Round Up: CellFactor, Bill Roper @ GCDC 2006, Guild Wars Live

Today's Gamasutra round-up includes news of CellFactor: Revolution announced at QuakeCon, Bill Roper to deliver the keynote address at GCDC 2006, and the first Guild Wars Live event to be hosted by PAX, as well as the latest GameSetWatch posts, Serious Games Source news, product news, and Gamasutra job postings. - Artificial Studios and Immersion Games jointly announced that CellFactor: Revolution, a new physics-based first-person shooter for the PC, will be present at QuakeCon 2006 in Dallas. In addition, the game will be shipped this December. Jeremy Stieglitz, president of Artificial Studios and Manju Hegde, co-founder and CEO of Ageia Technologies, Inc., will demonstrate the game during QuakeCon on Saturday. CellFactor first debuted as a technology demonstration at GDC 2006 and has since evolved to offer five fully-destructible levels with new gameplay features. “CellFactor: Revolution fuses unpredictable psychic-powered warfare with awesome effects to produce a first-person shooter experience unlike any other,” said Stieglitz. “Everyday we continue to discover new ways to harness the extensive capabilities of the PhysX processor, which opens up a whole new range of gameplay scenarios.” - Organizers of the upcoming European game developer conference, GCDC, due to be held in Leipzig from August 21 to 23, announced that Bill Roper will deliver a keynote speech at the event. In his keynote at the event, Roper will address new technologies in the development process. Before he founded the game development studio Flagship Studios in 2003, he was Vice-President of Blizzard North and Director of Blizzard Entertainment. He is currently working with his team at Flagship Studios on the eagerly anticipated PC action role-playing game Hellgate: London. Roper joins British developer Peter Molyneux, who was announced in July as another keynote speaker for the event. More information concerning the event, including conference program and sponsorship opportunities, can be found on the official website. - Organizers of the popular webcomic Penny Arcade today announced that next month's Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) convention in Washington State will play host to the first ever Guild Wars Live Event. ArenaNet and NCsoft will sponsor the Guild War Factions battle between the Luxons and Kurzicks at PAX, which takes place in Bellevue, Washington August 25-27th. In addition PAX attendees can compete for more than $10,000 in cash and prizes by playing Guild Wars at the PAX 10K Arena. "The Guild Wars Live Event is a one-of-a-kind competition and every PAX attendee gets to play," said Penny Arcade's events manager Mike Fehlauer. "PAX is growing so quickly because the industry is really bringing its best offerings to the show. At the Expo developers and the hardcore players that drive this industry can directly interact like never before, and the Guild Wars Live Event is a great example of one of those unique events gamers will love." - The latest updates on Gamasutra sister weblog GameSetWatch include a look at the Drow race in Atari's MMORPG Dungeons and Dragons Online, a collection of links covering odd arcade titles and virtual worlds in China, and video game ads featuring games with terrible names. - Also updated today: Serious Games Source news, including the content line-up for Games for Health 2006, plus product news concerning Freeverse using OTEE's Unity Game Engine, as well as the latest Gamasutra job postings, featuring openings from Blue Fang Games, Day 1 Studios, Destineer, Electronic Arts, Midway Games, and Planet Moon Studios.