Latest News

[Continuing his 'GDC 25' archival research ahead of the 25th Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this February/March, official GDC historian Jason Scott unearths and digitizes late '90s audio talks on the Chinese game market, adapting games, game engineering discipline and making casual games.]

There's quite a huge amount of historical Game Developers Conference audio and videotapes in my to-do pile, so it's been a case of knocking through them as fast as possible, to turn them from decaying analog recordings into longer-lifed digital ones. A few dozen are finished, with dozens more waiting.

When you have a historical archive of a bunch of presentations from such a fast-moving field as game development, it might seem to be a matter of dismissing these historical items as "out of date" and then waiting for the latest and greatest.

But there's something to be said for listening to well-assembled, clear sessions on aspects of game-making that still hold true. Here's a few issues that have been around for some time, and continue to be relevant.

In one notable audio talk we've digitized onto GDC Vault, William Dalton lays out a CGDC 1998 wake-up call that the development environment of games need to bring in the same qualities that software has had for years in other industries.

Entitled 'Bringing Engineering Discipline to Entertainment Development', and now available on GDC Vault, he describes what happens when these time-tested best practices are laid in front of the then-still-young computer game development culture. Listening to it, it might be interesting to compare to your own group's practices and see how many points you have already internalized, and how many have been cast aside.

Elsewhere, noted puzzle designer Scott Kim's 1997 CGDC talk now available on GDC Vault in audio, 'Games for the Rest of Us' has a really amazing delivery style. As he steps through the current state of the game-creation industry and the type of games that are appealing to a mass-market, he drops asides and wry observations that keep his audience engaged and chortling throughout.

The 2011 Game Developers Choice Awards, the peer-awarded highest honors in video game development, will honor Peter Molyneux, co-founder of Bullfrog Productions and founder of Lionhead Studios, with the Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the art and science of games.

Along the way, the organizers have also revealed the return of Tim Schafer, the LucasArts veteran and founder of Double Fine Productions (Brutal Legend), as host of the March 2nd ceremony during the 2011 Game Developers Conference, which is being streamed live online by GameSpot.com, this year's official GDCA media partner.

This news comes shortly following the announcement of this year's Choice Awards finalists, led by games including Limbo, Red Dead Redemption and Mass Effect 2.

As a passionate creator of video games for more than 25 years and counting, and one of the creators of the 'god game' genre, Peter Molyneux exemplifies the principles of the Lifetime Achievement Award.

The award recognizes "the career and achievements of a developer who has made an indelible impact on the craft of game development and games as a whole."

While at Bullfrog Productions, which he co-founded in Guildford, England in 1987, Molyneux helped to create a string of seminal, innovative 'Britsoft' titles, including beloved games such as Theme Park, Magic Carpet and Dungeon Keeper.

His time at Bullfrog is particularly known for classic 'god game' progenitor Populous, which Molyneux will also be talking about as part of a special to-be-announced GDC 2011 lecture series.

After leaving Bullfrog Productions in 1997, when it was owned by Electronic Arts, Molyneux went on to form Lionhead Studios. The developer created notable PC franchises including Black & White before devising the acclaimed, choice-laden Fable RPG franchise and being acquired by Microsoft in 2006.

The Lifetime Achievement recipient is chosen by the elite Game Developers Choice Awards Advisory Committee, which includes game industry notables such as Doug Lombardi (Valve), Mark Cerny (Cerny Games), Harvey Smith (Arkane), Raph Koster (Metaplace), Julien Merceron (Square Enix), John Vechey (PopCap), and Clint Hocking (LucasArts).

This year's Independent Games Summit, which will run from February 28 to March 1 alongside the 2011 Game Developers Conference at San Francisco's Moscone Center has just added a number of new lectures, including from IGF Grand Prize winner Andy Schatz (Monaco), Eliss/Faraway designer Steph Thirion and industry veteran Luke Schneider (Radiangames series).

Monaco's Schatz will be presenting a lecture called 'How to Win the IGF in 15 Weeks or Less', explaining how the acclaimed co-op heist game was "entered into the IGF after 6 weeks of work by only one person. It became a finalist in the Grand Prize and Excellence in Design after 11 weeks of work. And it won both after 15 weeks."

Along the way, one-man team Schatz "will show how design-by-brownian-motion can not only lead to a better finished product, but a faster schedule as well", as "Monaco's fanciest tech tricks and failed experiments will be revealed."

Elsewhere, Radiangames' Schneider will join Vblank Entertainment's Brian Provinciano, Copenhagen Game Productions' Dajana Dimovska, and Nonchalance's Jeff Hull in a talk titled "The Next Steps of Indie: Four Perspectives", which gives attendees "a glimpse into their unexpected paths in the past, and what we can expect from [them in] the future".

The four sequential 15 minute lectures will cover Radiangames' one-game-per-month strategy on Xbox Live Indie Games, Vblank's development of a compelling NES/GTA homage with Retro City Rampage, Copenhagen Game Collective's approach on "making the monitor the mediator" with IGF finalist B.U.T.T.O.N., and Nonchalance's Jejune Institute ARG, "the best real-world game you've never played, happening right underneath our noses".

Organizers of the 2011 Game Developers Conference have debuted a rare Western talk from Deadly Premonition creator Swery, plus new lectures on Rock Band 3's Pro Guitar mode and Pixar's Toy Story 3.

As the overall session list for the February/March event further expands, organizers are revealing brand new Main Conference session announcements just debuting on the website.

These talks are part of GDC 2011's Main Conference, which takes place at the Moscone Center from Wednesday March 2nd to Friday March 4th, 2011 during the pre-eminent, San Francisco-based event, featuring discipline-specific Tracks dedicated to programming, design, art, audio, business and management, and production.

Some of the top new lectures added to the GDC roster include the following:

- In his first-ever major Western talk, Access Games' Hidetaka 'Swery' Suehiro will present a talk on his work making cult console title Deadly Premonition, explaining "his unique method of architecting games" with reference to the polarizing action game.

The in-depth talk, which will be simultaneously translated from
Swery's native Japanese, "touches upon the 7 points to check [to see] if
your game's storyline might already be dead", also focusing on the
detail and interactivity which made Deadly Premonition a
fascinating, self-avowedly flawed title.

- Another notable just debuted talk is 'Prototype through
Production: Pro Guitar in Rock Band 3', presented by
Harmonix's Jason Booth and Sylvain Dubrofsky, in which the duo present:
"How do you go from an insane idea like 'Lets teach non-guitarists how
to play a real guitar in Rock Band 3?' to a genre changing
product in 20 months?'

Organizers have revealed that Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo, will keynote the 2011 Game Developers Conference, held this March in San Francisco.

Coinciding with the 25th iteration of GDC, the world's largest professionals only video game event for learning, networking, and inspiration, Nintendo's Iwata will present a major keynote around this milestone entitled "Video Games Turn 25: A Historical Perspective and Vision for the Future."

As a leading player during the last 25 years of the modern video gaming era, Nintendo has a unique perspective on what makes gamers grin, what defines the term 'gamer' and what is essential to ensuring industry growth. In this keynote address, Mr. Iwata will talk not only about how video gaming has evolved, but also his views on where we go from here.

A longtime friend of the GDC, Mr. Iwata first appeared on the keynote stage of the Game Developers Conference in 2005, where he gave developers the first information about the technology being used for the console then codenamed "Revolution" -- which has since become known as the Wii system; in 2006 where he spoke about "disrupting development," and introduced the Western development community to philosophies on engaging new players; and in 2009, where he debuted a new game in The Legend of Zelda franchise and a host of other notable insights.

"We are honored and pleased to welcome Mr. Iwata back to the keynote stage for our 25th conference," said Meggan Scavio, GDC director. "Nintendo continues to innovate and captivate developers and gamers alike, and we're looking forward to their unique insights into both the history and future of the game business."

The Independent Games Festival has announced the eight Student Showcase winners for the thirteenth annual presentation of its prestigious awards, celebrating the brightest and most innovative creations to come out of universities and games programs from around the world in the past year.

This year's showcase of top student talent include slapstick physical comedy adventure Octodad, from DePaul University's Team DGE2, University of Montreal student Richard E. Flanagan's boldly styled Myst-like adventure Fract, and Tiny and Big, an ambitious, comic-book styled 3D action platformer from Germany's School of Arts and Design Kassel.

In total, this year's Student Competition took in more than 280 game entries across all platforms -- PC, console and mobile -- from a wide diversity of the world's most prestigious universities and games programs, a 47% increase from entrants in the 2010 Festival, making the Student IGF one of the world's largest showcases of student talent.

All of the Student Showcase winners announced today will be playable on the Expo show floor at the historic 25th Game Developers Conference, to be held in San Francisco starting February 28th, 2011. Each team will receive a $500 prize for being selected into the Showcase, and will are finalists for an additional $2,500 prize for Best Student Game, revealed during the Independent Games Festival Awards on March 2nd.

In conjunction with this announcement, IGF organizers are also revealing that this year's Independent Games Festival Awards at GDC will be hosted by Anthony Carboni. Carboni is host and producer of Bytejacker, the acclaimed indie and downloadable game video show and website, and one of the most enthusiastic and devoted followers of the independent game scene.

The full list of Student Showcase winners for the 2011 Independent Games Festival, along with 'honorable mentions' to those top-quality games that didn't quite make it to finalist status, are as follows:

[Continuing his 'GDC 25' archival research ahead of the 25th Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this February/March, official GDC historian Jason Scott goes back to CGDC 1996 for a classic keynote speech on id's Quake from Mike Abrash.]
The videos of Game Developers Conference and CGDC speeches in the boxes mailed to me from headquarters go back to 1996, with a few in 1997, more in 1998, and then a lot more after the turn of the century.
The later ones are on BetaSP and other high-end format tapes, while the pre-2000 recordings tend to be on VHS (or the previously revealed audio tapes).
There's something about those VHS tapes that give them a sense of authority, that we're looking in on a window of a time lost, even though it's barely a decade ago.
The videos are especially interesting considering the huge leaps in computing power since then, where the people in the video talk about boundaries and pushing limits that barely register on our modern radar.
But if you want someone talking about pushing boundaries in the most intense fashion, then you can't do much better than a CGDC 1996 keynote talk from Michael Abrash, formerly of id Software.
Here's some screengrabs from the VHS that we retrieved from the GDC archives: