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GDC 2013 organizers have revealed three new Visual Arts talks for its March conference, including performance capture insights from veteran director Remington Scott, a live character creation demo by Scott Campbell, and Ocean Quigley's overview of the dynamically constructed visuals of the new SimCity.
The Visual Arts Track is just one of seven tracks to be held Wednesday-Friday, March 27-29 during the Game Developers Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.
This particular track "strives to educate artists and technical artists about methods for producing game art and animations," focusing this year on producing "exceptional art while reducing costs."
In 'Performance Capture: Insights from the Edge,' industry pioneer Remington Scott will explain how to bring realistic, digital humans to life, as he does currently as freelance director for Sony Computer Entertainment of America, Activision, THQ and Electronic Arts. Scott's talk will combine his experience of over 25 years, during which he worked on Academy Award for Achievement in Visual Effects winners The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Spiderman 2.
Independent artist Scott Campbell, who served as Psychonauts and Brutal Legend's art director while working with Double Fine, will design a new character in front of his audience in 'Creating Amazing Characters.' Along with the live demo, he will show past works and techniques for creating memorable and distinctive characters.
Finally, Maxis' Ocean Quigley will give an overview of how SimCity's art works within aesthetic, technical, and UI constraints in 'Building SimCity: Art in the Service of Simulation.' Insights will include the motivations behind the game's aesthetics and the methods that Maxis developed to achieve them.

GDC 2013 organizers highlight three new talks for its Education Summit in the March conference, including a panel on commercial and educational collaboration, a "deathmatch" of professors arguing their curricula, and a lecture on tabletop RPGs used to teach game design.
The GDC Education Summit is just one of eight Summits to be held Monday-Tuesday, March 25-26 during the Game Developers Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.
The popular Summit is designed to "explore experimental and inventive educational approaches that established game curriculum builders can bring back to their faculty and classrooms."
As one of the newest lectures, Sam Roberts will share how to teach formal elements of game design using tabletop RPGs in 'Catacombs and Curriculum: Role-Playing Games for Teaching Design.' Roberts will bring his combined experience as assistant director of the Interactive Media Division at USC and co-organizer of the IndieCade festival of independent games for the talk.
In 'Beyond the Dialogue: Perspectives on Industry and Academia,' four panelists will discuss ways that those in commercial game development and academic video game education can benefit from more active cooperation.

[GDC 2013 organizers are highlighting special Valentine-themed talks taking place at March's conference, including Dragon Age's David Gaider on sexuality in games, a talk on NPC romance, and Frank Lantz on 'Strange Love'. Here's their message to you!]
It's Valentine's Day and even video game trade shows have a little love to share. To get you in the mood for the March event, here's a taste of the love potion that is GDC.
Our Design track is aflutter with love and lust. We've got talks from Dragon Age's David Gaider on sexuality in games, a talk on NPC romance, and Frank Lantz on 'Strange Love'.
In 'Sex in Video Games,' BioWare EA's Dragon Age series lead writer David Gaider will tackle how addressing or ignoring social issues such as sexism and sexuality in games can affect not only sales, but public perception about the company who makes them.
Frank Lantz, Parking Wars and Drop7 developer and NYU Game Center Chair, will explain game theory (the mathematical analysis of conflict and decision making) and how it can inspire and influence game design in 'Strange Love: Game Theory vs. Game Design.' The talk will especially appeal to those interested in human behavior or the intersection of math and art.
For those trying to find love, Schell Games designer Heidi McDonald will share research on how men and women approach NPC romance in a poster session entitled 'Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Ferelden.' Narrative designers can learn from her 500-person survey how to address "the romance motivations of several types of players at once."

On the last day of the early registration deadline, Game Developers Conference 2013 organizers have announced a special lecture from Konami's Hideo Kojima, who will publicly show his division's FOX Engine in detail for the first time, via demonstrations of the development process and workflow behind Metal Gear Solid Ground Zeroes.

Game Developers Conference 2013 organizers have revealed new Summit talks for its March conference, including a discussion on Giant Sparrow's acclaimed indie The Unfinished Swan, Jesse Schell's look into how different mediums are shaping storytelling, an FTL postmortem and a Riot QA spotlight.
The first two of these spotlighted talks are part Game Narrative and GDC Education Summits, just two of eight total Summits that will take place Monday, March 25 and Tuesday, March 26 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA during the first two days of GDC 2013.
In 'The Future of Storytelling: How Medium Shapes Story,' Jesse Schell, professor at CMU's Entertainment Technology Center and founder Schell Games (Puzzle Clubhouse), will offer attendees "useful tools for understanding what story structures work best on present-day gaming platforms, and on the many new ones that are right around the corner."
In 'The Unfinished Swan: From Student Prototype to Commercial Game,' Giant Sparrow's Ian Dallas will discuss what went right and wrong with the Game Developers Choice Awards nominated first-person painting game. Topics will include what the studio learned in school that was most useful and why it chose a publisher instead of staying independent.
In addition, organizers are reminding of two other exceptional talks scheduled for the GDC 2013 Summits. In the QA Summit, League of Legends developer Riot Games' Benjamin Seifert will discuss a three-prong approach to QA in 'It's Raining New Content: Successful Rapid Test Iterations.' Also, in the Independent Games Summit, Subset Games will deliver a postmortem on its IGF and Game Developers Choice Awards nominated game in 'Designing Without a Pitch - FTL Postmortem.'

2013 Game Developers Conference organizers are announcing the first of a series of new, interactive onsite events, 'Class of GDC: Photo Playset,' created in a renewed partnership with production group iam8bit.
In its own area on the Lower Lobby of the North Hall, iam8bit will offer GDC attendees from March 25-29 a free photo session with optional, "questionable fashion and laser backdrops" to personalize their photos with friends and colleagues.
As the official event description explains: "GDC is kinda like a high school reunion. Every year, the game industry gathers in San Francisco to hug old pals... and make some new ones.
It's the place to learn and share (and drink) the many fruits of our creative business, under one gigantic roof. So it only makes sense to immortalize the occasion - especially because everyone always needs a new Facebook profile pic.
Presenting the "CLASS OF GDC: Photo Playset," where attendees are welcomed into an elaborate snapshot experience, harkening back to those days of bad dos, questionable fashion and laser backdrops. But hold up - this isn't JUST some funny thing you did at a party once...
A hair & makeup artist will be on hand to help you achieve that perfect look, you'll get to sift through a random assortment of ugly sweaters and hideous dresses, and a well-educated photographer will earn back their student loans while you awkwardly smile."

Game Developers Conference organizers have announced new lectures for its 2013 Main Conference, including how Borderlands 2 added humor through gameplay, how World of Warcraft coded its network API, and how EVE Online became a multiplatform universe.
These lectures are part of the Programming, Production, and Design Tracks in GDC's Main Conference, to be held March 27-29 in San Francisco at the Moscone Center.
In a Design Track lecture, Gearbox Software lead writer Anthony Burch will share how his team added humor in game mechanics in the talk 'Designing Humor in Borderlands 2.' He will discuss "how a quest with no gameplay can actually be funnier than a quest with it, how every mechanic holds the potential for humor, and how even jokes need debugging."
For the Programming Track, Blizzard's Joe Rumsey will explore solutions to issues for 'Network Serialization and Routing in World of Warcraft.' He will share sample code to illustrate how they handle machine generated codes for serialization, dynamic protocol negotiation, and more.
Lastly, for the Production Track, CCP Games' senior technical producer Andie Nordgren will discuss connecting PlayStation 3 shooter DUST 514 to the existing EVE Online universe in 'Creating the EVE Universe: Technical and Cultural Strategies.'