Game Developer Confrence 2008

Sunday, March 2nd, 2008

Well as some of you may know I used make games back in the 90′s then switched to web development from 2000 to 2007, and have recently jumped back into creating games again. I was recently at the Game Developers Conference here in my home down of San Francisco and wanted to write up a small preview of what I saw.

Why games again you ask? Well as some of you may know I love technology and was able to work with some of the top 3d game engines back in the 90′s and now have a chance once again to work on projects pushing the boundaries of game development.

What did I see at this years GDC 2008? Well for once think I went to a lot of talks and sessions one of them being about BioShock and its story, I thought this was quite a good session, and it covered the bases of empowering player to care about your stupid story. Well thats the title of the talk that Kenneth Levine gave at GDC this year. I don’t have my notes in front of me since I left them at work but to recap they really scaled down what BioShock was originally. They wanted to span a great time period but scaled it down and also scaled back the number of characters in the game. One thing that stood out was the evolution of the little sister.

Pictured below is a few slides from the session, I missed one concept and sorry for the blurry photos but I didn’t want to be rude and use a flash during someones talk.

evolution of the little sister         BioShock’s Big Daddy

You can it changed quite a bit from the original design, and they eventually settled on the little girl, which worked out well since they Big Daddy was sort of a father figure type of monster that would protect the little sister like it was his daughter.

Next up…

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PS3 Lair GDC Presentation

Wednesday, March 21st, 2007

One of my good friends who works for Factor5 spoke at the latest Game Developer Conference (GDC) about “Creating Next-Generation Materials for Lair”. This presentation gives you a bit of incite on the next generation of game development and the directions the top developers are going in order to create great visuals for you gamers.
lair.jpg

Screen Grab from Presentation

This is more of a technical presentation geared towards artist but if you have any interest in game development its worth checking out the PDF that Matthias Worch released recently.
1818properlair.jpg

BTW this screen shot the full 1080p was hidden somewhere in the presentation.

Links:

Lair GDC Presentation Page
Factor 5 – Developers of Lair
Lair HD Trailer

Keep and Eye on this game to hit your PS3 some time this year!