GDC Online Reveals All-Day Blizzard, Google, Unity Tutorials

Author: by Staff

GDC Online organizers have revealed full-day sponsored events for the October show in Austin, including Google, Unity Technologies, and an unprecedented Blizzard writing/design showcase. Taking place Monday, October 10 through Thursday, October 13, 2011 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas, GDC Online continues as the leading worldwide event dedicated solely to discussing the development and business trends surrounding connected games -- including casual titles, MMOs, virtual worlds, and social networking games. These full-day events will run alongside the show's Main Conference, and will offer a comprehensive look at the design and programming philosophies of these three powerhouse companies. As seen in the event's Schedule Builder, the following are three sponsored events to be held at GDC Online 2011. - As part of the Design track, World of Warcraft studio Blizzard Entertainment will host a GDC Online-exclusive special one-off tutorial aimed at designers and writers, "The War of Worldcraft: Developing Franchise Narrative in the Transmedia Age." The full day of content sees Blizzard Entertainment's writers and story developers, "the creative minds behind Diablo, StarCraft, and Warcraft", focusing on various elements of the company's hit franchises, and kicked off by an introduction from the company's VP of creative direction Chris Metzen. Other sessions include a panel on the "developmental payoff of creating narrative content in ancillary and or/licensed media" from the company's Micky Neilson & James Waugh, and a two-part design masterclass from World Of Warcraft's lead quest designer Dave Kosak. Other sessions include a discussion between Chris Metzen & game and transmedia writing veteran Flint Dille (Transformers, Chronicles Of Riddick) on "the peaks and valleys of creating - and sustaining - a living, breathing franchise universe", and a final panel featuring all of the senior Blizzard veterans. For more information on this special event, please look at the GDC Online Schedule Builder. - In addition, web giant Google will host its own sponsored video game-centric "Google Developer Day," featuring a number of talks dedicated to the company's tools and technologies, including Chrome, WebGL, the Google App Engine, and more, with full details newly available. Confirmed lectures include the company's Christian Schalk on 'How To Build Kick Ass Social Games in the Cloud', Gregg Tavares on 'WebGL Rocks. Why you should be using WebGL', Colt McAnlis on 'Native Client is Ready For Games! Are You?', and Lilli Thompson on 'Cross Platform Game Programming with PlayN', among others. - Also offering a programming-centric deep dive for a full day is Unity Technologies' "Unity Track Day," featuring a series of presentations and workshops surrounding the company's popular Unity engine. These sessions will span introductory material to more advanced topics aimed at seasoned professionals. Including partner companies such as OpenFeint and Mixamo, as well as Unity's Brian Bruning on 'Distribution with Union', more details for the all-day event are available via the GDC Online website. The day joins a fourth, separate GameSpy Technology tutorial day devoted to "building iconic online games", with more details to be confirmed soon. In addition to this trio of sponsored events, GDC Online recently unveiled a handful of new sessions within the Main Conference, featuring talks on Ubisoft Blue Byte's The Settlers Online, Mind Candy's Moshi Monsters, and a panel on raising venture capital. Overall, featured speakers for GDC Online encompass major online firms such as Riot Games, Zynga, Nexon, CCP, Gazillion, PopCap, RockYou, Playdom, BioWare Austin, and many more. As a notable reminder, discounted early registration pricing for GDC Online passes, offering discounts of up to 40% on regular pass prices, will remain in effect until September 1. For more information on GDC Online as the event takes shape, please visit the official GDC Online website, or subscribe to updates from the new GDC Online-specific news page via Twitter, Facebook, or RSS. GDC Online is owned and operated by UBM TechWeb, as is this website.