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To help inspire submissions for the GDC 2012 call for papers, the event's advisory board members for the Audio track spoke out on the challenges facing modern audio professionals, and outlined what they hope to see at the upcoming March 2012 San Francisco-based event.

Seasoned industry professionals such as Media Molecule's Kenneth Young, HUGEsound.com's Chance Thomas, Microsoft's Scott Selfon, Brian Schmidt Studios' titular Brian Schmidt, and Video Games Live/Game Audio Network Guild founder Tommy Tallarico all discussed the most significant accomplishments, challenges, and trends facing audio production as part of their drive to encourage submission ideas for the GDC 2012 Main Conference.

As GDC advisory board members, these industry veterans oversee the show's Audio track and ensure that each of its sessions remain relevant and hold up the high bar of quality that GDC attendees have come to expect.

The call for papers for GDC 2012 will close on September 6, with a list of audio-specific topics available on the official website. In the following interview, the advisory board members discuss key issues they'd like to see addressed at next March's show.

What do audio professionals have to keep in mind when working on titles for the web or mobile devices? How do these platforms influence the use of audio?

Kenneth Young: Download size and available storage space certainly have a big impact on the approach -- for example, you don't have the liberty of throwing an abundance of streaming music, ambiences or voice assets at the project. On the positive side, such limitations force the developer to really consider whether wallpapering their game with music or thousands of lines of clunky, information-heavy and exposition-heavy dialogue is a good idea. Here's my obligatory Angry Birds example -- it only uses music when it is needed, in the menu and as a payoff upon level completion.

Chance Thomas: You need to remember the range of device capabilities. The mobile marketplace has a wide array of devices and capabilities, and today's audio pro needs to understand this range. For instance, a game developed for the hypothetical iPhone 5 will be sold at the same app store that old G3 users are still buying from.

Therefore, today's games still have to sound good on the minimum spec platform. For example, a cool interactive music design that works great on the iPad 2 using let's say, three stereo streams, is useless on earlier phones with only a single music stream available. It's important that audio designs still do the game justice on the minimum spec platform.

Brian Schmidt: The style of game you'll do for a mobile is most often very different from a console or PC title, as Kenny alludes to. You don't need the big choir-orchestra so much as tasty simple bits to complement the game.

In addition to download size, for web-based games, sometimes the developer is extremely concerned with "time to play" -- that is, from the time the user clicks on the game icon, they want to start playing the game within seconds. A game that requires lengthy downloads won't hold the user's attention, and they'll click and go do something else rather than wait even 60 seconds for a download or install.

A phone or web game will have a far smaller team and you will probably be the only audio person, so if you're a composer, get used to doing sound effects -- and not hacky, crappy ones! SFX is probably more important than music in many of these games. The SFX for these gmaes are much more likely to be abstract -- or non-diegetic -- than on consoles, so get good at knowing how to inform the player with sound without annoying them.

[In the latest installment of "Tales from the GDC Vault", digital historian Jason Scott debuts free video of major keynotes introducing the Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, and Xbox (via Bill Gates) to the world at Game Developers Conference.]

I'd argue that there are few bigger moments in the game industry, and perhaps in almost any industry, than the introduction of a new console. It's certainly one of the most expensive undertakings these companies will endure, requiring years of design and fabrication and meticulous planning.

If you did it all right, and luck falls in with you, and the right software houses get behind you, then success will come fast and free -- you'll have to construct additional buildings just to hold all the money.

But if you misstep, fail to have the right "kind" of titles or the killer launch games waiting alongside your console, then financial ruin and misery await you -- wounded, your company may not recover for years.

In this most stressful of times that a CEO may encounter, comes the tradition of the keynote speech, the time when you will step on stage, welcome everyone, talk of freedom and power and ability and dreams, and then point to the console mockup or system that you are going to drop on the world by (hopefully) the millions.

Any missed cues, or onstage crash, and the rags will be buzzing about it the next day. One solid, amazing demo, and you'll be the toast of the forums and the hallways of GDC. Like I said... it's as intense as it could possibly get.

With that in mind, I've digitized from BetaSP tape, specially for GDC Vault, not one but three keynote speeches given at GDC over a decade ago, introducing (or re-introducing) a new hardware console to the world. We now know who came ahead, who fell behind, and what tricks and triumphs these machines had in store, but it's very enlightening to look back with this knowledge at the offerings and statements in these presentations.

Organizers are proud to highlight the winners of the IGF China-sponsored Shanghai and Beijing Game Jams, both of which invited attendees to test their game design skills in a two-day marathon of collaboration and creative experimentation.

Held last month, these two China-based events invited professionals, indie developers, and even hobbyists to form teams and create a working game prototype from scratch, using only their own tools and tech.

To add a twist to the traditional game jam formula, each event also had its own theme around which entrants had to build their games -- the Shanghai Game Jam's topic was "Resurrection," while the Beijing event's topic was "Utopia."

In addition, the events encouraged entrants to meet other developers and work with new team members, and GDC China - part of UBM TechWeb, as is this website - awarded Tutorials & Summits Passes to the outstanding teams.

The following are the winning entries from both the Shanghai and Beijing Game Jams:

Shanghai Game Jam Winners
Topic: "Resurrection"

1st prize: The End is Nigh

As a frustrated soul left behind in the Rapture, players must try to prevent their neighbors from ascending into heaven, either by dragging them down or simply shooting them with a gun.

2nd Prize: Bud

In this title, players control seeds that sprout and grow, bringing new life into a landscape torn apart by war, industry, and death.

GDC Online has announced that PopCap co-founder John Vechey will give a keynote at the upcoming October show in Austin, Texas, where he will discuss how the Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies developer is adapting its popular single-player games to social platforms.

The keynote, titled, "Playing Well With Others - How PopCap Creates Compelling Social Game Experiences," will provide GDC Online attendees with an inside look at how mobile and social games have influenced the design philosophy of the extremely successful casual game studio.

Vechey launched PopCap in 2000 with co-founders Brian Fiete and Jason Kapalka, and has been instrumental in driving nearly every aspect of the company's operations. As interim CEO of PopCap until 2003, Vechey oversaw all aspects of the company's Web presence while directing e-commerce, privacy/security and online games services.

Vechey's major contributions at PopCap include securing some of the company's largest partnerships with major Web portals and game publishers, helping to launch the immensely popular title Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook, which went from zero to 25 million users in its first twelve months, and establishing PopCap as a major player in the social games business.

Currently the VP of Internal Business Development, Vechey manages PopCap's strategic investments and acquisitions, and helps shape and guide the global business and product strategy.

The GDC Vault service has released several new free videos from the Game Developers Conference 2011, this time featuring rants from the industry's top social game developers, a panel on successful indie startups, and career lessons from industry vet Don Daglow.

These talks join recently-debuted free videos including GDC 2011's Game Design Challenge, indie sessions on Osmos and Super Meat Boy, GDC 2011's classic postmortem series, and a slew of other sessions from throughout the history of the Game Developers Conference.

The following video lectures are the newest highlights to be made available for free from GDC 2011:

- The first talk offered for free is the high-energy social game panel, "No Freaking Respect! Social Game Developers Rant Back." This session, co-hosted by Eric Zimmerman and Jason Della Rocca, features a handful of the most outspoken and influential social game developers out there, with each focusing on a topic of their choosing.

The talk includes developers such as Cow Clicker's Ian Bogost, Loot Drop's Brenda Brathwaite, and more as they cover pressing issues facing the occasionally stigmatized realm of social game development.

- The next session, dubbed "From AAA to Indie: Three Start-Up Stories," showcases three recent success stories from developers who jumped from big-budget, AAA development into the indie space.

Jake Kazdal of Skull of the Shogun developer Haunted Temple, Spry Fox's Daniel Cook (Triple Town), and AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! creator Ichiro Lambe all look back upon their careers in traditional development, and provide an inside look on how they transitioned into the indie space.

GDC Online has revealed a new batch of sessions for the upcoming October show, this week featuring a look at EA's social game Dragon Age Legends, a postmortem on Super Hero Squad Online, and a glimpse at Kabam's analytical approach to production.

Taking place Monday, October 10 through Thursday, October 13, 2011 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas, GDC Online continues as the leading worldwide event dedicated solely to discussing the development and business trends surrounding connected games -- including casual titles, MMOs, virtual worlds, and social networking games.

This year's Main Conference will include tracks on Business & Marketing, Customer Experience, Design, Production, and Programming, as well as a sponsored track on Monetization.

As seen in the event's Schedule Builder, the following lectures are highlights from this year's Main Conference:

- In the Business & Marketing track, Ethan Levy of Electronic Arts will host, "Dragon Age Legends' Road to 100k Likes," a talk outlining the successes and failures of the marketing strategy for the company's social game spinoff.

In this metrics-driven session, Levy will point to Dragon Age Legends' MMO-like beta program, its fully animated trailer, and more to explain why the title was "a game of firsts in the social gaming space."

- Over in the Production track, The Amazing Society co-founders Jay Minn and Jason Robar will reflect on their recently launched Marvel MMO in, "Marvel Super Hero Squad Online Postmortem- An MMO For the Whole Family in Under Two Years." In this lighthearted session, the pair will look back on their experience working with Marvel, developing in Unity, monetizing game content, and much more, offering an inside look at the production of their kid-friendly online game.

To help inspire submissions for the GDC 2012 call for papers, the event's advisory board members for the Business & Marketing track spoke out on the rising business trends in the industry, outlining what they hope to see discussed at the upcoming San Francisco-based show.

Seasoned industry professionals such as Gaikai's David Perry, independent developer Adam Saltsman, Zynga's Louis Castle, Gazillion's Dan Fiden, and Ngmoco's Alan Yu all discussed the most pertinent business strategies of the last few years, as part of their drive to inspire submission ideas for the GDC 2012 Main Conference.

These GDC advisory board members oversee the show's Business, Marketing & Management track, and ensure that each of its sessions remain relevant and hold up the high bar of quality that GDC attendees have come to expect.

The call for papers for GDC 2012 will close on September 6, with a list of business and marketing-specific topics available on the official website. In the following interview, the advisory board members discuss key business issues they'd like to see addressed at next March's show.

How do you all think downloadable and free-to-play titles have affected the business strategies for traditional, boxed retail games?

David Perry: At the start, there was a lot of resistance to free-to-play. I put a lot of energy into trying to be the first free-to-play console game and was met with enormous resistance. I even remember comments saying not to interview me anymore, as this entire concept is horrible. In reality, times have moved on, Zynga is worth billions of dollars, free-to-play is no longer just an Asian phenomenon, and publishers are open to all business models.

Looking around, it's as if the video game industry, including mobile, is driven by three things in this order: Convenience, low price (Free to try), and high quality -- if you have all three you have a slam dunk. The X factor is how easy you make it to share. Boxed retail games fail on two out of three key drivers -- convenience and low price -- therefore they are ticking time bombs.

Adam Saltsman: Free-to-play is a kind of a marketing coup. The name, I mean, not the actual concept. The main difference between "free for the first month" and "free for five minutes a day" is the latter is proven to make scads of money for social games.

Part of me is worried that box games are in the process of getting renamed and re-monetized the same way: "super deluxe special edition tin box with army helmet and real gun, only $250!" But the other part of me is really happy, because I know there will always be a free demo for the next big AAA game that I can download and check out, instead of having to take the big $60 (or $250!) gamble every time.

And there is a happy possible future where games are simply priced based on how you engage them. If you just want to play through the first chapter of a game and see what the controls and graphics are like, that will have one price (maybe free). If you want to pore over the whole game for 200 hours, then that can be a different price. This makes sense for people and for bandwidth I think, but there are a lot of opportunities for the system to be manipulated to work against the audience. This is going to be an interesting few years for any industry that used to sell chunks of data in a box.

Louis Castle: All digital entertainment is trending toward three things: sharable, free-to-sample, and pay for consumption. Boxed games are struggling with the same market forces that have been thrust upon the music industry and now film. There may be some long-term market for physical goods, but it is unlikely to be the primary market it is today.

How soon this industry will be forced to accept the change will depend on how long console makers will hold on to the current model. The market forces have little to no effect if you are one of the major franchises, but everyone else is already having to deal with the difficulties of getting players to pay when free options are readily available.