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We're happy to confirm that Double Fine founder Tim Schafer will once again take the stage during the 2015 Game Developers Conference to host the 15th annual Game Developers Choice Awards.
The same stage will also welcome back Capybara Games founder Nathan Vella as host of the Independent Games Festival awards, now in its 17th year of celebrating the work of independent game makers.
The ceremonies kick off at 6:30 PM on the evening of Wednesday, March 4th during GDC 2015 in San Francisco.
The 2015 Game Developers Conference starts on Monday, and as everyone prepares for the big show we'd like to take a moment to highlight some of the most interesting can't-miss Summit sessions at this year's conference.
These sessions will be 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.
The 2015 Game Developers Conference kicks off next week, and if you're planning to attend here are a few sponsored sessions from high-profile speakers you must not miss during your time at the show.
First, Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney will deliver a sponsored session on "The State of Unreal Engine" on Wednesday morning, where you can expect to hear his thoughts on the future of Unreal Engine 4 and what comes next.
Later that day, Sweeney and other senior Epic talent will be expounding on the contemporary state of game development and answering questions from attendees during an hour-long "Game Developers Town Hall" session sponsored by Epic Games. It's taking place at the end of Wednesday, March 4th, and it's sure to be a learning opportunity for game makers.
GDC 2015 kicks off next week, and advance online registration for the conference has closed as we buckle down and prepare for the show.
If you're interested in attending the show and missed your chance to register online, don't worry! You can still register onsite next week.
The GDC registration desks in the North Hall of San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center will open this Sunday, March 1st from 5-7 PM PT to afford conference attendees an opportunity to register early and claim their badges before the conference kicks off on Monday morning.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[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.
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.
[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.
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.
