Conference sessions for Lyon GDC are added frequently
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Programming/Coding
Game Design/Scenarios
Arts/Animation/ Story Boards
Audio/Music
Production/Project Management
Business/Management
Programming / Coding
Lecture
Behavior Trees for Next-Gen Game AI
Speaker: Alex J. Champandard, Consultant & Developer, AiGameDev.com
Brief Introduction
Behavior trees are an increasingly popular way to implement the AI of next-gen games, like in Halo 3 or Spore. This talk introduces behavior trees in depth, comparing them to traditional approaches such as finite state machines and scripts, and showing how they can be a much more intuitive and powerful solution. Specific techniques to make the behavior trees easy to edit, configure, and assemble together into large scalable AI decision making and control systems.
Takeaway
Attendees will learn everything about building behavior trees in practice, including tricks for creating a manageable design and a scalable implementation, specifically targeted towards creating complex AI logic.
Intended Attendee
This talk targets AI programmers and technically oriented designers who are interested in implementing complex logic in a scalable and manageable way. Attendees should have some experience with developing AI systems, including finite state machines and scripting languages.
Lecture
Bridging the gap. NAT traversal and peer communications
Speaker: Mark Thompson, AnalogX
Brief Introduction
Communications between clients via the Internet is now critical to games whether they are running on the PC or console, whether it's an MMO or FPS. In many cases this is simply used for for syncronizing game state or chat, but it can also easily be used for transfer of data and other applications. This talk covers the common issues in related to peer to peer communications and firewall traversal, as well as many of the common (and not so common) solutions. Real world protocols will be discussed such as BitTorrent, STUN, SIP, with practical examples of how they can be utilized in a game environment.
Takeaway
Attendees will learn the advantages and shortcoming of several techniques of firewall/NAT traversal and peer communications, including a practical implementation.
Intended Audience
Programmers or architects currently working on games which require communication between clients over the Internet.
Prerequisites:
C/C++ programming language;
A working knowledge of TCP/IP;
A working understanding of generic socket programming (any platform);
A laptop with compiler (if participating with in-class development.
Lecture
COLLADA - An intermediate format for game developers
Speaker: Remi Arnaud, Sr. Graphics Architect, Intel & Khronos
Brief Introduction
Thousands of 3D content developers are taking advantage of COLLADA already, saving time and money. This presentation is an overview of COLLADA, and a survey of the tools available, followed by a Q&A.
Takeaway
Attendees will discover how they take advantage of COLLADA in their content pipeline.
Intended audience
This presentation is for all audience, artist and programmers, that want to discover COLLADA, or want to learn more about this technology and all the possible usages
Lecture
Developing technology for EyeToy
Speaker: Mark Lintott, Head of Technology Eye Toy, SCEE
Brief description
We shall start with a review of the production history of the EyeToy Franchise from EyeToy Play up to present day. We will then present the structure of the EyeToy group. We will discuss the motivation for developing a re-useable technology engine and for the most part of the talk we will be reviewing the processes that we have put in place to make this all work. We will spend a short time sharing our experiences of outsourcing and following this we shall talk briefly of our experiences migrating to and developing a title for Playstation 3. Finally there will be a demo presentation of the Playstation Eye and we’ll wrap up with what the EyeToy group will be looking at in the future.
Takeaway
An overview of the EyeToy core framework; Issues developing for Playstation 3, sucesses developing for Playstation 3; Automation and testing; Deferred rendering; SPU usage; Stream Processor.
Intended audience
The intended audience would be programmers and technical artists...
Lecture
Porting issues and solutions on Runaway 2
Speaker: Nicolas Hamel , Console Lead Programmer, Cyanide
Brief description
Based on the port of “Runaway 2: The Dream of the turtle”, Nicolas HameI will show how the Cyanide team have been able to port the full game to the small Nintendo DS. The original PC-game fit on a DVD9 and had around 6 gigs of data while the DS card is 128Mbytes. The lecture will also go through the different memory and code optimisation the programming team at Cyanide have been through to reduce the amount of memory used by the game.
Takeaway
Various methods to ensure a good and sharp game port.
Intended audience
Developers and game porting company.
Lecture
Creating Great Games for the Nintendo Wii and Its Unique Controller
Speakers: Philip Oliver,CEO & Co-Founder, Andrew Oliver, Chief Technical Officer, Blitz Games
Brief description
Creating great games is never easy, especially when the console offers something that no one has seen before! This session offers insights from Blitz Games, the developers of Wii launch title SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab and three subsequent Wii games, into how to make the most of the unique Wiimote. As SpongeBob SquarePants: Creature from the Krusty Krab featured over 10 individual control systems, including flying, driving and platforming, each system had to be approached with a clear idea of how to innovatively use the controller, whilst ensuring that the target audience got the most out of the game. Questions that needed to be answered were: How do we approach traditional platforming levels with this control system? How do we convey and explain the unique controller uses to the user in game? How do we achieve consistency of use over the whole game at the same time as supporting the many varied features? Prototyping controls and ideas on the Wii platform was surprisingly easy and this was a refreshing change. This enabled us to try out some really imaginative uses for the controller even with a short time scale. Even though the ideas are fairly simple to prototype, getting the feel of each control system just right was a challenge in itself. Detecting the correct motion of the controller had to be very specific and tested thoroughly as different people held the controllers in sometimes very different ways. The problem of how to convey the instructions for the controller types within the game had to be addressed. As we all know, nobody reads the manual, especially at the target age range. A series of images, text prompts and even animated movies were experimented with, all with different results. Testing and interpreting these methods were key to getting a successful title. The brand of SpongeBob SquarePants entails wacky and surreal humour as a core feature, so it was also possible to capitalise on this by using the varying game scenarios for experimental and unusual control systems for the many different game modes. While approaching the controller in this way, it was important not to just create controller ideas for the sake of it. The target audience needed to find the game as accessible and enjoyable as any other title.
This lecture also addresses the question; is it possible to create an innovative launch title with a large license, while keeping the target audience in mind?"
Takeaway
A greater understanding of the gameplay benefits and opportunities created by the Wiimote.
Intended audience
Developers & prospective developers of Nintendo Wii Games.
Panel
What's Next for Game AI: Challenges and Opportunities
Speakers: Jurie Horneman , Producer, 10tacle Studios Vienna,
Alex J. Champandard, Consultant & Developer, AiGameDev.com
Axel Buendia, CEO SpriOps, Stéphane Bura, Creative Director, 10tacle
Brief description
A panel of experts on AI in games will discuss the design and programming of artificial intelligence for next-gen platforms:
-
Which AI techniques are needed to meet the expectations of today's players?
- What effect do complex environments and physics simulations have on AI development?
- Is real-time planning going to replace the finite state machine?
- What are current solutions for allowing level scripters to make optimal use of AI-controlled characters?
- What are the latest developments in non-opponent AI?
- How are people dealing with the uncanny valley from the AI side?
Takeaway
Attendees will hear a broad range of opinions on the challenges of next-gen AI development and develop an understanding of the many opportunities ahead.
Intended audience
This talk is aimed at programmers and designers who develop or use artificial intelligence in next-gen games.
Research session
Single scattering effects for computer games
Speaker: Venceslas Biri , Director of engineering school IMAC, Professor assistant in computer graphics and virtual reality, Gaspard Monge Institut
Brief description
This talk addresses the rendering of single scattering effects such as glows and shafts of light, along with volumetric shadows induced by shadow casters in the participating media in real-time. Our method is easy to integrate in a video game graphics engine using the shadow volume technique since it requires only a little additional texture memory and is implemented with simple shaders. Realistic images can be produced in real-time for usual graphic scenes and at a high level framerate for complex scenes, allowing changes in the properties of participating medium, animations of objects and even light sources movements.
Takeaway
Listeners will discover a real time algorithm able to render single scattering effects and volumetric shadows that, compared to other technics, is easily integrated in a classical graphic engine.
Intended audience
The talk concerns the R&D staff of video games industry but also researcher in computer graphics which should have a basic level in computer graphics and graphic engine to understand the talk.
Research session
Texturing Mesh Models
Speaker: Bruno Levy , PhD Researcher, INRIA
Brief description
Texture plays a fundamental role in the visual experience created by a video game. Texturing a mesh requires both to paint the texture and to define the way it is applied onto the model. The latter means attaching a couple of (s,t) texture coordinates to each vertex of the mesh. This session explains how to implement some recently-discovered algorithms that automatically generate
those coordinates. Live demos of the algorithms will be also shown.
Takeaway
Attendees will be able to seemlessly integrate automatic unwrapping into their
own toolboxes, they will understand how to implement two simple techniques
(harmonic maps and LSCM), and will acquire the background to understand
more complex ones (Blender's ABF unwrapper)
Intended audience
Tool developers interested in texture mapping, the audience should be
familiar with software development, OpenGL or Direct X, and mesh representations.
Research session
Controlling the gaze of animated conversational agents during face to face interaction
Speaker: Gerard Bailly , Senior Research Director, CNRS
Brief description
We describe a set of works performed at GIPSA-lab aiming at giving context-aware gaze skills to virtual talking heads notably sensitivity to the environment of the interaction and particularly to human interlocutors. We present the statistical models built for animating our talking heads and deformable organs (tongue, lips, hands) using video-based motion capture and 3D medical imaging techniques. Data has been collected for different speakers and languages. We then present essential components of a model of visual attention we have developed, implemented that contribute drastically to the sense of presence of our talking agents. They are able react to events occurring in the virtual and real environment and maintain mutual attention with human partners. This model uses gaze data captured by non invasive eye trackers.
Takeaway
New interaction devices and systems. Statistical models of facial control, shape and appearance. Impact of gaze on attention and decision.
Intended audience
Creators of interactive games. Developers of avatars and facial animation components.
Research session
Automatic behaviour synchronisation, from parallel state machines to task modelling
Speaker: Fabrice Lamarche , Assistant Professor, Rennes 1 University
Brief description
This talk will focus on reactive behaviour modelling and the connection with virtual human animation. We will present the HPTS++ model (Hierarchical and Parallel Transition System++) and some extensions relative to task modelling. When using parallel state machines to describe the behaviour of autonomous virtual humans, the user frequently faces hard problems related to synchronisation and parallelism. The HPTS++ model addresses parallel and concurrent behaviour synchronisation and adaptation issues by providing a real time scheduling algorithm ensuring the consistency of the emergent behaviour. We will deeply present the model and will show how it can be coupled with task modelling models in order to provide a high level formalism taking advantage of synchronisation mechanisms provided by HPTS++.
Takeaway
Attendees will get an overview of the HPTS++ model, its scheduling algorithm and its good properties in term of behaviour modelling. Moreover, we will show how the description though state machines can be coupled with high level task modelling.
Intended audience
This talk is aimed at programmers and designers who are concerned with modelling the behaviour of autonomous virtual humans / entities.
Research session
Playing to train your video game avatar
Speaker: Pierre Bessière , Senior Researcher, CNRS
Brief description
The goal of this talk is to demonstrate how, by using the Bayesian inverse programming technique, a player of a video game can teach an avatar how to play. However, we first show how Bayesian programming is also very useful in simplifying the programming burden of a video game development team. We first present a simple introduction to Bayesian probabilistic techniques used in numerous industrial and research fields to reason and decide when only incomplete and uncertain information is available. We then explain how these techniques may be use by a game designer to program a bot behavior without writing a single line of code. We finally demonstrate, using Unreal Tournament, how by playing as usual a player can teach his avatar how to play autonomously by itself.
Takeaway
The main lesson of the presentation will be the interests and huge potentiality of Bayesian probabilistic techniques to improve the artificial intelligence part of vide games.
Intended audience
Game designers and developers interested in new artificial intelligence probabilistic techniques.
Research session
STRADA: Reinforcement Learning-Based Approach for Building Strategic Game AI
Speaker: Charles Madeira , Postdoctoral Researcher, Computer Science, Paris, LIP6
Brief description
Reinforcement learning (RL) is an exciting alternative to the typical script-based approach used in the game industry. It is able to automatically build more realistic strategic behaviour, to propose more valuable user experience and to lower development costs. In order to explore this alternative, a novel RL-based approach for modern strategy games, called STRADA, is proposed. STRADA revolves around the combination of the ideas of complexity reduction and learning acceleration. Usefulness of the resulting system is demonstrated on the task of building strategies for Battleground, a commercial wargame that simulates Napoleonic battles.
Takeaway
Attendees will learn about automatically designing behaviour for modern strategy game NPCs by using RL.
Intended audience
This talk targets AI developers who are interested in designing innovative and adaptive strategic game AI.
Research session
Sofa: a free open source multiphysics engine
Speaker: Francois Faure , Assistant Professor at LJK , INRIA, University of Grenoble I.
Brief description
Sofa is a new open source framework for mechanical simulation. It is based on a scene graph data structure enriched with physical models and abstract algorithms. It allows rapid prototyping by combining available components.
Each body can be composed of different, synchronized models for internal dynamics, collision surfaces and rendering. Sofa can simulate deformable and rigid bodies, and it includes various collision detection algorithms and differential equation solvers. Stiff contact forces are efficiently handled, even between different kinds of bodies, e.g. rigid and deformable. The LGPL license of Sofa allows its free use in commercial applications.
Intended audience
Game developers looking for a free alternative to commercial physics engines.
Research session
Audio content authoring for games on mobile
Speaker: Jacques Lemordant , PhD, member of WAM Project, INRIA
Brief description
A usual approach to game development takes into account the visual content with graphic animated objects, the audio content with 3D audio sources and sound effects, and the software development linking the audio and graphical objects with game events and rules. Letting the audio designers produce animated audio sources and sound effects and giving them tools to construct these animations is one of the key the motivations for designing formats for interactive audio. Interactive XMF, presented at the last GDC in Austin, is one of these formats. The new audio APIs for embedded systems, OpenSL/ES or JSR135/JSR 234 Advanced Multimedia Supplements, offer the opportunity to build above them an XML format for interactive audio, together with its associated tools like a sound designer and a sound manager.
Intended audience
Audio designers or game developers willing to maintain direct control over the composition and presentation of an interactive game sountrack.
Takeaways
The mobile platform fragmentation problem can be partly soved through the use of a higher level format for interactive audio.
Research session
Accurate shadows by depth complexity sampling
Speaker: Vincent Forest , PhD, IRIT, University of Toulouse
Brief description
Most real-time and off-line applications generate soft shadows by convolving hard shadows or using assumptions only correct in specific cases. Furthermore, most of them are based on the shadow-maps and thus they are subject to the artefacts introduced by the discrete, surjective representation of the scene. In this presentation, we take advantage of latest GPUs and the robustness of shadow-volumes to efficiently compute accurate shadows with a controllable, quality-dependant frame-rate. The proposed algorithm solves the direct illumination problem from area light sources and naturally handles animated textured light (fire, TV screen etc.) as well as semi-opaque occluders (window glasses).
Intended audience
This session targets programmers of photo realistic renderers or whose interested in advanced real-time rendering techniques.
Takeaways
This session exposes the limitations of an image based framework in accurate soft shadows generation and introduces a new object based algorithm well suited to accurately solve the direct illumination problem. Implementation constraints for real-time rendering using object based shadow framework will also be presented.
Research session
Game AI. Perspective from a Research Lab.
Speaker: Vincent Corruble , PhD, LIP6, Paris 6
Brief description
This talk outlines some projects carried out at LIP6 (most of them within collaborations with industry and other labs) that cover but also exceed the traditional academic approach of game AI, usually focused on the design of stronger automated opponents. I will introduce a project on the design of strategic AI by machine learning (this will be presented in detail in Charles Madeira’s talk), present briefly our contribution to the DEEP project that deals with the modeling of NPC’s emotions and personality in adventure games, and describe work on automated Game Balancing. I will draw on these examples to reflect on current directions for Game AI research and how it interacts with current and future needs of the industry.
Intended audience
This talk targets AI developers who are interested in hearing about current directions for game AI research. Attendees would benefit from some previous experience with developing AI systems.
Takeaways
Attendees will learn about new developments from AI research that have direct implication for Game AI design. They will also gain some insights about possible future contributions of AI research to the game industry.
Research session
Dialogs based on emotions, experience and personality
Speaker: Viviane Gal , CEDRIC, Paris
Brief description
DEEP is a research project between two academics (CEDRIC/CNAM, Lip6 Unievrsity of Paris 6) and two game companies (Quantic Dreams, Spirops). The goal of DEEP is the generation of dialogs between the player and non playable characters (NPC). We begin by a description of the research principles and the architecture of the DEEP engine. We develop our work related to narrative aspects and the player history and experience modelling. We then present the LIP6 emotional model for synthetic characters with personality. These models are integrated into Quantic Dream engine with Spir.Ops’ AI middleware. We conclude with a demonstration of DEEP engine pertinent aspects
Intended audience
The presentation concerns game designers, scientists interested in the creation of contents for the video games, and AI programmers.
Takeaways
Through the RIAM DEEP project description, labelled by Cap Digital, the session presents an original management engine design process and a method combining the principles of a scripted approach with intelligent agents management.
Research session
Efficient Interleaved Sampling with Modern Graphics Hardware and Applications
Speaker: Benjamin Segovia , Université Lyon&Etranges Libellules
Brief description
This presentation proposes efficient techniques to perform interleaved sampling with modern GPUs. The idea is simply to speed up any rendering application requiring an important use of sampling strategies by computing uncorrelated samples for nearby pixels inside a n x m rectangle. The goal is to considerably decrease the required fillrate while maintaining a quality close to the one obtained with a brute force approach. To illustrate the approach, two applications are presented: the first one consists in speeding up a classical off-line global illumination algorithm to ensure real time rendering with current GPUs. The second one computes approximate soft shadows in real time. The implementations of the proposed algorithms are finally straightforward and they can be easily integrated in any existing real-time rendering system already using deferred shading.
Intended audience
This session targets any programmer who may be interested by advanced real-time rendering techniques.
Research session
Software for Multi-Processor System on Chip: moving from generic RISC platforms to CELL
Speaker: Paul Amblard , Joseph Fourier University, Grenoble, TIMA Laboratory
Brief description
This paper presents multiple implementations of Mpeg-video decoder on a CELL processor, using different software partitioning and mapping schemes.
The approach starts from a generic representation of an Mpeg-video decoder, from which multiple customized Mpeg-video decoders can be obtained (i.e. different number of tasks, video resolutions, frame-rates, etc). Each of these configurations of \mpeg~video decoders were mapped and executed on a CELL processor. During previous works, this was already realized using multi-Risc based Multi Processor System on Chip (MPSoC) platforms. However, by changing to CELL processors, new challenges and problems appeared.
These aspects must be considered and solved, in order to obtain a running Mpeg-video decoder on CELL. This paper presents these challenges and problems, along with some solutions. Finally, some performance results are presented for different Mpeg-video decoders implementations on a CELL processor.
Intended audience
The experiments presented in the paper can interest developers on Cell.
Research session
Grimage: Markerless 3D Interactions
Speaker: Bruno Raffin , INRIA Rhône-Alpes, Grenoble
Brief description
This talk presents how we associated computer vision, physical simulation and parallelism to move one step towards the next generation of interactive applications. The Grimage platform, located at INRIA Grenoble - Rhône-Alpes, glues multi-camera 3D modeling, physical simulation and parallel execution for a new immersive experience. Grimage is a unique platform built from commodity components. It was demonstrated at the 2007 Siggraph Emerging Technologies Show. The public was enthusiastic and several medias covered the event. We will use this demo as a base to discuss technical issues, challenges and future trends in building highly interactive virtual worlds.
Intended audience
This talk is open to anyone interesting in exploring new interaction techniques.
Research session
Communicational and emotional virtual human
Speaker: Catherine Pelachaud , University of Paris 8
Brief description
These past years have seen the emergence of autonomous conversational virtual humans, able to communicate with other virtual humans or users. The virtual human uses verbal and nonverbal means: gaze, facial expression, gesture, etc…, participate to the communicative process. Conversational virtual human is based on human communication theoretical models.
Our presentation will offer an overview of these models taken from the animation, cognitive science, artificial intelligence and psychology. It will describe the techniques to endow virtual humans with communicative and emotional capabilities.
Intended audience
Anybody interested in the creation of an autonomous communicative emotional virtual human, in particular in the modelling and representation of nonverbal and emotional behaviours.
Takeaway
At the end of the talk, the audience would have an overview of the main emotional models and communicative functions of nonverbal behaviours.
Research session
Play All: the collaborative revolution
Speakers: Arnaud Carré, Darkworks Hubert Sarret, Kylotonn
Brief description
There is no similar project to Play All in the video game industry. Five development studios from île- de-France decided to share their technologies and skills but also to gather their technical teams to develop altogether a production pipeline for PC and next-gen and handled consoles. An R&D center based in Paris has been specially set up to host the project and the forty engineer team, which will work on the project for two years.Started in September 2007, the release of the PLAY ALL middleware toolchain is expected late 2009 with an opening to the developer community end of 2008. Because they believe the next revolution of the industry is the cooperation and help between studios, these five studios decided to put aside the fear of sharing technology and skills and teams of programmers.Since its conception in 2006, the five technical directors: Arnaud Carré (Darkworks), Hubert Sarret (Kylotonn), Yann Planqueel (White Birds), David-Vesa Cohen (Wizarbox) and Bertrand Carré (Load Inc) have imagined, set and implement the cooperative working methods of tomorrow. This original collaborative R&D project has been set up by 5 studios: Darkworks, Kylotonn, White Birds, Wizarbox et Load Inc. It also federates 4 other middleware companies: Bionatics, AtOnce, Spirops, Voxler, as well as 4 out of the top French academic Laboratories of research: LIRIS, CNAM, LIP6 and ENST.
Intended audience
Studio managers, technical directors, lead programmers, any development team which is interested in technical co-development and technology sharing between studios.
Takeaway
After a short presentation of the project PLAY ALL, we will introduce the solutions we set up to manage the technical collaboration between the studios and the development of a production pipeline for several teams.
Research session
Expressing rendering for interactive applications
Speakers: Xavier Granier , INRIA
Brief description
Gathering the recent results from the ARTIS and IPARLA research teams (INRIA), this presentation presents new techniques in expressive rendering (or Non-Photorealistic Rendering) adapted to video games. These new methods enrich previous approaches with intuitive color variations, novel line drawing techniques, and substrate/media imitation. Most of them work in real-time and can easily been implemented in current graphics architectures to create previously unseen rendering styles.
Intended audience
The intended audience (game designers, animation creators and more generally graphics designers) have to have some basic knowledges on rendering.
Research session
Standards and adaptation for multi-X games in inhomogeneous environments
Speakers: Françoise Preteux , ARTEMIS, Marius Preda, ARTEMIS GET/INT
Brief description
3D graphics content scalability, diversity of terminals, network heterogeneity, real time interactivity and interoperability are the nowadays main technological challenges for multi-X games. The novel solutions we developed combine powerful compression tools based on the open MPEG-4 standard and intelligent strategies for terminal and network driven adaptation, thus reaching the trade-off among complexity, QoS and network load. The multi-X game designed in the OLGA European project demonstrates the successful implementation of (1) automatic tuning of the stream size and (2) real time optimization of data representation according to rendering and decoding terminal capabilities.
Intended audience
Middleware editors, 3D technology developers and providers, companies for mobile and on-line gaming.
Takeaway
A portfolio of advanced technologies for (1) providing and consuming 3D graphics assets on thin clients in mobile environment and (2) enabling terminal and network independence, seamless scalability, interoperability and large-scale deployment based on open standards.
Sponsored session
Multi-Threading for Games and the rise of virtual worlds
Speakers: Leigh Davies , Senior Application Engineer, Dr. Rémi Arnaud, Senior Application Engineer, Intel
Brief description
3D games and virtual worlds continue to push the boundaries of what is possible on home PC's. Effectively utilizing multi-core hardware is vital to for filing the challenges of bringing these worlds to life. This session will briefly cover the Intel roadmap and look at how current game developers are rising to the challenge of writing game engines designed to scale beyond 2 cores to fully leverage the power of new multi-core PC platforms.
Intended audience
Aimed at PC developers interested in how Intel’s multi-core roadmap is driving more immersive 3D worlds.
Game Design / Scenarios :
Lecture
Is it fun yet?
Speaker: Janus Anderson, Creative Director & Dallas Snell, Director of Business Development,NCSOFT
Brief Introduction
At each stage of an online game’s development, designers have asked themselves the age-old question: “Is it fun yet?” Feedback on this question comes from many different sources: from the development team, QA, focus groups, and online beta testers. All of these are important sources of feedback, but the one that is the least understood and utilized involves player metrics from online beta testers. This session focuses on using player metrics to analyze the “fun factor” in a game, and provides concrete examples of how metrics can be useful in identifying key areas in which the game can be improved.
Takeaway
This session will teach basic techniques for gathering and analyzing player metrics, as well as demonstrate a wide variety of specific metric types that are useful when making executive decisions and game balance adjustments for online games.
Intended Audience
This session is for developers or executives interested in learning how to use player metrics to analyze and improve game balance to faciliate the transformation of the "fun factor" into the "pay factor."
Lecture
Bridging the Next Generation Gap between Storytelling and Gameplay
Speaker: Matt Costello, Writer & Game Designer, Polar Productions
Brief introduction
This will be an highly interactive presentation that explores, from one long-time practitioner’s point of view, essential ways that ‘story’ is built. It exposes key story elements we all should be looking at when working in games and then – through real exercises – how gameplay changes significantly when ‘story’ is introduced. The goal: that story and interactivity are best ‘built’ together. Through a variety of exercises, the audience experiences how ‘story’ can change the nature, importance, and meaning of any and all gameplay and interactivity. What was once merely fun, can turn deadly serious, now turned crucial with the addition of key story elements. Not really a lecture….this presentation will use the audience itself to bring home all its points in a visceral, memorable way.
Takeaway
The audience takes away how the story process in an established medium (novels) works for a published author. They will moreover understand the essentials that transform reality into fiction, from the use of Point of View, to the increasing pressure and suspense. Keeping those essentials in mind, they will have then played with gameplay to see those same elements applied...
Intended Audience
Anyone involved in creating gameplay and story together, whether a producer, level designer, or writer. Suitable for all levels and game formats.
Lecture
10 ways to fail with a foreign designer
Speaker: Noah Falstein, Sole Proprietorship, Independent
Brief description
There seems to be an international hierarchy of game development. Games made in Japan may succeed anywhere. Games made in North America may succeed anywhere – except Japan. And games made everywhere else can succeed in their home territory but only rarely break out to success in the rest of the world. To counteract this tendency, occasionally European developers have brought in designers from the USA in an attempt to reach the lucrative market there while still using local talent to make the game. This talk will cover the most frequent ways this kind of collaboration runs into trouble – and what can be done about it.
Takeaway
This talk will alert attendees to the most common problems in working with a designer at long distance, and suggest a range of experience-tested methods to minimize risk and maximize success.
Intended Audience
Anyone working with, or contemplating working with a game designer at long distance will find this talk useful (although possibly alarming!) Producers, publishers, and leaders of small development companies will likely find it particularly relevant.
Lecture
5 lessons about tangible user interfaces
Speaker: Nicolas Nova, User experience and foresight researche, EPFL
It has been assumed that tangible and gestural interactions such as the ones
allowed by the Wii pad would improve the usability of video games. The
possibility to have a direct mapping between players’ movements and in-game
actions is the cornerstone of this hypothesis. However, reality proves to be more
complicated and this talk describes common misconceptions about tangible
interfaces, drawn from human-computer interaction research. Examples taken
from player studies and research experiment allow to describe what are the
implications for user-centered game design.
Takeaway
Attendees can get an overview of classic misconceptions concerning tangible user interfaces. Results from user studies are described and implications for future game control design are discussed. The talk can be seen as a checklist for the use of tangible user interface in gaming.
Intended Audience
All, although people interested in how to know more about gaming gehavior and
how this influence the game design process would be interested (game
designers, quality managers). No prerequisite knowledge is needed.
Lecture
Visual storytelling - using visual design as a narrative device
Speaker: Viktor Antonov, Art Director, Independent
Brief description
Visual design in games is rarely used to its full capacity.
Many development teams and project leads consider game art to be a presentation package for content, a packaging design that will help sales.
While pleasing aesthetics are important; new shaders too; good visual design can and should accomplish much more than that.
Another function of game visuals is storytelling: the game-world is a powerful tool for providing information about the back-story. The environment with its architecture, props, level of decay tell us a lot about the what happened before the player came. This makes the narration subtler, sophisticated and replaces flat expositions and voiceovers.
Takeaway
The subject of this session is meaningful visual design in games, with a focus on concept design and pre-production.
Redefining the difference between visual design and graphics.
What are the different roles of visuals that are often overlooked by development teams?
Case studies – Half Life 2 and The Crossing
Intended Audience
Art directors,
Concept designers,
Production artists,
Producers,
Creative directors,
Project leads.
Lecture
Memories of emotions and emotions of memories. Character as a narrator
Speaker: Antoine Villette, CEO, Darkworks
Brief description
The consistency of a realistic character relies now more in its behaviour than in its ability to cry or to laugh realistically.
Of course, we will need more and more polygons to allow real close-up, but as long as our avatars will suffer from the Deep Amnesia Syndrome (no memories of what has happened during the play of a game), we will not reach the real emotion, the emotion of the player discovering a real human being behind the animated polygons.
Takeaway
A systemic and exploring approach of the story telling
in open universes.
Intended Audience
Writers, game designers, AI programers.
Lecture
Shared design: through the lens of design and production
Speaker: Arnab Basu ,Associate Producer, Riley Cooper, Lead Designer, Crystal Dynamics
Brief description
The concept of a shared game design department for a mid sized studio revolves around the central identity of incubation: operating like an ‘internal startup’ with reduced risks and steady returns.The presentation will take a critical look through the eyes of a designer and a producer at best practices used at Crystal Dynamics. Discuss the challenges and success encountered during new concept and prototype development, junior designer training as well as design support across departments and teams.
Takeaway
Through critical deconstruction of processes and methods applied – understand the how and why a centralized cross-functional game design unit is a prudent low-risk talent and concept investment for your studio
Intended Audience
Studio Managers, Game Designers, and Producers or anyone interested in starting or already a part of a shared design group.
Sponsored Session
WideGlance Technology
Speaker: Stanislav Velmakin , Business developement director , ruCap Ltd.
Brief description
We have all talked about VR for a long time, but modern technologies still fail to show virtual world to an ordinary user. Ideal worlds created by developers could not be reproduced properly by common display facilities. So, how could we turn a normal computer screen into the window between our world and virtual reality? An easy yet brilliant solution is found with WIDEGLANCE technology. Our innovation is to detect the relative positions of the user and the display real time. Thus, any move of the user’s head leads to the respective scene modification as if the user is looking through the window. This technology is implemented in ruCap device with proper accuracy and data processing speed. Both are already available for game developers.
Takeaway
Great understanding of the new benefits and opportunities in game design and development provided by WIDEGLANCE Technology.
Intended Audience
This presentation is for those interested in game design and new technologies.
All developers and publishers can benefit from this session; no prerequisite knowledge necessary.
Arts / Animation / Story Board
Lecture
Production Design as if you know what you are doing
Speaker: Andrew Paquette, Lecturer / Art dept manager, NHTV
Brief description
Production design is not just about making illustrations of interesting to look at characters, environments, and props. It is also about communicating how to build all of those things to the CG artists tasked with their construction. How many game studios take full advantage of the production designer's skills? Unfortunately not many. And today, as next gen games are looking more and more like feature film graphics, it is time to take notice of their example and nearly 100 years of practice in this field.
Takeaway
Attendees will see working pipelines that take full advantage of the production designer's art. They will see failed examples (perhaps similar to their own), and solutions. Most of all, they will learn to recognise whether there is a problem with their studio's approach to production design.
Intended Audience
Art directors, artists, and studio pipeline experts. Most attendees with an art-related job title will understand the presentation, but anyone with an interest in art will get something from it.
Lecture
Traditional Animation Techniques & Principles applied to CG Character Animation
Speaker: Larry Ruppel, Lead Character Animator, Lux Animation
Brief description
As games approach or surpass the level of top cinema box office (witness HALO 3), the gaming audience may well demand increasing sophistication in the animation performance of CG characters in the games themselves. Principles of traditional key-frame animation can lend themselves to improved and more impressive CG character development.
In this master class, a former 2D animator with classical animation experience will share the techniques he has used and carried over in making the transition to 3D.
Visual materials will be studied and analyzed.
Attendees are encouraged to bring samples of their animation for projection and discussion..
Takeaway
Attendees will be exposed to a whole new world of animation techniques they may know little about that derive from the accumulated artistry of the entire 20th century as it developed and perfected the art and illusion of character movement and performance..
Intended Audience
This is a session primarily for character animators on all levels who wish to improve the quality of their 3D character performance by applying traditional animation techniques.
The class will be held in English, and not specific to any particular animation program.
Lecture
The Art of Crysis
Speaker: Michael Khaimzon, Art Director, Crytek
Brief description
I would like to break down our approach to creating concept art, characters, vehicles and weapons, as well as a general approach to a good looking art, regardless of the kind of game you are making. There are certain rules and techniques that every artist or designer has to remember in order to make his game look good. I would like show some very early samples of our art, and demonstrate our evolution as an art team. Attendees will be able to see that we started from scratch with an inexperienced team, and what we had to learn to get to the Crysis that you all see today.
Takeaway
This session reviews the creation of Crysis and addresses the tools and all art techniques used to build the environments.
Intended audience
All passionate designers who want to learn more about the creation of outstanding environments.
Lecture
Real Drama in Real Time
Speaker: Stuart Adcock, Senior Character Artist, Ninja Theory
Brief description
Ninja Theory in collaboration with Weta Digital and Andy Serkis pioneered the use of performance capture in real time and set new benchmarks for emotionally engaging characters. This talk will cover the journey focusing on the development of the facial system used on Heavenly Sword, why Ninja Theory chose to implement the system they did, the benefits of recycling assets and how this all fits into a character pipeline. It will also cover advanced topics on how to achieve an extra layer of realism and emotion by refining shapes, shaders and manipulating motion capture data.
Takeaway
Attendees will be exposed to the process of setting up a face for motion capture and hopefully leave with a good understanding of how to implement a similar system, including which areas an artist should focus on and which areas can benefit from recycling.
Intended audience
Technical Artists and Animators interested in facial setups and motion capture. Having some experience in this field will be helpful.
Lecture
Ilustrative visual design of Team Fortress 2
Speaker: Moby Francke, Lead Visual Designer, Valve Software
Brief description
From character design to world creation, this session explores the techniques used to achieve the unique visual design of Team Fortress 2. Learn the important design fundamentals of silhouette, hue, saturation, value, proportion and how they relate to a unifying and immersive experience in game play space.
Takeaway
Game developers will understand the process of integrating stylized visual design with game design.
Intended audience
Anyone interested in the process of visual design in video game.
Lecture
Best practices for minimizing the gap between ddc applications and game engines
Speaker: Fred Moreau, Founder, Veloce Interactive
Brief description
While Game Engines show more and more integrated content creation tools, they offer limited connection with Digital Content Creation Applications such as 3dsmax or XSI. Game Studios often have to develop bridges themselves. How can developers help artists get the most out of both the DDC App and the Engine? How can artists preview in-game assets while modelling and texturing? How can both profiles understand each other better? This session highlights best practices when working with 3dsmax and a DirectX Based Engine.
Takeaway
Presentation Support and sample files
Intended audience
Artistes “In Game”, Directeurs Techniques et Développeurs d’Outils Interne.
Lecture
Closing the gap
Speaker: Thomas Wilson, Creative Director, Beenox Studios
Brief description
Thomas will discuss the artistic challenges his team faced while creating a next-gen title based on Dreamworks latest CG animated feature film Bee Movie. He will explain how his team focused on closing the visual gap between the movie and the game with new animation tools and better production techniques. The presentation will cover live demos of their facial animation system, shaders, foliage, lighting and post-fx tools.
Takeaway
Developers will have some insight on better tools and techniques than can design for their artists.
Intended audience
Animators, modelers, texture artists, technical directors, designers and programmers to some degree.
Sponsored session
Practical Global Illumination Lighting for Game Developers
Speaker:Niklas Harrysson , Software Developer, Illuminate Lab
Brief description
Niklas will show Illuminate Labs lighting technology which is used in game titles such as Killzone 2, Mass Effect and Mirrors Edge. The presentation will describe how techniques such as Spherical Harmonics for dynamic relighting and Directional Global Illumination Light Maps work and how to use them. Niklas will also show how to integrate advanced lighting technology directly in your game editor to make it accessible for your artists.
Intended audience
Technical Directors, Technical Artists, Graphics and Tools programmers.
Audio / Music
Lecture
Procedural Sound Design
Speaker: Leonard Paul, Video Game Audio Instructor, Vancouver Film School
Brief description
Procedural audio techniques for sound design for video games existed since games first began to utilize audio. Programmers for the Atari VCS had to find algorithms to utilize the limited audio capabilities of the system to generate sound effects ranging from tank engines to volleyball sounds. Clearly these early attempts had difficulty achieving the realism that we now expect with most games today, but they show how sound designers can utilize procedural methods to generate audio. Nowadays, with the release of the seventh generation of game consoles the computational power allows for very sophisticated methods of real-time audio manipulation and generation that have not been explored with games before.
Takeaway
This talk brings together many methods of creating real-time sound effects for games. Clear examples show how to begin thinking more about the rules of how sounds are created rather than just the creation of the content itself.
Intended Audience
This talk is oriented towards sound designers and sound coders for videogames who wish to utilize procedural techniques when generating sound effects for games.
Production / Project Management
Lecture
Project Management Styles and Team Motivation
Speaker: Anne-Christine GASC, Independent Producer
Brief description
The problem with managing development in very creative and technical environments is reconciling the flexibility required by the creative teams with the immovable deadlines and specifications set by the project stakeholders. The objective of project and team management is to avoid frustrated creativity, crunch time, demotivated teams and general disappointment.
The question for delivery managers is: how can we reconcile facilitating creative endeavours with the reality of delivering on time? How can we provide flexibility to support change management, while at the same time guaranteeing delivery dates? How can we support ALL project requirements: delivering on time, on quality, on budget and maintain a good work-life balance?
Takeaway
Attendees are shown one way of successfully managing delivery by using a simple set of working practices combining project management, team management and man management techniques, showing how they affect each other. The result is a production best practise rigid enough to reduce crunch time, while providing enough flexibility to support creativity.
Intended Audience
This is a session for anyone with project delivery responsibilities such as leads and producers. No special knowledge is necessary, but an understanding of the basics of project management techniques such as Prince2 and Agile is preferable.
Lecture
One license Multi-Unique Platforms
Speaker: David Ortiz, Senior Producer, EA Sports
Brief description
One license, multiple platforms. More and more companies are looking to take a popular license and game experience and ship it on multiple platforms. This is a common approach to game business be it sports, movie based games, or original IP. So how do you capture the essence of a license and make the experience relevant and at high quality across multiple platforms? What considerations need to be made up front, and how do you establish and maintain a clear vision and identity amongst the teams that are working to deliver these products?
Takeaway
Attendees will leave with a brief but useful perspective on how to leverage and deliver a licensed product or original IP across multiple titles.
Intended Audience
Producers, Designers, Studio Heads, and Product Leads that are interested in, or see themselves dealing with development of a single license or IP across multiple platforms.
Lecture
Studio organizations that make better games: “Who does what” and the responsibilities inside the production process.
Speaker: Risa Cohen, Independent Producer
Brief description
The high cost of development and the final quality are directly related to man month cost, project organization and best use of talent. Zen and the art of production management will talk about: different studio structures and resource management, roles inside a studio, the audit process and solutions to raise your production value in even the hardest situations.
Takeaway
Concrete examples of studio structures that function and details on what problems many studios face, and how to avoid them. Audit methods and checklists that help gve a snap shot picture of the health of your studio.
Intended Audience
Studio managers, project managers, leads and people who anticipate moving into a management position.
Lecture
Millions of players, ready to create...go!!
Speaker: Florent Castelnerac, CEO Nadeo
Brief description
The information technologies brought us the ability to be part of a whole as authors, actors and spectators. To think otherwise is probably out of date, out of age. The 'art' of making games will continue, as well as nicely done games, but the concept of game-instrument is probably the most important evolution of our industry, way ahead of MMO or casual gaming questions. One million tracks created by players for TrackMania, as a whole, is meaningless. But every track means something to its author and people who joined him to play. The goal of letting players create is not to make them work and produce something, it is to make them enjoy the act of creation and receive recognition of other players in doing so. TrackMania games are named 'United' and 'Nations' because we think the gaming industry can bring to the world a good reason to be together. With only a team of twelve people, we delivered an instrument for ten millions players to "play, create and share!" But today, I would change our old slogan to "enjoy, exist and unite!" and I will try to explain why I see this as a key to make a successful game-instrument.
Takeaway: Attendees will leave with an overview of Nadeo major concerns when designing a game like an instrument.
Intended Audience: Passionnate game developers interested by questions about the role of players creation in the video game industry.
Lecture
Scrumming the big teams
Speaker: Stephane Baudet, Managing Director, Ubisoft Annecy
Brief description
Maintaining creativity and implication within large teams has become a real challenge for producers and team managers. Named after a rugby formation, the Scrum methodology is based on the principles of efficient communication, collaborative management and flexibility of production.
Regardless of your existing management organisation, Scrum can be seen as a great management toolbox to keep the advantages of a big team without sacrificing maneuverability. If carefully implemented, the pitfalls of self-management and iterative development can be avoided, and developers will take ownership not just for what they do, but how they do it. The direct benefits are: team empowerment, reduced frustrations and fair decision making process.
Takeaway:
If you intend to use the Scrum methodology for your next game development, this postmortem format lecture will get you up to speed by giving you details about what went right and wrong during the various developments us at Ubisoft Annecy.
Intended Audience: Producers and team managers who heard about the agile methodologies and want to learn how it was successfully implemented at Ubisoft Annecy.
Sponsored session
Economy of Scale: How one repository for all assets improves productivity
Speaker: Sven Erik Knop , Technical Support Engineer, Perforce Software
Brief description
Role-specific Configuration Management (CM) and Digital Asset Management (DAM) tools that just handle software source code or art assets can create or exaggerate communication problems between team members. Many studios now employ unified CM repositories to store the full range of asset types for their games. A major benefit of unified CM is the increased visibility that all contributors get of the state of the project. This can lead to accelerated games development and better developer and artist productivity. This presentation shows some of the tools and methods that can shorten development time of complex games projects.
Takeaway
Attendees will learn that separate silos for different types of project asset can create or reinforce divisions between coders and artists. By putting all assets in one place, team members get real time information about what's going on with assets on which they depend, leading to better-informed decisions and improved awareness of the project as a whole.
Intended audience
Project managers, team leads, designers or artists looking to improve communication within a growing team or to get better control and understanding of a rapidly expanding code and digital asset base.
Business / Management
Lecture
One-Console Future
Speaker: Denis Dyack, President, Silicon Knights
Brief description
The video game business is the world’s fastest growing entertainment industry. However, its growth is far from over. Everyone in the industry is working toward broadening the market for all consumers. As market pressures develop through increased production costs, demand for higher quality games, and the establishment of content-driven game models, a standardized, one-console future is inevitable and will allow for mainstream broadening to finally occur.
By analyzing the history of technology and its commoditization, and by drawing analogies from similar trends in other technologies, this presentation illustrates how a standard, one-console future is not only possible, but also a likely occurrence. Additionally, this presentation shows how a one-console, hardware standard benefits both the creators of video games and their consumers.
Takeaway
The audience of this presentation will have a better understanding of the inevitability of technology commoditization based on past technology trends. They will also get a positive view of a one-console future, and how standardization will open the market for developers, publishers and consumers.
Intended Audience
This presentation is aimed at anyone interested in video games and the industry’s future. If a single platform were to emerge, then a significant paradigm shift would occur within the games industry and anyone involved in games would be affected.
Lecture
Competing With Free
Speaker: David Edery, Worldwide Games Portfolio Planner Microsoft, Xbox Live
Brief description
Four loosely-related trends are changing the competitive landscape in the game industry. One is the rapid spread of free, microtransaction-supported games. The second is the growth of free games (with significant dev budgets) created by major advertisers like Burger King. The third is the re-distribution of older games (like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time) for free with ads. The fourth is the surge of free user-created games hosted by sites like Kongregate, created with Flash and XNA, etc. How will game developers compete against (or capitalize on) this rising tide of free content?
Takeaway
Attendees will get a quick but meaningful overview of developerments in the free game space, then insights into what they can do to compete more effectively against free content (or, alternatively, how to best produce free content themselves.)
Intended Audience
All developers and publishers can benefit from this session; no prerequisite knowledge necessary.
Lecture
Everything You Need to Know To Run A Successful Dual Market Development Studio
Speaker: Doug Whatley, Breakaway Ltd.
Brief description
This session offers real world experience and insight into how game developers can successfully broaden business opportunities by adopting a multiple business model strategy. With the emergence and continued evolution of cross-platform development and disparate distribution models, the line between casual, serious and hard-core games continues to blur. In order to succeed, developers will need to understand how to create content, leverage IP and successfully transfer technology knowledge and expertise for multiple markets including emerging markets. Future business opportunities and trends in emerging markets will also be discussed.
Takeaway
Attendees will take away a working knowledge of how to structure a studio for new opportunities in gaming, how to negotiate and work effectively with non-traditional gaming companies and how to leverage game technology for new and emerging markets.
Intended audience
This presentation is valuable to anyone in the game industry including mid-level and higher managers and executives in production, business development and operations. It is also valuable for anyone interested in using games/game technology in new and emerging markets.
Lecture
Culture - Organisational and national – impact on a development studio
Speaker: Kumar Jacob, Director - TwelveJ Limited
Brief description
To explore the effect of national culture on organisational culture in the context of game development. To look at the drivers behind organisational culture and how they might be influenced. Consider the impact of natural culture and characteristics. What can management influence, to maintain an effective team?
Takeaway
All attendees will gain a broad understanding of culture – organisational and national, including research findings. On a practical level participants can consider techniques to manage teams with people from different countries and cultures towards a common corporate goal.
Intended audience
All, but particularly managers and seniors.
Lecture
Securing a console development project
Speaker: Jeff Hilbert, DDM, Joel Benton, Kuju
Brief description
Joel Benton and Jeff Hilbert will walk Developers through the processes they have used the secure multiple large and small scale development projects. They will outline materials expected by the Publisher to pitch, how to prepare the materials and who to contact at each Publisher. They will end with a question and answer session to address and specific concerns or real world issues.
Takeaway
Developers should leave the presentation with an understanding of what Publishers expect in a pitch and whom to pitch.
Intended audience
Established Development Studios try to move into the next level or new Development Studios with an Experienced Team.
Lecture
How to avoid making games for other people
Speaker: Mark Morris , Chris Delay ,Introversion Software
Brief description
In 2001 three friends from university founded a video game developer because they believed that there was no creative freedom left in the conventional industry. Since then Introversion Software has produced three of the most innovative and challenging video games of recent times. In this talk, two of the founding partners Mark Morris and Chris Delay will discuss the processes and beliefs that have enabled the company to grow from a small group of pals to a fully fledged video games developer. In this warts and all presentation, Mark and Chris will discuss the history of Introversion including the mistakes made and the lessons learnt. Looking to the future they will touch on some of the recent trends in the industry and reveal some of the secrets that have allowed introversion to constantly punch above their weight.
Takeaway
A practical guide to starting and running an indie video game developer.
Intended audience
Anyone whose soul is being crushed by working in the mainstream industry and wants to strike out on their own.
Lecture
Applying new business models to your game design
Speaker: Thomas Bidaux , NCsoft
Brief description
Along with the expansion of the online games, we have seen new business models emerge as well: in-game advertising, micro-payments, episodic games. This presentation will cover what it takes to integrate those business models into your games, learning from the direct experience with Guild Wars and PlayNC portal in Korea, as well as other successful implementation of new business models in the Online game industry.
Takeaway
Overview of the new business models and their requirements to be properly integrated into the games.
Intended audience
Lead Designers, System designers, Producers, Project Managers.
Lecture
Marketing your development studio
Speaker: Ian Baverstock , Kuju
Brief description
A walk through Kuju’s evolution from a singular brand to a multi – branded collection of studios. To talk about the development of integrated marketing and how to self promote development studios to publishers. The motivations and business sense behind this and the advantages and risk this brings about. To explain why development studio marketing will become an imperative part of their business in the near future. To follow with Q&A.
Takeaway
Developers should leave the presentation understanding the ideas behind Kuju’s view of marketing, branding and self promotion for game developers.
Intended audience
Development studio’s business managers and senior staff.
Lecture
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Making intelligent FPS takes 6 years, but it's worthy
Speakers: Anton Bolshakov , Oleg Yavorsky, GSC Game World
Brief description
It started in 2001 as one of the most ambitious and gigantic FPS games ever imagined. Ukrainian studio GSC Game World released STALKER after 6 years of development. With an already formed community and a lot of great press reviews, STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl keeps its promises. Despite the difficulties and challenges due to the ambition, STALKER delivers outstanding experience with its atmosphere, and has already conquered a large community of gamers. How do we face the pressure of creating such a giant during 6 years, and most of all, how does a studio manage to stay in business? This talk will share GSC Game World's experience with the conception of STALKER and the different approach of relationships with publishers and an original handling of PR and marketing. The downfalls, the challenges and successes of a long but state-of-the-art development.
Takeaway
Project decision-making and time-planning. Brand promotion.
Intended audience
Game designers, project managers, PR specialists.
Lecture
An Inside Look at the Business of Casual Games
Speaker: Jessica Tams, Casual Games Association
Brief description
It has been an exciting year for casual games—not only are more and more people playing, but casual games have become the subject of mainstream news articles and large media companies have become interested in the space with more fervor than ever. The buzz is not surprising, of course. Many following the industry have known for some time that more people play casual games than any other type of video game. Now in 2007, this fact is becoming widespread knowledge. In addition, the industry has started to attract new platforms, studios and publishers. What was once an industry centered around PC and online portal games has grown over the past couple of years into emerging casual areas, such as the Xbox LIVE Arcade and the Wii. This session offers an overview of the inner workings of the $2.25 billion connected casual games industry from the perspective of a development studio- with information to help developers make informed decisions about the pros and cons of operating in and entering the casual games industry.
Takeaway
A deeper understanding of the emerging casual games market – and how to apply the successes in casual games to the entire gaming industry.
Intended audience
Developers interested in an expanded audience for their games - exploring ways to attract a broader consumer demographic.
Research session
Games and media in the 21st century
Speaker: Stephane Natkin, Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM)
Brief description
One way to understand the evolution of a new generation of interactive media is to consider the increasingly complex relationships between the real world and the virtual world, in multiplayer games as ubiquitous games, massively multiplayer on line games, geo localized mobile games, augmented reality games …In this talk we will show several examples and demonstrations of this evolution and we analyze its impact both from the point of view of media and video games. As a consequence, in the next ten years, the video games world may change significantly in its content, its technology and its economy.
Takeaway
The goal of the presentation is to lead the attendance to understand the principles of the upcoming generation of Multiplayer Ubiquitous Games (MUG) and, as a consequence, the cross influences between media, telecommunication and the video game economies.
Intended audience
This presentation is meant for manager, game designer and game analyst. It assumes a general knowledge about games and media economy and technology.
