GDC 2008 Reveals EA, Spielberg's Boom Blox, Fable 2 Features

Author: by Staff

As part of his latest Director's Cut post, GDC 2008 executive director Jamil Moledina has revealed new talks from EA's Lou Castle on its Wii exclusive Steven Spielberg collaboration Boom Blox, and Peter Molyneux on Fable 2's 'Big Three Features' as part of the February conference's line-up. The 'Director's Cut' section of the weblog is slated to run regularly leading up to the GDC 2008 show itself (part of CMP, as is Gamasutra), and Moledina's second entry reads, in part: "One of the things we're seeing more is the interest in developers to present theory and example in the context of an unreleased game, thereby advancing the edge of GDC's learning forward several months into the future. This collision of past, present, and future is evident in Peter Molyneux's talk, Fable 2 The Big Three Features Revealed, just posted moments ago. As you may recall, Peter revealed at GDC 07 the introduction of man's best friend into the experience of his new epic. However, as many of you know, Peter is an incredibly thoughtful and prescient creator, with both the genre-creating Populous and Black & White under his belt. Given that background, he has a collection of ideas that he's looking forward to presenting. Furthermore, he will present the design concepts live, in-game, to provide the level of proof one gets from a traditional GDC postmortem. Another example is one that represents a running theme at GDC, which is the collaboration between film and games. When Neil Young announced that EALA would be working with Steven Spielberg, it signaled a change in the landscape of Hollywood collaboration. By bringing AAA talent from both worlds together, this partnership has the potential to produce experiences that combine the best of both worlds. The first result of this collaboration -- a Wii puzzle game titled Boom Blox -- is almost here, and executive producer Lou Castle has graciously agreed to share his experiences co-developing the game, in a session titled Creating Steven Spielberg's Boom Blox. Yet, Lou is an extraordinary creative leader in his own right, having created the Command & Conquer series, and we got even more confirmation of it at our stealth studio head event, GDC Prime. We asked him to share some of the zero-documentation, heavy prototyping, and failure-friendly principles that resulted in a highly efficient design and production process. We think this session will be well worth your time." Game Developers Conference 2008 itself is scheduled for February 18th-22nd 2008 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco - more information is available at the official show website.