I know people who are highly educated and use their brains on levels of analytical depth that are alien to me. On a daily basis they use vocabulary no ordinary person of daily grind has to face. The thing is, they also seem somewhat detached on a personal level of communication. Everything is questioned, referred [...]
I am met by a large, bodybuilder-type fellow sometimes referred to as “The Arms.” More conventionally, he is known as Andrea Pessino, the Vice President of Technology for Ready at Dawn Studios. Andrea seems genuinely uncomfortable with the title (VP of Technology, that is) since he and the other principals at Ready at Dawn would [...]
The job title “producer” has no consistent meaning in video game development. Ask anyone who works in the industry and you can be sure they’ll have their own unique idea of what a producer is and what he or she does. To some, “producer” is a title worthy of great respect and admiration. To others, [...]
If you get a hundred game writers into a room (and I’m not entirely sure that there are a hundred game writers), the one thing they will agree on is that writers are often brought into the development process too late. I hear about far too many scenarios in which the developers have all but [...]
Is Gearbox your first entrepreneurial venture? Gearbox Software isn’t my first company. Now that I think about it, it isn’t my third, either. I had my hands in a number of things earlier in life. One of my earliest and best lessons in leadership, management and corporate organization occurred when a friend and I were [...]
Kicking off the first talks at this year’s GDC Europe, Ubisoft’s Executive Producer Christopher Schmitz and BlueByte’s Senior Producer Benedikt Grindel offered their take on the critical success factors of game production.
Ten years is a long time for a game engine to survive. Bungie has managed to ship four (and soon five) games based off of the Halo engine. In this talk, Mat will go over one of the critical components of that engine, the tag system. The tag system is how everyone at Bungie thinks [...]
How does a game designer fall deeply, passionately in love with their field again? How does one come to believe that the game mechanic is more powerful than photography, paint and the written word? Veteran game designer Brenda Brathwaite chronicles her journey on this path. Returning to her native paper prototyping, Brathwaite started work upon [...]
Many online games rely on leveling up, stat increases, and item unlocking for the carrots that retain players. Sony Online Entertainment launched Free Realms as one of the first, large casual MMOs, and learned a lot in the first year about what motivates casual players to play, return, and spend money. This presentation presents examples [...]
How Nine Women Can Have A Baby In A Month: Making the Most of Multiple Cores Efficient Asynchronous Engine Design for the PS3 and 360 In the hectic, time-pressured world of game engine creation, engine architecture for new hardware starts from the most readily available solutions. This has lead many developers to build current generation [...]
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