GDC 2009 Late Additions Include Ono, Journo-To-Designer Panel, Interaction Innovations

Organizers of this month's Game Developers Conference have revealed notable, late-breaking new talks from Capcom' Yoshinori Ono on Street Fighter IV, MIT's David Merrill on new forms of interaction, and a panel of journalists-turned-developers on crossing over to another side of the industry. Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono will present a talk called "IV Style: Returning to the Roots of a Fighting Game Classic," discussing how the Capcom team approached the design and development process of the anticipating fighting game -- and promising "a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse into the inner workings of Japanese development." Also confirmed is "Physical Play: Siftables and Other New Forms and Formats for Interaction, Collaboration and Creativity" from David Merrill of the MIT Media Lab, who will be showcasing his innovative 'Siftables' technology, "cookie-sized, computerized tiles you can stack and shuffle in your hands." Over his entire lecture, Merrill will give an overview of his work "building new systems for physical, collaborative and multimodal interaction with digital content," asking the question, "What opportunities will arise from systems that make digital interaction more physical and less screen-based?" Finally, a panel of one game journalist and five journalists-turned-game-developers, including Insomniac's Bryan Intihar, Bungie's Luke Smith, 2K Games' Jason Bergman and Capcom's Kraig Kujawa will present "But What I Really Want to Do is Make Games," relating their experiences in radically changing their job descriptions within the industry. Game Developers Conference 2009 takes place at the Moscone Center from March 23rd to 27th, and more information on the event and registration is available at the official GDC website.