SAN FRANCISCO — The Game Developers Conference (www.gdconf.com) will take place from March 5-9 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. Early Bird rates offer a savings up to 35 percent on full pass prices, but the deal ends tomorrow, February 2.
Sessions this year include Heavy Rain creator David Cage discussing virtual actors and giving the first public demo of the new technology his studio Quantic Dreams is using. Game design legends Cliff Bleszinski, Sid Meier, Peter Molyneux and John Romero will come together for a discussion on the key games that have and continue to influence them in the panel “Forgotten Tales Remembered: The Games That Inspired Leading Innovators.” Naughty Dog lead game designer Richard Lemarchand will return to host “GDC Microtalks,” a one-hour session featuring ten prominent speakers with a variety of points-of-view. This year they will consider the theme “Playing for Time.”
In total, more than 400 sessions will be held during the show. A complete schedule can be found online at: http://schedule.gdconf.com.
The main conference begins on Wednesday, March 7, at 9:00am with a “Flash Forward” session, which will give all of the main conference speakers the opportunity to grab attendees’ attention by taking the stage for just :60 each to give a brief overview of their session.
GDC is also introducing a new format for its keynote sessions. Rather than one central main conference keynote, GDC will feature six Track Keynotes, one for each discipline on which the main conference tracks focus. They will feature industry luminaries like Zynga COO John Schappert, Plants Vs. Zombies creator George Fan, Bungie lead engineer and favorite GDC speaker Brian Sharp.
The Tracks include:
- Audio Track: “Build That Wall: Creating the Audio for Bastion,” Darren Korb, Audio Director, Supergiant Games
- Business, Marketing & Management Track: “Why “Free” and Cross-Platform Is The Future of Gaming,” John Schappert, Chief Operating Officer, Zynga
- Game Design Track: “How I Got My Mom to Play Through Plants Vs. Zombies,” George Fan, Senior Game Designer, PopCap
- Production Track: “Concrete Practices to be a Better Leader: Framing & Intention,” Brian Sharp, Lead Engineer, Bungie
- Programming Track: “Designing a Technology Strategy for a Large Publisher,” Julian Merceron, Worldwide Technology Director, Square Enix
- Visual Arts Track: “The Art of Diablo 3,” Christian Lichtner, Art Director, Blizzard Entertainment