GDC 2011 Adds Deadly Premonition, Toy Story 3, Rock Band 3 Lectures

Author: by Staff

Organizers of the 2011 Game Developers Conference have debuted a rare Western talk from Deadly Premonition creator Swery, plus new lectures on Rock Band 3's Pro Guitar mode and Pixar's Toy Story 3. As the overall session list for the February/March event further expands, organizers are revealing brand new Main Conference session announcements just debuting on the website. These talks are part of GDC 2011's Main Conference, which takes place at the Moscone Center from Wednesday March 2nd to Friday March 4th, 2011 during the pre-eminent, San Francisco-based event, featuring discipline-specific Tracks dedicated to programming, design, art, audio, business and management, and production. Some of the top new lectures added to the GDC roster include the following: - In his first-ever major Western talk, Access Games' Hidetaka 'Swery' Suehiro will present a talk on his work making cult console title Deadly Premonition, explaining "his unique method of architecting games" with reference to the polarizing action game. The in-depth talk, which will be simultaneously translated from Swery's native Japanese, "touches upon the seven points to check [to see] if your game's storyline might already be dead", also focusing on the detail and interactivity which made Deadly Premonition a fascinating, self-avowedly flawed title. - Another notable just debuted talk is 'Prototype through Production: Pro Guitar in Rock Band 3', presented by Harmonix's Jason Booth and Sylvain Dubrofsky, in which the duo present: "How do you go from an insane idea like 'Lets teach non-guitarists how to play a real guitar in Rock Band 3?' to a genre changing product in 20 months?' The Harmonix staffers "will detail the process used to rapidly prototype this concept and evaluate ideas, through initial prototypes to user testing and final production", revealing how the team "applied traditional gameplay metaphors and techniques to the process of teaching" along the way. - Also recently confirmed is a second Pixar talk, 'Story Images and Character Arcs', from the legendary Bay Area animation company's Matthew Luhn, who will discuss "how you can unlock forgotten images and memories to inspire new stories and characters." Luhn will also analyze "why, or why not, you may need a character arc for your characters, and if so, how to create successful character arcs to compliment your stories", using the new toys from Pixar's Toy Story 3 to demonstrate the use of character arcs, and break down the inspiration behind the new toys and how they were conceived. Also notable and new from the over 200 thus-far confirmed lectures are talks from a Cryptic Studios art director on the character customization in games including Champions Online, plus Area/Code game design veteran Frank Lantz with a fascinating talk called 'Life and Death and Middle Pair: Go, Poker and the Sublime', and Tak Fung discussing innovative iPhone app Epic Win, which "uses the concepts of social games in order to hook people into carrying out their everyday tasks." At the forefront of game development, Game Developers Conference -- part of the UBM TechWeb Game Network, as is this website -- continues to deliver the most pertinent and informative updates in digital entertainment, with a host of GDC 2011 Main Conference and Summit content announcements to come over the next few weeks. Game Developers Conference 2011 -- the 25th iteration of the industry-leading show -- will be held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco from February 28th to March 4th, and early registration is open until January 24th. For more information on all aspects of the show, visit the official GDC 2011 website.