makes destruction in games look good. Finally we'll dive into cross-departmental destruction tasks, where communication is key.

Squeeze Play: The State of Ady0 Cmprshn
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SKU#: GDC12-3140
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Description: Squeeze Play: The State of Ady0 Cmprshn

Speaker/s: Scott Selfon (Microsoft Corporation)
Day / Time / Location: Thursday 10:00-11:00 Room 3004, West Hall, 3rd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Audio / 60-Minute / Lecture / All
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: Nearly all audio assets used in games today are compressed in some form -- but what does that really mean acoustically? This session will provide an overview of the technology behind some of the most commonly used compression formats currently in use (across devices from mobile to console), with a focus on how these formats and their implementations impact the sounds they are compressing. We'll also take a look at some more novel approaches currently in use to provide ever-greater space savings while presenting high fidelity and highly malleable sound effects, dialogue, and music. Content may still continue to feel the squeeze, but understanding how the squeezing happens allows for artists to wield these tools with increasingly efficiency and awareness, and perceived quality can continue to soar even as footprint is reduced.

Spot the Difference: AAA vs Indie VO Techniques
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SKU#: GDC12-3139
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Description: Spot the Difference: AAA vs Indie VO Techniques

Speaker/s: Michael Csurics (2K Marin) and David Gilbert (Wadjet Eye Games)
Day / Time / Location: Wednesday 2:00- 3:00 Room 3004, West Hall, 3rd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Audio , Production / 60-Minute / Lecture / All
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: One dev is a AAA dialogue guru, the other - Indie adventure-game royalty. They are both passionate developers who focus on delivering top-shelf voice performances to their players. Watch as they discuss the finer points of producing voice performances from both extremes of the financial spectrum.

Small Steps in the Dark: Embracing the Continuous Prototyping Mindset
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SKU#: GDC12-3138
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Description: Embracing the Dark Art of Mathematical Modeling in AI

Speaker/s: Kevin Dill (Lockheed Martin Global Training & Logistics) and Dave Mark (Intrinsic Algorithm)
Day / Time / Location: Monday 1:45- 2:45 Room 2006, West Hall, 2nd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: AI Summit / 60-Minute / Lecture / Intermediate
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: Utility-based AI is a widely-used approach, particularly for games with deeper or more complex behavior. While new users may find utility functions complex and intimidating, experienced users see them as a natural and comfortable way to express behavior. In a follow-up of their 2010 lecture, Kevin Dill and Dave Mark will show how simple problems can be laid out quickly and easily using common design patterns. Additionally, they will show how complex situations can make use of utility functions to express more nuanced behavior. They will then walk through real-world examples, showing how they would be expressed in a utility-based architecture.

How To Ship a Game With Voices In 10 Languages? ...On the Same Day? ...And Keep It Consistent?
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SKU#: GDC12-3137
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Description: How To Ship a Game With Voices In 10 Languages? ...On the Same Day? ...And Keep It Consistent?

Speaker/s: Alexandre Piche (Ubisoft)
Day / Time / Location: Wednesday 11:00-11:25 Room 3004, West Hall, 3rd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Audio / 25-Minute / Lecture / Intermediate
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: Managing audio voices in up to 10 languages during a game development process can easily become a nightmare for voice designers and localization team. It's even more difficult on an AAA game which contains more dialogs and barks needed to be recorded and translated. This can result in having around close to half a million versions of audio lines that you not only need to record but also to keep track of all the changes that happen frequently during the production.

This presentation will address 4 main challenges in the management of voices and how a dedicated tool can help them get through these challenges. This will be based on a concrete example of the success of a such tool in continuous development.

Saints Row the Third Real Time Capture Tools
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SKU#: GDC12-3136
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Description: Saints Row the Third Real Time Capture Tools

Speaker/s: Alexander Mejia (Volition-Inc/THQ Inc)
Day / Time / Location: Wednesday 4:05- 4:30 Room 3009, West Hall, 3rd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Visual Arts / 25-Minute / Lecture / All
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: In the past, we had several outsource partners that worked with us to help create marketing videos for Saints Row 2. Every cut we got back had bad footage because It was simply too hard for outsourcers to capture good visceral gameplay. Creating custom cinematics was out of the question due to personnel shortages and time restraints. that meant long nights at the studio replacing each shot with our existing tool "Slew mode" which had existed since our first game, Descent. It was designed for flying around levels, not for video capture.

For Saints Row the Third, we set out to create a tool that would minimize the use of our personnel on trailers. Machinima_Mode was created: a real time camera control system that would allow our outsourcers to create great dynamic footage with very little training. Our programmers spent 2 days implementing this mode, and it was worth the effort.

With Machinima Mode, the amount of capture requested by outsource companies has dropped 90% and we can spend more time focusing on making the game instead of trying to support marketing. In this post-mortem you will learn how tweaking existing tools made a huge difference to outsourcers who capture live action footage to market our game.

Robustification Through Introspection and Analysis Tools (Avoiding Developer Taxes)
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SKU#: GDC12-3135
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Description: Robustification Through Introspection and Analysis Tools (Avoiding Developer Taxes)

Speaker/s: Stephen Kennedy (Havok)
Day / Time / Location: Friday 2:30- 3:30 Room 2009, West Hall, 2nd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Programming / 60-Minute / Lecture / All
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: We seek to remove human interaction from all tedious programming tasks. We show how a modified LLVM clang frontend can keep your reflection data up to date. By comparing metadata snapshots the computer can do 90% of the work of maintaining strong backwards compatibility. Make your asset pipeline much more robust. We show a low-overhead method of binding C++ to script via reflection. As well as producing reflection structures for serialization, our clang front-end can produce structures which are combined with the memory managers raw blocks to give an accurate picture of the heap automatically. In all cases, we aim to minimise the cost of change by removing the human interaction and to provide verification of those human edited parts.

Real-time Sound Propagation in Video Games
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SKU#: GDC12-3133
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Description: Real-time Sound Propagation in Video Games

Speaker/s: Jean-Francois Guay (Ubisoft)
Day / Time / Location: Friday 10:00-11:00 Room 3004, West Hall, 3rd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Audio , Programming / 60-Minute / Lecture / Intermediate
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: One way to increase immersion of the player is to create a more realistic environment. For sound, that means adequately simulating the reflection, absorption and diffraction of the sound. This presentation will demonstrate a new lightweight method to compute sound propagation which focuses more on achievable high-quality results than finding exact calculations to correctly simulate a game's 3D sound atmosphere. Our algorithm permits adequate simulation of obstruction and occlusion caused by game objects (diffraction and absorption), as well as propagation of sound in the environment (virtual direction and position of sound objects). This method has been used successfully in AAA titles at Ubisoft.

Racing to the Finish: Content Production on Forza Motorsport 4
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SKU#: GDC12-3131
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Description: Racing to the Finish: Content Production on Forza Motorsport 4

Speaker/s: Arthur Shek (Microsoft Studios (Turn 10)) and Tatyana Dyshlova (Microsoft Studios)
Day / Time / Location: Friday 11:30-12:30 Room 3009, West Hall, 3rd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Production / 60-Minute / Lecture / All
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: Producing content can be challenging, even on a small scale project. Managing production of over 500 cars and 26 unique tracks in less than 2 years, while working with studios across 4 countries, is a downright scary and daunting task. How did Turn 10 Studio manage this complexity for "Forza Motorsport 4" without getting buried in the overwhelming day-to-day details? This presentation covers the content production challenges encountered on a large-scale AAA title and how Turn 10 used new processes and technology to manage, schedule and scope our project to nail our ship date.

Rapid, Iterative Prototyping Best Practices
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SKU#: GDC12-3132
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Description: Rapid, Iterative Prototyping Best Practices

Speaker/s: Eitan Glinert (Fire Hose Games)
Day / Time / Location: Wednesday 3:30- 4:30 Room 2022, West Hall, 2nd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Production , Game Design / 60-Minute / Lecture / All
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: Great, innovative games don't just magically happen; they're almost always the result of lots of trial, error, and prototyping. If you care about exploring to come up with something different and new, if you don't want to just rehash the same old tired FPS mechanics, or if you're trying to get team buy in on the new project then you need to experiment. This session will cover why it's worth spending a significant portion of development on prototyping, 8 lessons for how to do it effectively, and 8 common pitfalls to watch out for and avoid. We'll draw from the prototyping phases of Dance Central and creative indie titles Slam Bolt Scrappers and Go Home Dinosaurs for examples.

Racing Games: A Semi-Formal Sound Study
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SKU#: GDC12-3130
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Description: Racing Games: A Semi-Formal Sound Study

Speaker/s: Damian Kastbauer (Lost Chocolate Lab)
Day / Time / Location: Thursday 5:30- 5:55 Room 3004, West Hall, 3rd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Audio / 25-Minute / Lecture / All
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: Games that center around driving cars are a unique genre and offers significant challenges for sound designers. Racing games and their fans share a closeness to the real world not found in many other genres -- fans of racing games are almost always fans of cars, motorsports (either as fans or participants) or both. Some very crucial aspects of the driving experience in race car games are sonically-related; such as the roar of the engine or the hum of the tires right before they lose traction. These are key sounds that professional drivers are acutely attuned to in order to drive their fastest. Using examples from current-generation games for reference, we will break down the key elements that compose vehicle audio simulation and infer various implementations through comparison.

Production Culture: How Two and a Half Artists Completed the FX for Gears of War 3
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SKU#: GDC12-3129
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Description: Production Culture: How Two and a Half Artists Completed the FX for Gears of War 3

Speaker/s: Francois Antoine (Epic Games, Inc.)
Day / Time / Location: Wednesday 11:00-11:25 Room 3009, West Hall, 3rd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Production , Visual Arts / 25-Minute / Lecture / Intermediate
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: In an time of ever-growing development teams, Epic Games prides itself on keeping its dev team a small as possible. In this presentation we will look at how two and a half artists managed to create FX for an entire AAA game, including cinematics.This presentation's focus will be on how Epic Game's 'production culture' made this possible and how deeply it reaches into all aspects of the company, from the hiring process to the software tools.

Playtesting and Metrics: Getting the Most Out of Your Usability Testing
Price:$3.95

SKU#: GDC12-3128
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Description: Playtesting and Metrics: Getting the Most Out of Your Usability Testing

Speaker/s: Jordan Lynn (Volition)
Day / Time / Location: Thursday 11:30-12:30 Room 2022, West Hall, 2nd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Production , Game Design / 60-Minute / Lecture / All
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: This talk discusses how to integrate back-end datalogging into an existing playtest program to create more satisfying user experiences. Specific examples, drawn from AAA titles Red Faction Armageddon and Saints Row:The Third, will highlight successes where this integration provided valuable information, as well as areas where we identified potential improvements. This talk will discuss the benefits of integrating these two methodologies and will provide tips and tricks to avoid our missteps and get the greatest positive impact on your game's user experience.

Performance Capture: A Creative Primer
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SKU#: GDC12-3127
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Description: Performance Capture: A Creative Primer

Speaker/s: Tameem Antoniades (Ninja Theory Ltd.)
Day / Time / Location: Thursday 11:30-12:30 Room 2016, West Hall, 2nd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Visual Arts / 60-Minute / Lecture / All
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: Modern performance capture means more than just putting on a mocap suit and doing a few walk cycles. While the technology has advanced enormously, catching more nuances, facial expressions, takes more than just good cameras-- it takes a disciplined creative process and thorough preparation. In this session, Tameem Antoniades, the creative director of Ninja Theory (Heavenly Sword, DmC), will discuss the practical and aesthetics challenges of using modern performance capture technology to create cinematic cutscenes. Attendees will learn how to conceive, cast, plan, and direct motion capture shoots from early brainstorming all the way through to the final renders. He'll share lessons learned from actors like Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings, King Kong) and directors like Alex Garland (28 Days Later, the Beach) and his own years of experience designing and directing cinematic performances for games.

Passenger: Story of a Convergent Pipeline - From Assassin's Creed Lineage to Assassin's Creed Revelations
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SKU#: GDC12-3126
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Description: Passenger: Story of a Convergent Pipeline - From Assassin's Creed Lineage to Assassin's Creed Revelations

Speaker/s: Thomas Felix (Ubisoft)
Day / Time / Location: Thursday 4:00- 5:00 Room 2002, West Hall, 2nd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Programming , Visual Arts / 60-Minute / Lecture / All
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: Two years into the development of an exclusive technology connecting Game and CG pipelines, the Passenger team -- part of the Technology Group at Ubisoft Montreal, now focuses on solving game content production issues. In this presentation, we will explain our strategy to expand a game universe, and describe the underlying authoring pipeline. We will then focus on the framework we developed to bridge both game and CG technology, and finally demonstrate how this powerful workflow can be applied to narrative game content creation. Practical application of the passenger technology will be given throughout the gamut of various well-known productions, from films like Assassin's Creed Lineage and Embers, to games like Assassin's Creed Revelations.

Ownership - Dragon Age Style
Price:$3.95

SKU#: GDC12-3125
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Description: Ownership - Dragon Age Style

Speaker/s: Adriana Lopez (BioWare)
Day / Time / Location: Thursday 2:30- 3:30 Room 2009, West Hall, 2nd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Production / 60-Minute / Lecture / All
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: True ownership, at all levels in a game company, is one of the main ingredients for making AAA titles. Most managers understand this. That's why the term is so widely used across all levels and disciplines. Especially since the introduction of Agile made "Product Owner" part of a project's vocabulary. That said, ownership is also one of the most misused terms in the industry. If you are calling someone an "owner" or if you are being called one, this talk is intended to clarify what that means.

We will discuss what is expected of our owners within the Dragon Age Franchise, what true ownership looks like and what are some of the common problems facing owners that we have found. The result, a fully engaged team that is able to deliver.

Out of the Fire and Into the Surprisingly Agile Remote Development Environment
Price:$3.95

SKU#: GDC12-3124
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Description: Out of the Fire and Into the Surprisingly Agile Remote Development Environment

Speaker/s: Coray Seifert (Slingo, Inc.)
Day / Time / Location: Friday 12:05-12:30 Room 2002, West Hall, 2nd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Production , Game Design / 25-Minute / Lecture / All
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: Overnight, Slingo went from a traditional co-located business to a remote game development operation due to a mysterious electrical fire at our North Jersey office. Despite this potentially disastrous business interruption, the Slingo team maintained landmark output and registered record numbers while working at offsite locations. Coray Seifert examines what went right, what went wrong, and what the team learned from this fascinating chapter in Slingo's 15-year history.

Is remote game development sustainable? What are the pitfalls and drawbacks? What benefits does it bring to the team? What is the best way to deploy remote teams or individuals? Before, during, and after the talk, attendees and members of the GDC community are encouraged to pose questions and join the discussion via the #GDCRemoteGameDev Twitter hashtag as we discuss the critical question: Is remote development a viable way to make games?

Orchestral Recording at Abbey Road for Lord of the Rings: War in the North
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SKU#: GDC12-3122
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Description: Orchestral Recording at Abbey Road for Lord of the Rings: War in the North

Speaker/s: Craig Duman (WB Games), Inon Zur (Zur Studio's) and John Kurlander (Mulholland Scoring)
Day / Time / Location: Friday 2:30- 3:30 Room 3010, West Hall, 3rd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Audio / 60-Minute / Lecture / Intermediate
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: Sound accounts for a very large part of the experience in games and this lecture is all about informing game audio professionals about a real world, step by step case of what it really takes to incorporate a live orchestra into their games production. The people involved in this lecture are the key people involved in pulling this all off and without their individual contributions the recording session could not have happened. In an industry where crunch is the norm and so many things go wrong, here is case where is all went right and fell into line. That's something everyone can benefit from.

Music Copyright in Video Games: The Elephants in the Room
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SKU#: GDC12-3121
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Description: Music Copyright in Video Games: The Elephants in the Room

Speaker/s: Sergio Pimentel (Nimrod Productions)
Day / Time / Location: Thursday 5:30- 6:30 Room 2022, West Hall, 2nd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Production , Audio / 60-Minute / Lecture / All
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: Publishers and developers have increasingly used commercial music in games in order enhance the gaming experience, satisfy consumer's tastes and ensure that content is relevant across very different cultures. With major differences in music copyright ownership across different territories, as well as differences between rights required for digital and physical distribution, licensing can become a dangerous minefield to navigate. Such issues can be ignored due to the lack of understanding in both the games and the music industries.

With the chaotic state of the digital music licensing landscape in Europe and the fragmentation of global repertoire, it is easy to see why this reluctance is perpetuated. Whilst working with OneBigGame as music supervisor on Chime and WINtA, these issues had to be addressed and explained to all of the stakeholders involved in the development and release of both games.

Monster Galaxy: Developing Social Games for Gamers
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SKU#: GDC12-3120
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Description: Monster Galaxy: Developing Social Games for Gamers

Speaker/s: Mike Sego (Gaia Online)
Day / Time / Location: Thursday 6:05- 6:30 Room 130, North Hall
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Game Design / 25-Minute / Lecture / All
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: By 2010, social gaming had proven to be a massive phenomenon. However, the variety of game genres on the Facebook platform was very limited. Early leaders, like Farmville, set an example that other developers soon followed, leading to a landscape overrun with near-identical simulation games targeted towards casual and non-gamers. Guided by the belief that there is a huge, under-served audience of gamers using Facebook, Gaia Online set out to develop a social game that combined successful aspects of classic console games with the necessary elements of social gaming. The result was Monster Galaxy, an innovative RPG on Facebook that grew to over 20 million users. This talk will dive into the design challenges the team faced and lessons they learned, including designing for the free-to-play business model, applying insights from user and A/B testing, the need for continual content updates, and managing trade-offs to increase accessibility, retention, and conversion.

Modular Rigging in Battlefield 3
Price:$3.95

SKU#: GDC12-3119
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Description: Modular Rigging in Battlefield 3

Speaker/s: Johan Ramstrom (EA DICE)
Day / Time / Location: Wednesday 3:30- 3:55 Room 3009, West Hall, 3rd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Visual Arts , Production / 25-Minute / Lecture / Intermediate
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: For Battlefield 3, DICE took on its most difficult challenge so far. To raise the bar for character quality in games we developed our own deformation rig, combined it with the powerful ANT animation system (used in FIFA) and extensive motion capture usage. To create a believable experience we built and managed enormous amount of assets and ways of keeping these organized. The rigging process was one of the most challenging aspects of production, with the smallest change requiring an update for almost every single asset. With a modular rigging system and a flexible animation pipeline the production team could deliver on time and quality.

Why Designers Should Care About Metrics
Price:$3.95

SKU#: GDC12-3118
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Description: Why Designers Should Care About Metrics

Speaker/s: Laralyn McWilliams (iWin, Inc.)
Day / Time / Location: Thursday 2:30- 3:30 Room 2006, West Hall, 2nd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Game Design / 60-Minute / Lecture / Intermediate
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: Metrics and monetization have a bad reputation, mostly because they hung out with the wrong crowd. We started hearing about both concepts not from their roots in MMOs but as a part of the development philosophy of specific social game companies that were also notorious for a decision-making process that didn't include designers. In fact, metrics provide useful tools for designers that become a part of the toolbox for creating great games that players love.

Whether it's for a live game or a sequel, someone's going to be looking at the numbers and making decisions about what players want and how to create a more financially successful game. You can lead those decisions, or you can stand by while someone else makes them. This talk is intended both to educate designers and to arm them for debates with marketing, business development, product managers and execs about design choices.

Lighting and Simplifying Saints Row: The Third
Price:$3.95

SKU#: GDC12-3117
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Description: Lighting and Simplifying Saints Row: The Third

Speaker/s: Scott Kircher (Volition, Inc.)
Day / Time / Location: Wednesday 3:30- 4:30 Room 2002, West Hall, 2nd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Programming / 60-Minute / Lecture / Intermediate
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: Describes some of the key rendering technologies behind Saints Row: The Third. Main topics will be an update on Volition's inferred lighting technology and our new automated LOD generation system. Neither of these systems existed in Saints Row 2. In particular, this talk will cover new rendering features enabled or enhanced by inferred lighting: Lit rain (each rain drop can receive light and shadows from any and all lights), object-specifc screen space decals, and radial ambient oclusion (a simple splat based ambient occlusion method). It will also give a brief overview of mesh simplfication and then focus on some of the practical issues that arose in implementing automatic mesh LODs for Saints Row: The Third.

Journey vs Monaco: Music is Storytelling
Price:$3.95

SKU#: GDC12-3114
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Description: Journey vs Monaco: Music is Storytelling

Speaker/s: Austin Wintory (independent)
Day / Time / Location: Wednesday 11:00-12:00 Room 3010, West Hall, 3rd Fl
Track / Duration / Format / Audience Level: Audio / 60-Minute / Lecture / All
GDC Vault Recording: Video Recorded
Description: Composer Austin Wintory compares the two radically different scores he completed in 2011: thatgamecompany's Journey and Pocket Watch Games' Monaco. Despite being different games with different goals and very different scores, the underlying philosophy for creating a musically meaningful experience was identical. This talk explores how large scale and small scale structures were made in order to try and create narrative arcs and how reconciling adaptivity with musicality was handled. It will also explore the production process for each score, including a look at unused music and the evolutionary process the scores underwent. The lead designer for each game (Jenova Chen and Andy Schatz) will join Austin for the audience Q&A.


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