All Sessions 2009

Keynote:

CONFERENCE KEYNOTE: Online functionality for your next game? Why not go 100% online

The creator of legendary titles Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto, and founder of Realtime Worlds (one of the most successful developers in Europe) - is the event’s first prestigious keynote speaker. David Jones, who has been in the video game industry for over two decades, will share his thoughts on how to make a game successful, drawing on his experience from the award-winning and record-breaking Crackdown through to Realtime Worlds’ upcoming online title All Points Bulletin (APB), the hotly tipped online action game.

Art: Avatarrific: Putting a Face on the Xbox 360 Ab

Who is responsible for making the Xbox a friendlier place to visit? That question and many more are answered in this talk that will take you from the initial concept of the Avatar for the Xbox 360 through to its current implementation and a sneak peek into its future, here's a unique behind the scenes look into the development of the Avatar and the role that Rare had in the collaborative effort to create the NXE.
Rares' Louise Ridgeway and Stephen McFarlane delve deep into the dung of games development to talk to you about the design, creation and integration of Rare's Avatar for the Xbox and all the bumps we hit along the way.

 

Art: ART KEYNOTE: The Art of LittleBigPlanet - A Big Medley

Kareem and Mark discuss the process of setting a visual style that is both versatile and cohesive. The talk will touch on a broad range of subjects, from the desire for LittleBigPlanet to be a collage of visuals mixing the ancient with the contemporary; how the look and functionalities of LittleBigPlanet are highly integrated; and how cutting-edge visual technology was used to serve the vision of user-generated content.

Art: Art Directing customisable characters for international markets: A case study comparing South Korea to America.

The presentation covers Art Direction process, art planning, and creative problem solving in the design of the APB character customisation system, an integral part of a new MMO being released by Realtime Worlds in the next twelve months. Firm conclusions are drawn on how to design characters to succeed in the South Korean and American markets, supported by empirical research into cultural differences documented with beautiful visual examples. Modeling, anatomy, rendering, shading, and clothing are all discussed and demonstrated. The presentation culminates in a preview of the final APB character customization system using movies taken in game and online. (This is a state-of-the-art character system which generated a great deal of excitement when first unveiled by Dave Jones at GDC in 2008.) The new movies cover all aspects of the character creation process with a commentary on our techniques and reasoning at each point

Art: 3 Shades of Racing - Building Environments for Blur

 

When starting something brand new, some approaches change whilst others stay the same. This presentation will look at some of the shaders, tools, and solutions Bizarre Creations employed when working on the environments for our latest racing game, Blur.

Art: The Evolution of Fable's Challenging Hero

The Fable Franchise with its exclusive morphing heroes and heroines present a uniquely difficult artistic and animation challenge for the creative team.The evolution of the hero from the hugely successful first Fable to the much anticipated second iteration of the game saw an even wider ambition for the already overstretched hero morphing system. So while gamers enjoyed the freedom of personalising their Fable II hero to a greater degree than ever before; the Lionhead art department found themselves wrestling with an exponentially more complex system.
This talk will look at some of the historical problems associated the dynamically morphing Fable hero and look at the direction the team is now taking with their future experiments.

Business: Are You Really Going to Retire as a Game Developer?

Will you retire a videogame developer?  Do you see yourself modeling space marines and debugging renderers at 60?  And if not, when will you stop and what will you do next?  In an industry which sees graduates achieve lead status by 30, we just don't pace ourselves for the 40 year career.  But unless the workforce can grow faster than it ages indefinitely then these questions need answers.

Business: Panel: Why Grey Matters - How to Grow Your Business

How do you grow your business in the current economic climate? Ever felt it's very lonely at the top? This panel session looks at the benefits of industry expert mentoring following the experiences of 3 developers- DoubleSix/Kuju, TAG Games and Dynamo Games who have been supported through a NESTA pilot programme of mentoring- Raise the Game. How do developers share invaluable business knowledge that has been gained through years of experience and title development? How do we pass that on to support younger companies? We debate how developers can best support each other.

Business: Never Mind the Boxes: Games as a Service

The effort and finances needed to build full retail games is growing unsustainable. But what if you weren't making a product? What would Games As A Service look like? Services encourage loyalty; they turn products into platforms; they empower users; they play well with others and connect to existing services; and at the large scale, they wrap other products and become super-products. Using examples from inside and outside the games industry - from tiny, open-source Davids to console-licensed Goliaths - Tom Armitage examines already successful notions of service design and explores what it will mean for your games, big or small.

Business: Panel: Is Digital Distribution Truly the Saviour of the PC Game?

As traditional PC game sales continue to decline and digital download sales show consistent growth, it is clear that digital distribution is breathing life into PC game retail, but is it enough to keep it alive? Is digital distribution truly the saviour of the PC game?
Chair: Justin Keeling, IGN

Business: Panel: Tip Top Technology in Trying Times: How Do Studios Keep Up-to-Date in a Credit Crunch?

The onset of the credit crunch has posed a key question for developers - how do they ensure that their core engine technology meets the needs of their projects while keeping a close eye on the costs involved? The panel will look at the relative benefits of using middleware compared to developing and maintaining your own technology.

Agenda:

• One of the key challenges that developers face today is to ensure that their technology is strong enough for them to secure development contracts in a competitive world, robust enough to deal with the challenges faced during a project whilst still keeping close control of the costs incurred.
• What are the benefits of developing and maintaining your own technology?
• Are there any hidden risks in keeping everything in house?
• What strengths and weaknesses are there in using commercial middleware?
• Does using a complete engine from another developer provide the "best of both worlds"?

 

 

Business: What the Music Industry Can Reveal About Digital Distribution

The last few years have been turbulent for the music industry as it grapples with the transition from physical goods to digital distribution. What can the games industry learn from the music industry as the sales and delivery of interactive entertainment increasingly move online? Simon Watt of Universal Music explains what the music industry has got right - and wrong - and how it might apply to games.

Business: Panel: Online Games, Virtual Worlds and MMO's: Raising Money and Making Money

Thanks to their potential for scale and network effects, the on-line games sector - including MMOs, virtual worlds and casual games is the only game in town for Venture Capitalists. Paul Flanagan, Executive in Residence at Ariadne Capital, hosts a panel looking at the business models behind successful online games and virtual worlds and, through exploring the attractiveness of those business models, discusses how venture capital funds can be encouraged to invest in your projects.

Business:

BUSINESS KEYNOTE: Ship Your Game On Time, On Budget: Seven Highly Effective Practices

Australia's largest developer, Krome Studios, under the direction of CEO and Co-Founder Robert Walsh, will celebrate its tenth anniversary this fall. Having grown from an initial team of eight, to more than 400 employees in three offices, Krome's story is reaffirming in a time when studio closures and lay-offs are too common. Robert Walsh takes his 10 year commitment to improving Krome's production methodology and condenses it into seven highly-effective practices. These insights into "the business of production" will prove beneficial for studios large and small alike looking to make better games on-time, and on-budget.

Business: Understanding the Gaming Audience Landscape

This lecture will cover the broad demographic spectrum that exists within global gaming audiences.  It will detail areas of growth and decline, and will present findings on how this audience will evolve over the next 4 to 6 years. It will also educate game developers in methods of profiling intended game audiences behaviors, gaming configurations and more.

Coding:

Preparing for Larrabee

Intel® Corporation's Larrabee architecture introduces a new hardware and software framework for visual computing; enabling a greater degree of programmability than previous GPUs whilst far outstripping the performance of conventional CPUs.  This opportunity to innovate presents a challenge: how can developers leverage their existing codebase and assets whilst opening up avenues to exploit this new hardware?  Several approaches are presented, along with insights into how developers can get ready to leverage them.  Three fundamental methods are covered: optimizing graphics API usage for the hardware's unique features; sharing data between Direct3D and a Larrabee native application; and writing pure Larrabee native applications.

Coding: Race Script: An Alternative to Rubber Banding

No one likes a cheat. When videogames cheat and it's obvious it can kill your experience and leave you feeling conned or patronized. For years racing games have relied on a simple 'rubber band' mechanic to keep racers together and make races feel more competitive. Games that allow you to catch up to the pack by causing rival vehicles to break excessively or having them impossibly boost up behind you can be obvious and literally give the game away. We've created a new system for race management which is more subtle and flexible than previous systems that creates a much more satisfying and correctly competitive experience. The techniques are more widely applicable to other genres and this presentation is pitched to be accessible to Game Designers and Producers as well as AI Programmers.

Coding: Open Software for Closed Hardware

Examines the world of Free and Open Source software, investigating how time and money can be saved by using it. We cover the use of code within the games themselves, as part of the tool chain, and its available in productivity software. Licenses are also explained.

Coding: Lua Scripting Interactive Behaviour for PlayStation Home

PlayStation Home is an exciting new 3D gaming service for PlayStation®3.  It deepens the gaming experience, providing a place where gamers can meet, chat, plan, and launch games together.  In this talk we guide you through using Lua to script interactive experiences, such as Game Launching, Home Rewards, Arcade Games, 3D Mini-Games, scene triggers and more.  Find out how you can get involved.

Coding: The Wizards of OS: I Don't Think We're in C++ Anymore

A solid engine is usually enough to churn out hit games. However, some times an engine needs to be more. On Ride To Hell the Eutechnyx team took the core C++ engine, added a dash of Python scripting and turned it into something else entirely. The game engine has become the operating system for the scripting systems that describe the game.  Dave Hawes and Doug Wolff head down the yellow brick road towards this new paradigm, with some interesting stops along the way. *No knowledge of Python scripting required to have a good time!

Coding: CODING KEYNOTE: Playstation PS3: Cutting Edge Techniques

The keynote speech will provide an overview of the current state of the PlayStation platforms. Expect to hear a lot more about the new PS3 controller shown at E3, together with vision processing and advanced graphics techniques in the PS3 libraries. There will be coverage of several real-world examples of such techniques as used in recent and soon to be released PS3 and PSP titles from both Sony Computer Entertainment first party and external developers.

Coding: Introduction to Human IK Middleware: Complementing Your FK Animation

Visual realism for characters has made many strides over the past 10 years. It is now possible to create very detailed characters in real time. Much of today's in-game animation has been driven by forward kinematic (FK) animation. This talk introduces techniques for adding inverse kinematics (IK) to gameplay and discusses how to use IK to complement traditional forward kinematic animation. HumanIK is a standalone library that has been extracted from the Autodesk MotionBuilder animation engine. It provides realistic, real-time, full-body, human inverse kinematics and real-time retargeting. Autodesk MotionBuilder is used to demonstrate HumanIK middleware functionality with specific game scenarios.

Coding: Using Git to Tame a Herd of Cats

As a development team increases in size, its productivity must scale accordingly: bottlenecks need to be reduced, stability needs to be increased. Using conventional source control often serves to create such bottlenecks. This session will focus on the experience of adopting the Git system (http://git-scm.com/) in its place. This session will present the experiences of adopting Git as our source control system and its associated methodologies. Git was in use for over a year in a full video game production environment across multiple projects, multiple platforms and helped to solve the problem of increasing team size tending to reduce productivity.
The session offers a broad overview of Git, concentrating on the technical details of its application, including: Integration with existing source control systems; Leveraging Git to facilitate distributing the tasks of code maintenance across smaller teams; Hierarchical source control development: the costs and the benefits; Stable cross-discipline feature development.

Design: flOw and Flower: Games and Art

Every medium's growth starts with technological innovation, but after a certain point, the innovation of content and the user experience catches up and fuels deeper developments. Jenova Chen, the creative director of thatgamecompany, shares an overview of the making of his company's unique titles flOw & Flower, as well as his notes and ideas about the relationship between video game, entertainment and art.

Design: When a Creative Director Attacks! or What I Learned this Year with EA!

How one year at EA has changed his thinking about creativity in comuter games for the better. Paul Barnett has been busy of late, travelling around listening and talking to people about creativity and design. What he has learned has opened his mind about creativity in general and given him several new ways to find oportunity, money and value in his everyday job. In this talk he will be sharing you the insights, notes and general ideas that he has come accross. And Dave Perry still owes him a drink.

 

Design:

Designer mash-up: David Braben and Dave Jones play Elite and GTA

Elite and GTA are very different games from different eras, but both were landmark releases for giving the player real freedom. Develop brings together their legendary designers to play the games and discuss their similarities and differences. Expect unique insights into the creative inspiration behind the titles and the development challenges overcome in making them, as well as a fresh perspective on the games' enduring legacy - the opportunity for the player to create his or her own narrative.

 

Design: The Edge Panel: Architecture and Games

Architects and game artists talk about videogames as an extreme form of architecture, telling stories and influencing behaviour and emotion through spatial design.

Design: Community Chest: 10 Useful Things We Learned From the SingStar Community

The advent of services such as YouTube a few years ago, was very informative for the SingStar development team because our users decided to start uploading videos of themselves playing the game...ok so this might not be the perfect "demographic distribution" for formal consumer research, but it quickly became incredibly enlightening. Almost unimaginable in last gen development: to actually see first hand how people play our game... direct from their living rooms. So when we launched SingStar on PS3, we included our very own "walled garden" community and have been learning new things about our users ever since!

MySingStar Online soon became a sandbox for people to play in and experiment with - I won't say that this is our only inspiration for innovation, but it certainly helps. And several times we have seen a clear need for a feature, simply based on what we see and learn from our community. This actually goes beyond our community - we learn a great deal from forums and other fan sites - all of which we take great care to catch up with on a daily basis.

This talk highlights our experience of using the SingStar community to generate and validate our ideas for new features. It uncovers some of the most useful things we have discovered about our users and how that has inspired our development and innovation.

Design: Tom Clancy's EndWar: An After Action Report

The objective of Tom Clancy's EndWar was to do something people had been giving lip service to for a while: design an RTS from the ground up for console. In this session we'll talk about what went right and what went wrong and attempt to arrive at a meaningful definition of what a "console" actually is. In particular, aside from the obvious issues of controls, are there fundamental differences in design, which are required? Finally we will explore different possibilities for the future of RTS games on console.

Design: The Life Cycle of The Bonsai Barber for WiiWare

Veteran game designer Martin Hollis presents an overview of the game design of Bonsai Barber, the recent WiiWare title published by Nintendo. Spanning the entire project lifetime of Bonsai Barber, we'll see the game grow from first seed and early concept, through the incubation of the first three prototypes, then full production and finally to late stage tweak and balance.

Design: Evolving the Racing Franchise

The multi award winning Project Gotham Racing series started with a different name on a different console, and evolved over a period of 8 years. Through it's development it changed its core principals, techniques and gamer ethos. However, it also managed to retain it's identity without any brand confusion or loss of appeal. Chris Pickford and Ben Ward will take you through the thought processes that lead to Bizarre's last contribution to the franchise, PGR4. Along the way they will be supplying short post-mortems on each iteration, as well as giving insight into how a team always on the bleeding edge of technology can stay focused for 8 years without losing sight of the goal.

Design: Video Games as The Eighth Art

This presentation is about elevating the creation of games to be considered globally as the 8th Art In 1911, Italian writer Ricciotto Canudo (1879-1923), deemed the first theorist of film, considered cinema to be the the Seventh Art." He argued in his manifesto The Birth of the Sixth Art (1911) that cinema was "plastic art in motion sculpture and incorporated the distinctive elements of both the spatial arts (architecture painting) with the temporal arts (music and dance).  Today video games have become part of the new art discussion and employ the elements of film but add a crucial aspect " interactivity."

Design: DESIGN KEYNOTE: Building LEGO Worlds - online, offline, and everything in between

While TT Games continue to build on the success of "LEGO Star Wars" with new multi-platform LEGO games, "LEGO Universe" is a Massively Multiplayer Online game in development at NetDevil Studios in Colorado. Together, Jonathan Smith from TT Games and Ryan Seabury from NetDevil will jointly explore the similarities and differences between their approaches to the infinite and ever-changing world of LEGO play. With audiences moving more freely than
ever between "online" and "offline" game xperiences, how are genre expectations changing on both sides? This session will draw upon audience and user-testing research, market analysis, and lots of specific LEGO
gameplay examples. It will be relevant for anyone interested in online gaming, MMO development, working with licensed properties, or a younger audience.

Design: It's Time for Music Games 2.0

More than a decade after they first entered the scene, can we really say that music games have evolved? It seems that most music games still base themselves on the Rhythm Game template as made popular by PaRappa way back in 1996. Everybody knows that music is a powerful and universal medium, but practically speaking which aspects can we look to exploit in games? And conversely, how can games usher in new music paradigms? Join us in this session where together we shall denounce restrictive assumptions, map out unexplored gaming possibilities and reinvent our understanding of the gaming world's most booming genre!

Design: Rethinking Challenges in Games and Stories

In this lecture I take a second look at the role of challenges in gameplay - how they construct the player's experience and affect his or her emotional response to the game. Starting with a proposal for determining the difficulty of a challenge, I go on to question the assumption that games should be challenging at all, and make a case for other forms of computerized play beyond the traditional challenge-achievement-reward structure. I also addresses the effect of challenges on storytelling, and discusses how different mechanisms for influencing the plot of a story produce different feelings in the player. The lecture ends with a suggestion for a unifying meta-approach to interactive storytelling that obviates all the debate about the "right way" to do it.

Design: Gamesification: Turning Other Things into Games

How do you take IP from other mediums and turn them into games? What's the process, and what are the pitfalls? This panel will talk to people who've turned different kinds of projects into games and will explore ways it can go wrong, and ways to get it right.

Evolve: User Generated Content - The Legal Consequences

De-mystifying the rights that exist in user generated content. Who owns the uploaded content, what exclusive rights could be infringed, what defences may be available to infringement by the user generated
content.Other legal issues including defamation, impact on minors and privacy issues generally. I will also look at potential risk mitigation strategies for user generated content providers.

Evolve: PlayStation®Home - First Term Report

What have we learned in bringing PlayStation®Home to market?,There are many perceived parallels in other services, but nothing is really quite like it.,After a protracted gestation period, and some adjustments of focus along the way, what have we learned about what developers, publishers, and the community want from a console online gaming service?

Evolve: Panel: Crossing Over: How Working With Other Industries Can Improve Your Games and Your Bottom Line

The games business is changing fast. We're all familiar with the impact that things like motion control and direct distribution have brought, but what about the less well known revolutions? We now live in a world where TV companies are making games, local screen agencies are funding them, and charities and movie studios are commissioning them. So how do these developments change the kind of games your studio can make, and the ways it can get paid to make them? Over the last few years an organisation called Crossover has been bringing game developers, film makers, TV commissioners and internet innovators to discuss exactly those issues, and this session will bring together veterans of that process to discuss how the increasing integration between different creative sectors is changing the way they make games. Hosted by ex-Edge editor Margaret Robertson, panellists include Jamie Campbell (lead programmer at THQ's Juice Games), Adam Russell (ex-Lionhead, and now university lecturer and independent game-maker), Alex Amstel (managing director of IGF nominated Tuna).

Production: Usability Testing for Videogames

We're all paid to be video game experts and all too often we design for ourselves. Unfortunately we're familiar with video game conventions and more used to figuring things out for ourselves than ordinary folk. Usability testing can make you and your team much more honest and consumer focused. Getting lots of virgin users to play your game at every stage of development can stop you making wrong decisions or having wrong decisions forced upon you. As we proved while developing our last game, PURE, it doesn't have to be expensive to take a scientific and comprehensive approach to usability testing. We reckon that the recent testing we ran raised our Game rankings average by 5 to 10%. It's the single most important new process we've added to our studio in recent years and we'd like to share our experience in collaboration with the usability testing lab at the University of Sussex.

Production: Development Opportunities for PlayStation Home

PlayStation®Home is an exciting new online 3D gaming service for PlayStation®3.  Content in Home can further drive PlayStation title sales and create additional revenue streams.  This talk gives an overview of creating assets for Home, including Clothing, Furniture, Arcade Games, 3D Mini-Games, Environments, Apartments, Commerce, Game Launching and more.

Production: PRODUCTION KEYNOTE: Bridging the Gap Experiences Learned with Agile Project Management Across Multisite, Multicultural and Multilingual Projects

This session will give an overview of common challenges faced when implementing an agile method in a large organization. Specific challenges connected with shared projects on multisite, bridging geographical distances, cultural differences and language barriers, will also be addressed. The session is based on Ubisoft's own first hand experiences learned with Agile project management across multisite, multicultural & multilingual projects as well as Hansoft's experience working with agile implementations in more than 20 countries worldwide.

Production: Driving 3D TV's Using Current Generation Consoles

Hollywood is investing hundreds of millions of dollars into 3D but videogames can lead the 3D revolution and bring it into the home. Games themselves are inherently 3D and PS3 and Xbox360 are already capable of supporting 3D games. Using proprietary technology, Andrew & Aaron will give an exclusive, live demo of a game running in Stereoscopic 3D on a console. They will explore some of the ways games can benefit from Stereo 3D and also look at some of the problems when trying to make games 3D compatible. This session will offer an overview of the technology and 3D displays available, difficulties facing 3D game development - technical constraints and design considerations, and the misconceptions of 3D technology and baggage of old 3D. Plus, an introduction to the upsides of a 3D gaming experience, tips and tricks to enable regular games, PS3 and X360 to play in Stereoscopic 3D.

Production: From Light Bulb to Console: The Writing Process

Audio designers, producers, designers all those who come into contact with the mysteries of dialogue, this one's for you! Presented by Andy Walsh (Prince of Persia, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix), James Swallow,  and Justin Villiers (game title awaiting end of NDA, other upcoming next-gen productions).

Production: Management for Evil Geniuses

The dangers of the game industry’s obsession for size are well known, yet the macho approach prevails and project after project fails to be clever and tries to solve their problems with muscle. Imre aims to show how the development of Namco’s Dead to Rights - Redemption, Volatile Studio’s first truly AAA title, gave the team an opportunity to trial their own answers; tackling the challenges in a pioneering yet still deeply rooted approach, learning from the most surprising sources.

Production: Text; Voice Over; Multiple Skus... How a AAA localisation producer's nightmare can turn to be living a dream!

Unwieldy teams, off-site resources; foreign distributors are some of the too many challenges that Creative Assembly and Sega had to face for the localisation of Empire: Total War.,With one dedicated producer to that task, what was threatening to spiral out of control ended up being channelled. Down to the use a good set of tools, rigorous processes we will tell you how we delivered quality into budget, time and without tears.

Production: How to Communicate with Artists

Take a behind-the-scenes look at the creative direction, production process
and communication practices behind the making of some of SCEE's latest game trailers and intro cinematics. Discover some of the challenges involved and how to overcome them through a combination of blood, sweat, tears and knowing how to effectively work with artists, development teams and marketing departments.

Production: Managing Asset Heavy Game Production: High Quality Video, Graphics, Audio and Text

As studio game engines become more mature, the use of middleware becomes more widespread and platforms become more powerful, the best interactive titles are the ones with the highest quality content.,,Simon will talk about how the modern game producer when specifying, creating and managing the huge amount of assets in today's games needs to have an appreciation of not only software, 3D graphics and 2D textures but can also learn from the world of the film and audio production.

The Den: Designer mash-up: Masaya Matsuura and Jenova Chen play PaRappa the Rapper and Flower

Who says video gaming can't do leftfield or art-house? Two game developers who consistently push the boundaries join us in Brighton from opposite ends of the world to play and discuss each others' games. Masaya Matsuura flies in from Japan with PaRappa the Rapper, still among the most fondly remembered games of the PlayStation era, while Jenova Chen arrives from the U.S. with the new and utterly unique Flower.

The Den:

Public Service Gaming: Public Value First, Commercial Value Second

Channel 4 spent £2 million on games in 2008-9. Why? Commissioning Editor Alice Taylor sheds some light on public service games in the UK: What they are, why the UK makes the most public service games of (probably) any country out there, how Channel 4 is involved, and what the future holds.
Alice is speaking on behalf of Women in Games

The Den: Games, Designs and Lessons Learned at the Global Game Jam

Over 360 Games was produced by over 1600 people at the Global Game Jam. This session will be a pure explosion for your game design senses, as the most interesting games from the Global Game Jam is presented.,Locations involved in the Game Jam range from Japan and Australia over Israel, Turkey, UK, Denmark and France to Canada, US, Costa Rica and Brazil. ,,The games will mainly be used a starting point in a discussion about the usefulness of prototyping. Where meaningful cultural similarities and differences in the game development community across the globe will also be highlighted.,

The Den:  Making Videogames History: Starting the National Videogames Archive

Videogames are disappearing. No, really - they are.  Consoles, cartridges, discs, and tapes gather dust in lofts. Crucial prototypes get thrown away when studios go bust, rare versions of classic games are lost forever. Every day, we lose another little bit of our history. Luckily, We've just started a National Videogame Archive. This session is about how the project came together, how you can get involved and sharing our ideas for how the NVA can aid the games industry in the future. Together, we can make videogames history.

The Den: "Diagetic Media" - Beyond First-Person Shooters

The talk advocates taking a Diegetic approach to media. This means realising the new pervasive and networked nature of media that we use to consume. We must start viewing our creations, not as a single entity, but as part of a larger narrative universe of game, film, blog, mobile content and so on. An early example of this is the popular Matrix franchise; the story arc that begins in the short web film 'The Final Flight of the Osiris' continues into the PlayStation 2 game 'Enter the Matrix' and is picked up by the second film, 'Matrix Reloaded'.

The Den: The Develop Den Opinion Jam 2009

Most sessions at Develop aim to tell you how to make better games. This session is about making a better games industry. Or about explaining why the games industry is dead, anyway. Or why we need fewer women in games, or more lazy conversions. Or maybe the opposite? Anything goes, in short. Leave your preconceptions at the door but do collect a few handfuls of rotten fruit - nobody should be allowed to say that at a games industry conference without getting a tomato in the face, should they?

Break: Coffee Break sponsored by Testronic Labs

Break: Lunch

Break: Break

Break: Coffee Break sponsored by Testronic Labs

Break: Post Conference Drinks

Break: Coffee Break sponsored by Testronic Labs

Break: Lunch and One Life Left in The Den

One Life Left, Europe's only radio show about videogames, celebrates its 100th birthday live at Develop in the company of chat from development luminaries, music, nonsense and you. Ste Curran, Simon Byron and Ann Scantlebury host; fun, incompetence and tenously game-related content is (poorly) planned. The show will be broadcast on Resonance FM and podcast on iTunes the following Monday. Your presence, noise, and participation would be appreciated!

Break: Break

Break: Coffee Break sponsored by Testronic Labs

Break: Break

Audio: Welcome and Introduction

Develop Advisory Board member, John Broomhall introduces and highlights this year's Audio Track focus - "Real-time Audio".

Audio: Dolby in Games - Every Bit Amazing

Dolby Axon and Dolby PLIIz are two of the latest Dolby audio innovations for games. Dolby Axon is a high-quality 3D voice developed for all types of online games. You saw the pre-launch demo in 2008, now we'll be discussing the first implementations in Netdevils Jumpgate Evolution and Kingsofts Mission Against Terror. Dolby Pro Logic IIz introduces front height channels, creating a 7.1 or 9.1 playback system. This opens up the potential for true 3d effects such as helicopters, gunfire and rain overhead brining a whole new level of realism to gameplay.

Audio: Real-time Audio: Context Is Everything

Game audio always has been, and always will be, reliant upon real-time manipulation. The question is how much manipulation do we need and why? In this talk Young, the twice BAFTA-nominated talent behind the music and sound of LittleBigPlanet, will explore the history of game audio to establish how and why we've manipulated audio in the past in order to help understand many of the inherited methods and problems we now take for granted. Then, looking to the future, he will consider the advantages and disadvantages of emerging approaches and trends in real-time audio manipulation.

Audio: Guerrilla Tactics: Designing Audio for Killzone 2

The audio guru behind Killzone 2's acclaimed audio experience discusses his creative and technical approach to the project and what others can learn from Guerrilla's latest PS3 outing including an examination of its real-time environmental audio modelling using raycasts and ADSR.

Audio: Moore's More Story-Telling Power of Sound
The Eagerly Anticipated Sequel To Last Year's Highly Popular Session

With many attendees feeling he could easily have justified twice the time slot we gave him, feedback on Paul Moore's ‘Inspirational Sound Design' focused session last year was so positive that we asked him back - an Audio Track ‘first'.  So once again, with videogames increasingly drawing inspiration from the rich heritage of movie sound design, Develop invites a vastly experienced film practitioner to examine how sound can be used to underpin emotional narrative, and to explore the fact that some of the best film sound is about the power of ideas not technical prowess or high fidelity.  Moore will demonstrate how sound in the right hands can be a hugely effectively storyteller in its own right.

Audio:

Orchestral Soundtracks for Videogames: The Vital Do's & Don'ts For a Successful Orchestral Project

Sit back and luxuriate in wisdom wrought through 27 years' experience as Wilson plots a path through the avoidable pitfalls and signposts the tried and tested procedures that will assist in a smoother and more enjoyable journey to the 'final take' - as well as a considerable saving of both time and money.   A must-attend session for game composers, music supervisors, producers and executive producers alike covering budgeting, orchestrating/arranging, conductor/composer liaison and relationship, hiring orchestras/specialist players/singers, studio/engineer hire and set-up, scheduling tasks and timing, music preparation/printing parts/scores and not forgetting the actual recording sessions.

Audio: Painting With Sound: The Future of Procedural Audio

Farnell will explain why he believes game audio development is set to eventually move from a data-driven to a generative model in order to cope with the demand for assets and detailed real-time control of sounds.  He will reveal where enlightened developers are now and what changes new technology coming down the pipe will bring.  Discussing a range of topics including efficiency, next generation architectures, tool-chain development, creative roles, automatic content generation, aesthetic issues (realism vs impact) of synthetic sources, psychoacoustic data reduction, object modelling, advanced analysis and parameterisation, he will provide an overview of the problems, advantages and research agendas in procedural audio.

Audio: Gold Blend: Audio Code and Design Working Together for the Perfect Flavour

Rooney & Mayne explore the vital interaction between audio designers, audio programmers and the game team shedding light into the grey areas that can occur when different disciplines work together.  Who should lead the process and why?  Who is empowering whom to do what?  What is the real value of pre-visualisation work?  The session will examine what is the most efficient path to defining and realising the overall audio vision without wasting time creating really clever but unnecessary technology.

Audio: AUDIO KEYNOTE: The Runtime Studio in Your Console: The Inevitable Directionality of Game Audio

 

When it comes to adaptability, visuals are a decade ahead of audio in games.  3D assets, real-time lighting, shadows, texture maps, particle effects, and procedural animation, provide the processes for a highly adaptable visual environment.  By contrast, fully mixed wave files, common in the majority of games today, are like 2D art; you can only see one side.  They're big and clunky and typically pre-processed.  Yet there's a desire and need to hear sound and music from all perspectives, from many directions, in various surroundings, and in different contexts.  In order to effectively react and adapt to a non-fixed game timeline, audio content must be authored and kept in smaller component parts until runtime, when they are assembled and mixed.  So take your entire music studio and sound design suite, including mixers, synths, samplers, DSP, mics, speakers, etc; virtualize everything and make it adequately efficient, then drop it all into your game authoring environment.  Stir in a non-linear DAW, the right game ties, and some mixing intelligence, and there you have it; a complete run-time studio, ready with the flexibility to turn on a dime to meet the needs of the game.  

Audio: The 2009 Open Mic Session: What next?

Ultimately, what are we trying to achieve? What will be the key factors for the development of game audio in the future? Where are we going?  With free beer, possibly the best audio track se. An opportunity for all delegates and speakers to share their views and engage in debate on the future of game audio.  Self-opinionated ranting encouraged as usual.

Break: Break

Break: Lunch

Break: Coffee Break

Evolve: KEYNOTE: Resetting the Game

Dave Perry began his career where the industry got going, with side-scrolling games for consoles made for kids. Today your mum is as likely to play games as her grandson, the platform could be an iPhone, a console or a Facebook application, she could be paying through advertising, subscription, per download or via micro-transactions - and she's probably not playing a platform game. Where is she taking us? David Perry is one of the few luminaries in the business and commonly gets in trouble for speaking his mind, so get ready for a no-bull guide to the future.

Evolve: MOBILE KEYNOTE: Moving games to a new beat: The development of Nokia's Dance Fabulous

At last, mobile devices are getting the sort of personalized content that a take-everywhere device deserves. Nokia's Mark Ollila explains how the developer of Dance Fabulous incorporated a phone owner's music collection into its rhythm action gameplay and hooked into N-Gage Arena's passionate community of users to reach an untapped audience.

Evolve: Whose Quiz is it Anyway? Bringing User-Generated Content to the Buzz! Franchise

Buzz! was already one of the most social games on home consoles, but for the PlayStation 3 version Relentless took the game online and opened up the experience. More than a million questions have since been written and shared by Buzz! players, but what did the team do to manage all this user-generated content - and what did they learn for the future? Caspar Field and Dan Croucher reveal Relentless's experiences in bring the audience into the multi-million selling world of Buzz!

Evolve: Browser Based Games The Past, the Present, the Future

Browser-based games have become an increasingly important segment of the computer games,market. Companies like Gameforge (O-Game), Bigpoint (Seafight), and Jagex (Runescape),have established highly successful and long-running franchises in the market. Start-up game development house Splitscreen Studios was founded in 2008 with the goal to create the next generation of browser-based games. Splitscreen's first title, the science-fiction themed PIRATE GALAXY, was launched in early 2009. It is the first browser based game to sport full featured 3D graphics based on DirectX, and pioneers many concepts that go beyond what previous titles had to offer in regard to gameplay, usability, and business model.,,The talk analyses the evolution browser games, from the early beginnings to the current state of,affairs. Based on the lessons learned from existing titles, it provides insight into the technological, conceptual, and economical decisions behind PIRATE GALAXY. It also gives an outlook on trends and potential future development of the genre.

Evolve: 20 Great Innovations in Casual, Social and Mobile Games That You Should Steal

The pace of innovation in the social, mobile and casual games industries has been more rapid than ever in the last year, thanks to the hundreds of developers debuting new features and technologies in their games. Successful innovations spread like wildfire, too. This talk will present some of the key innovations from these new frontiers of gaming from the last 12 months, explaining why they're groundbreaking, how they've boosted games and delighted gamers, and examining how they can be used in other titles - including those on console and PC.

 

Evolve:

10 Things Nobody Tells You About Digital Distribution and Self-Publishing That You Must Understand to Succeed

Thanks to digital distribution and the new online marketplaces, veteran developer Team17 is self-publishing again after a 10-year hiatus. Many studios think they can go it alone, warns its studio head Martyn Brown, but few have the connections or processes to succeed. What are the barriers to market that self-publishers face? What practical skills and knowledge does your studio need to master to succeed? How important is IP, and what's your plan to stand out in the crowd?

Evolve: The European Free to Play Market

A new market is emerging all around the world. Free to play games, online, multiplayer games available for free and monetised through a premium subscription or sales of virtual items, originally came from Asia. Over there, the model has been very successful, to the point that it currently dominates the PC Gaming market. That new model has been around in Europe long enough to tell if works. This lecture covers the market of the Free 2 Play games in Europe, the key successful games, the ones that are known as well as the ones less known in the industry.

Evolve: How Today's Social Networks Will Change How You Make, Play and Sell Games Tomorrow

Social networks like Facebook have taken the world by storm in the past few years with over 500m monthly active users across them in the west alone. Social games - or games designed for play with friends on social networks - have experienced explosive growth as a result with tens of millions of consumers playing them every day. Social games are right at the center of broader industry trends like free-to-play, games-as-a-service, social game design, user generated content and digital distribution. This presentation from one of the largest and fastest growing social games companies will share how social networks are transforming how games are played, made and sold and offer some predictions of how the game industry might change as a result. Examples and play- and distribution data are used liberally throughout.

Evolve: Panel: Crossing Over in a World Gone Casual

Even a decade ago, casual game pioneers seemed to be mining a niche, as the big games companies dreamt about Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Today Nintendo's casual-focused Wii and DS consoles are dominant, while the most successful of the early mover casual companies rival the established games companies for size and reach. With the traditional games industry also following casual gaming into digital distribution even as the latter push onto consoles via XBLA and PSN, is the world turning casual a threat or an opportunity for casual game developers and publishers? How are they differentiating their products, and what do the two sides of the industry still have to learn from each other?

Evolve:

The Xbox LIVE Indie Games Platform: Community Games for Fun and Profit

Microsoft's open-to-all Xbox LIVE Indie Games platform (recently renamed from Xbox LIVE Community Games) has rapidly evolved into a passionate online society of game creators. Fiercely creative individuals, micro-startups, in-house prototyping groups and those who are simply curious - the low barrier to entry means anyone can have a go. Community websites have sprung up to support the format, and the channel now has sufficient momentum to attract teams of seasoned industry veterans.

 

This presentation will give you the information you need to get started building a community game or application, as well as best practices for delivering compelling experiences which will get noticed by the community of users who now have the chance to rate your work using the new community ranking feature.

 

With the recent release of XNA Game Studio 3.1, several compelling new features have come to the platform such as Avatar support, Xbox Live Party support, video playback and more. These new technologies allow the Indie Game creator to deliver content which is on a par with commercially developed games. The presentation will provide an overview of these new features and guidance on how to leverage them.

Evolve: A Game is a Game is a Game

‘Casual' games are killing the market for ‘real' games, you know.  They're dumbing down players, diverting money away from well-loved franchises and cluttering up the release schedules of publishers who should know better.  They annoy fanboys.  They don't exist on ‘proper' platforms (though you can bet they'll reach them eventually) and ruin it for everyone.  They have no redeeming factors.

Evolve: Panel: Opportunities and Hurdles for Mobile Gaming

The mobile games storefront is changing. For years the big barrier has been the operators, but for how much longer will this be the case? Do manufacturer-owned marketplaces such as Nokia's N-Gage and OVI and Apple's iPhone App store improve the situation for mobile games developers and publishers or make it worse? Should we be abandoning walled gardens altogether as the mobile Internet finally comes of age?

Evolve: Infectious: How Viral Games Capture an Audience of Millions

The creators of Escape the Fear, the all-conquering Lily Allen game described by EMI as "the promo video of the digital age", share their vast experience of the browser-based viral/casual game market. As well as providing key insights on everything from designing a game around a client's brand to understanding player demographics and the differences between viral and traditional console game development, the session will conclude with a look at the oncoming collision between traditional and casual games.

Evolve: Panel: The Fight For Playtime: What Do Social Networking Sites Have To Offer The Games Industry?

Facebook and Myspace each have over 100m unique users. The users of these sites are not only coordinating their leisure time through them, but spending their leisure time on them, and even playing games on them. What does that mean for the games industry? How can traditional games and game companies engage with the social networks - their users, their platforms, and the core gamers already using them? Are Facebookers casual-gamers-in-waiting? This panel invites representatives from top social networks to explain what gaming means for their products, and how they can support your efforts as games developers.

Evolve: Case Study: A Browser-Based MMORG on Every Desktop

Why take one monetization method to the online party when you could take two? Jim McNiven, CEO of viral game veteran Kerb Games, reveals the in-and-outs of creating a browser-based MMORPG. What are the advantages of going browser-based, and what are the pitfalls? Do micro-payments lead to a mini-income? How can brand sponsorship round off the business model?

Evolve: Launch Your Game Across Multiple Mobile and Social Platforms Without Killing Your Team

As a developer, it's tough to simultaneously launch a game across multiple platforms. This session provides practical advice so that teams can produce quality titles without blowing their budget. Spanning iPhone, Android, J2ME and Facebook, examples are provided of what can and should be reused, as well as the additional work that should be prepared for.

Evolve: Panel: After the iPhone Honeymoon:Where Next for Apple's Mobile?

Modest fortunes have been made and heads have been lost over Apple's revolutionary platform. A year on from App Store's introduction, we've gathered together several leading iPhone developers to hear what's gone right and wrong, and more importantly what happens next? With SDK 3.0 bringing a host of new features to the iPhone, a superior new device likely this summer to lead to the platform's first taste of fragmentation and App Store pricing and marketing still a black art, there's everything to play for.

Evolve: How Social Networks and Emerging Platforms and Technologies Will Re-shape Gaming's Oldest Genre

While yearly updates keep many sports games locked in the living room, the rapid uptake of social networking and the surge in new mobile technologies give us the opportunity to take them into completely new territory.  From Fantasy Football leagues to the Golf.com Pro Challenge, sports games ensure that self-professed non-gamers spend more time playing games than they might think; taking a cue from some of the recent work Gusto has done in this field, the session explores how we can take advantage of Facebook, GPS, the iPhone et al to create new gaming experiences and grow that audience further.

Evolve: Practical Applications of Online Convergence

Everyone is talking about convergence but what are the practical implications of this for core developers in the online world? How can game developers benefit commercially from bringing their talents to bear on the web?,,For the past 3 years Mediatonic has been working with casual and core publishers such as EA, Sega, Nintendo and Popcap to bring their content to the web in innovative new forms in addition to developing and publishing our own IP. ,,We share the lessons we've learnt with case studies, statistics and practical advice on developing content for the web along with precisely why this makes commercial sense.

Evolve: KEYNOTE: The Long Tail and Games: How Digital Distribution Changes Everything. Maybe.

You've heard it all before: digital distribution and the Long Tail are going to fundamentally change the way that platform holders, publishers, and developers do business. It will decrease the importance of hit games, make niche titles wildly profitable, replace marketers with recommendation engines, and finally give quality content the success it so richly deserves... maybe. This lecture will explore the current realities of the Long Tail, and how you can succeed given those realities.

Break: Coffee Break sponsored by Testronic Labs

Break: Lunch

Break: Coffee Break sponsored by Testronic Labs

Break: Break

Games Edu: Introduction and Welcome

Session description coming soon.

Games Edu: KEYNOTE: Building Institutional Relationships

Building solid and long lasting relationships between institutions is a difficult task. TIGA is taking a structured approach to helping development studios, universities and other organisations achieve strong links through the Play Together program, run in conjunction with NESTA.

Games Edu: KEYNOTE: Channel 4 Education and Indie Games 

Channel 4's educational games: learning in leisure time. How Channel 4 is throwing educational material into UK teens' entertainment time - and why they like it.

Games Edu: Oh The Cowman and Farmer Should be Friends

Why the games industry and academics should be closer, but not too close. This talk will examine some of the conflicts between publisher, developer and universities, as well as examine the role of games lecturers.

Games Edu: Blitz Open Days

Presenting four years of Blitz Open Days for students and lecturers as a case study, the talk will look at what goes into running them, what we have learned from them and where we might be taking them in the future.

Games Edu:

Academic Partnerships with SCEE

Little Big Devkits: An update from Sarah from SCEE about what has been happening in the world of PlayStations in education...

Games Edu: Skillset Sessions - Introduction

Games Edu: The Global Game Jam

The Global Game Jam has been a runaway success, with this years event having over 1600 participants and producing over 300 games. Susan will talk about what enabled the event to take off in such a way.

Games Edu: Centre of Excellence for Games, Abertay

In February this year the Scottish Funding Council announced the creation of the Scottish Centre for Excellence in Computer Games Education at the University of Abertay Dundee. This presentation will discuss the aims and aspirations for the Centre, and ways in which it hopes to engage with the education sector and the computer games industry to share opportunities, information and best practice.

Games Edu: X48

Portfolio events are key to improving design and development skills. X48 brought student teams from all over the UK to the university of Derby in order compete with each other, using XNA to produce a complete game from scratch in under 48 hours.

Games Edu: Games Fleadh

Ambitious game design students are filling the generation gap, highlighted by games industry. At Games Fleadh event the XNA Ireland Challenge, game industry professionals have been blown away by students modern adaptations of classic games.This presentation and demonstration examines how budding game designers and developers are playing a leading role and teaching us some new tricks.

Games Edu: Roundtable Discussions

Games Edu: Roundtable Summary

Break: Coffee Break

Break:

Lunch

Break: Coffee Break