GDC 2012 Debuts 200+ Sessions, Including Gears 3, Ninja Theory Talks

Author: by Staff

Game Developers Conference 2012 organizers have debuted 200+ GDC sessions in its Schedule Builder, with new highlights featuring a behind the scenes look at Gears of War 3, a breakdown of our psychological need to play, and Ninja Theory's approach to motion capture. The 26th GDC show will take place Monday, March 5 through Friday, March 9 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, and the Main Conference (March 7th-9th) offers six tracks covering key disciplines in the games industry, including Audio, Business, Marketing & Management, Game Design, Production, Programming, and Visual Arts. The following lectures are the newest highlights for GDC 2012's Main Conference: - In the Visual Arts track, Epic Games artist Francois Antoine will detail how a very small art team managed to create all of the effects for the studio's big-budget shooter, Gears of War 3 (pictured). The talk, dubbed, "Production Culture: How Two and a Half Artists Completed the FX for Gears of War 3," will provide an inside look at Epic's approach to game production, exploring how it affects nearly all elements of the game development process, from hiring, to tool development and beyond. - In the Game Design track, the always enthusiastic Jason VandenBerghe (creative director at Ubisoft on Far Cry 3) will host "The 5 Domains of Play: Applying Psychology's Big 5 Motivation Domains to Games." Drawing from research and scientific evidence, VandenBerghe will examine the five psychological traits linked to motivation, and explore the ways developers can use this information to improve their approach to game design, playtesting, and reaching out to new audiences. - In this week's second Visual Arts lecture highlight, Ninja Theory chief creative officer Tameem Antoniades will pick apart the motion capture process his studio uses to create believable in-game cinematics in titles like Enslaved and the upcoming Devil May Cry. The talk, "Performance Capture: A Creative Primer," will detail the procedure from beginning to end, offering tips on how to best work with mocap actors, direct virtual scenes, and more. In addition to the above sessions, GDC organizers previously announced new Summit talks, featuring Blizzard on StarCraft II localization, a series of mini AI postmortems, and Triple Town creator Daniel Cook on new online game genres. Show organizers also announced Main Conference talks including the first ever Western appearance of Space Invaders Infinity Gene creator Reisuke Ishida, BioWare on the Dragon Age franchise, and an audio session examining both Journey and Monaco. For more information on these or other sessions at GDC 2012, please take a look at the event's recently-launched Schedule Builder, which will list all public lectures and additions between now and the March 2012 show. To ensure you receive the latest news about GDC 2012 as the event takes shape, please subscribe to updates from the GDC news page via Twitter, Facebook, or RSS. GDC is owned and operated by Gamasutra parent company UBM TechWeb.