GDC Europe has revealed a new batch of lectures for the upcoming August show, featuring industry legend Mark Cerny on the future of the industry, Age of Empires and Titan Quest veteran Brian Sullivan on level design, and Battlestar Galactica Online developer Bigpoint on handling large IP.
Taking place Monday through Wednesday, August 15-17, 2011 at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost, alongside the major gamescom trade show, GDC Europe will again provide the essential pan-European perspective of game development and business trends.
Some of the new highlights from the Main Conference, which features tracks on Business & Marketing, Game Design, Production, Programming and Visual Arts, include the following:
- Industry veteran Mark Cerny, whose career spans titles such as Marble Madness, Crash Bandicoot, and Resistance, will host a high-profile talk in the show's Design track titled, "The Long View," which will examine the last forty years of video game history, as well as provide a look into the future.
Cerny notes that "2009 and 2010 have now shown some erosion in console video game sales," and his talk will discuss what this trend could mean for the industry, and why developers might have to adapt to considerable changes in their creative process.
- In a retrospective Design track lecture, "Level Design: Lessons Learned from Age of Empires and Titan Quest," Northeastern University instructor Brian Sullivan will provide attendees with a look back at lessons learned from two popular isometric PC titles he was a part of.
Sullivan, who worked with Ensemble on the Age of Empires series and founded Titan Quest developer Iron Lore Entertainment, will go over the level design processes for these games, offering developers "insight into how to design their levels with respect to gameplay, play style, topic, story, quests, pacing, performance, tech, art, budget, schedule, and fun."
- Elsewhere, in the show's Business & Marketing track, Philip Reisberger, chief games officer at German online game developer Bigpoint, will host, "Hollywood IPs - Chance and Opportunity for Browser Games," a talk that will go over the development of the studio's own Battlestar Galactica Online.
Drawing examples from the game, Reisberger will outline the challenges of translating a television IP into an online video game, the viral strategy that helped support the project, as well as how to design a game to appeal to international audiences.
In addition to these and other lectures found in the Main Conference, GDC Europe has added notable Summits on Social Games, Smartphone & Tablet Games, Independent Games and Community Management to the existing line-up this year.
Other recent GDC Europe announcements include new talks within the show's numerous Summits, featuring thatgamecompany and Digital Chocolate, as well as main conference talks from Jonathan Blow, Quantic Dream, and Gameforge. GDC Europe has also released several interviews with some of the show's notable speakers, such as Ernest Adams, Zynga's Lou Castle, CCP's David Press, and Blue Byte's Teut Weidemann.
GDC Europe organizers would also like to remind potential attendees that Early Registration pricing for the show will end on Wednesday, July 20th, with reduced-price registration for the event only available until that date.
For more information on GDC Europe as the event takes shape, please visit the official GDC Europe website, or subscribe to updates from the new GDC Europe-specific news page in RSS form, official Twitter page, or official Facebook page. GDC Europe is owned and operated by UBM TechWeb.
