GDC Online 2011 Reveals Riot Games, EverQuest II, Gamification Talks

Author: by Staff

GDC Online has debuted a new batch of lectures for the October show in Austin, featuring speakers from Riot Games on iterative tool creation, SOE on introducing streaming to EverQuest II, and Bunchball on the essence of gamification. 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. This year's Main Conference will include tracks on Business & Marketing, Customer Experience, Design, Production, and Programming, as well as a sponsored track on Monetization. As seen in the event's Schedule Builder, the following lectures are highlights from this year's Main Conference: - In the show's Programming track, Riot Games' senior gameplay engineer Andy Woo and senior producer Travis George will host "Putting the Plane Together Midair," a talk detailing the ongoing development process behind the studio's smash hit League of Legends. Woo and George will go over the studio's process for iteratively developing their tools, while simultaneously using those tools to ship projects and support an active online game. - Also in the Programming track is a lecture dubbed, "EverQuest II Extended: Streaming a Non-Streaming Game," in which Joshua Kriegshauser, technical director at Sony Online Entertainment, will explain how EverQuest II adopted an online streaming system for a game originally designed for a standard, file-based install. Noting SOE's assumptions and lessons learned when retroactively implementing this streaming system, Kriegshauser will teach attendees the ins and outs of implementing an online streaming system in games designed without that infrastructure in mind. - Finally, in the show's Business & Marketing track, Molly Kittle of gamification company Bunchball will host a session titled, "Your Users Just Want to Play: Learning the Basics of Gamification." Here, the company's director of client services will clarify the increasingly-complex definition of gamification, boiling the concept down to its essentials. Kittle will outline the fundamental elements of a successful gamification campaign, and will explain why "true gamification isn't just points and badges, but it is designing a campaign that provides users with recognition, rewards, status and achievement – and the desire to come back for more." In addition to the Main Conference, GDC Online will also feature the ever popular Game Narrative Summit, as well as Summits on Smartphone & Tablet Games and Virtual Items, all of which will host specialized sessions on some of the most vital emerging areas in games. Within the last few weeks, GDC Online also debuted Main Conference sessions from companies like CCP and Zynga, as well as talks from the Game Narrative Summit from Eidos Montreal, Microsoft, and more. The show's organizers have also unveiled the ,a href=http://www.gdconline.com/news/2011/07/gdc_organizers_debut_gdc_play_.html>new GDC Play initiative, which will allow select exhibitors to showcase their games at a special GDC Play Pavilion on the show floor. 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.