Note: Speaker submissions are now closed!
Austin GDC 2008 Tracks & Topics
"Evolve to Win"
The theme for this year’s audio track is “Breaking Out of the Loop.”
The Audio track for the Austin GDC is designed to elevate game audio development education, strengthen the community, and foster professional growth of the individual. By providing advanced game audio sessions within a social environment, this track strives to push the boundaries of game audio development.
The advisory board is looking for session topics that address innovation, evolution, and modifying old habits. Submissions for the audio track need to be for sessions at an intermediate or advanced level. Submitted sessions that are too basic or targeted for beginners will not be considered.
The following are suggestions for submission topics, however, your proposal does not need to be limited to one of these subjects.
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The Art of Audio Implementation: Share new techniques, unveil your latest systems, and dazzle the audience with your implementation savvy.
- The State and Future of Interactive / Adaptive Music: Is adaptive music evolving or devolving? How have changes in technology affected the music experience? A look at where we are today and where we might want to be heading.
- Films Are Not Games: Let’s stop trying to design game audio to be more like film, when the nature of game design gives us many more creative opportunities.
Special Session - Iron Composer Texas, Year 1:
"Prepare for Battle!"
Three game audio guys/gals will be selected from the pool of volunteers by a Mysterious Mystical Traditional Texas Process. Those three will compete LIVE to see who will be Iron Composer Texas during a 90-minute session at Austin GDC. Three months before the event, each participant will be given a description of The Mystery Game. During those three months, they will prepare a keyboard full of sounds and music. On the day of the session, each participant will have a turn at playing his/her prepared sound set LIVE, while audience volunteers play the game.
But there is one twist: The Secret Ingredient!!!!!!!
Who will win???? Maybe there will be cake for the winner????
To participate, send an email with your full contact information, industry credits and a short bio to Evelyn Donis by April 14. In the email subject line type Iron Composer Texas. If selected, you will be contacted and provided with the necessary information to compete. Good luck!
The theme for this year’s online games track is “Breaking Down Barriers.”
Online gaming can be a global business opportunity for just about any product…if you have the right information at the right time. A barrier to entry to a region or a particular group of gamers will often be self-imposed by a developer and publisher because of a simple lack of information.
The experienced publishers and developers in our sessions and panels will help you break down those barriers by concentrating on two main areas of discussion:
Regions: The differences and similarities of the three main regional markets – Europe, North America and Asia – and the vital considerations in delivering and marketing a product in those regions
Gamer Groups: The differences between the three main gamer groups in each of those regions – Hard Core, Middle-Core and Casual – and the vital considerations in delivering and marketing a product to one or more of those groups
Player preferences are changing. They want less grind, more rewards, lots of ways to express themselves, and faster advancement curves. As designers we need to reach a broader audience and find ways to keep them playing. How will we break out of the sub-500 thousand market and into the global market reaching tens of millions players?
Suggested topics include:
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How to design and build global brands?
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How to keep players in the game without using the traditional grind/advancement model?
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Designing for micro-transactions
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Is designing a game that can work in all markets a good idea?
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Understanding your audience
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Design rules MMOs should adhere too
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Why are RPGs “sticky” with players?
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How to break out of the RPG mold
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East meets West, what design challenges face each territory?
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How do new business models affect design
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How do you mix business with pleasure (fun gameplay)?
The breakout of online video games into mainstream culture is reshaping our audience. At the same time, the massive popularity of social networking web sites as a cultural phenomena is bringing the Internet to the forefront of people's daily experience. This serves to reinforce the first lesson of the Internet: it's all about Community.
What does the convergence of these trends mean for game developers and operators? It means our audience is changing, and that difference implies changing community dynamics and requires that we evolve new techniques and best-practices.
Suggested topics include:
- Why "Community" is not a cost-center
- What community and support "best-practices" do we need to embrace?
- The new casual gamer culture vs. the traditional gamer demographics
- Scaling and managing user-created content
- Useful metrics techniques for social games
- Changing practices for the new demographic (kids, casual players, etc.)
- Understanding and supporting the playstyle of casual gamers
- Working with fansite and community leaders
Technology & Services
While the game itself is certainly critical to success, it cannot succeed if it doesn’t have excellent technology and a solid service base. This track covers key technology areas and the services that support our games. Traditionally these areas have been barriers to game success, so we will concentrate on the key things that stop teams from succeeding.
Suggested topics include:
Technologies
- Database scaling and metrics
- Server scaling, best practices
- Networking technologies
- Voice chat options and issues
Services
- Customer service in-house or outsourced?
- Networking best practices
- Security – the arms race
- QA best practices
The Writing for Games track is dedicated to the art and craft of interactive storytelling. This track is designed for any game developer, writer or otherwise, that has a vested interest in stories and games. We have designed this to be a forward-looking track, featuring content you can't find anywhere else. Austin GDC 2008 is shaping up to be a watershed year for this event, and we welcome your participation.
The theme for the Game Writing track is "The Future of Storytelling in Games." This theme is a designing principle, applied to each day as follows:
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The Future Is Now: A look at how this year's crop of games is breaking the storytelling mold in games
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The Future Is Coming: Revelations on the future of game writing from game projects currently in development
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The Future Is Yours: A no-holds-barred look at what's possible in the world of interactive storytelling
Please ensure that your submission relates to one of the specified sub-topics for Day 1, Day 2 or Day 3.
Wondering how these themes apply to session content? Here is some food for thought - use as inspiration, not as constraint!
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Can you relay a compelling analysis (or reveal behind-the-scenes information) on a particular game (or set of games, or genre, or studio, or games from a particular region) released last year that demonstrates some breakthrough in the evolution of game writing and is exemplary for future games? Then you have a topic for day 1.
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Are you working on a project that is pushing the boundaries of what is possible for interactive storytelling? Or do you have knowledge from another field (technology, design, film, literature, software, psychology, criminology, pharmacology) that can enable game developers to advance the art of gamewriting? Then you have a topic for Day 2.
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Do you have any inside knowledge on some future development that may radically change the way we create/experience elements of writing - story, plot, circumstance, setting, motivation, character, dialog - in games? Or perhaps your work involves some type of forecasting, and you (or a co-presenter) have the depth of knowledge to apply that work to games? Or are you a specialist in some far-flung field (technology development, science fiction, biogenetics, teleportation that could, by some stretch of the imagination, forever change the way stories are told or played in interactive media? Then you have a topic for Day 3.
The advisory board would like to hear from game-savvy specialists of all types including game writers; writers and creatives in other fields who have specific knowledge and qualified opinions in this area; managers and producers in the publisher and developer communities; creators, designers, marketers, critics, journalists, technologists, pundits, futurists and fortune tellers anyone in the game industry, or even a broadly-related industry, with unique insight into our topic could be a qualified speaker for this year's lineup.
Gear your submission to the audience for the Writing track, which will be a mix of up-and-coming and seasoned professional writers who are looking for inspiration from people with real experience in the field; and secondarily, experienced game developers and producers who need to understand more about emerging developments and new experiments in game writing, and gain better insight into how to write better games and/or produce stronger scripts for games.
The Writing track encourages presenters to plan beyond subject matter and give careful consideration to the style and format of your presentation. Feel free to think openly and experiment with your presentation structure and format. How can you make your presentation more engaging to your audience? What can make your session more entertaining and fun? PowerPoint is out, unless used for rich media - no bullet point slide presentations for this track, please.
This track is designed for intermediate-to-expert audiences; therefore "gamewriting 101" presentations and general-overview topics are not appropriate for this forum.
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