Game Developers Conference 2010 organizers have revealed plans for the GDC Vault, including free videos featuring Zynga, Ernest Adams and more, and regular free updates planned throughout the year.
The
newly launched GDC Vault website is designed to hold
free speaker slides from all GDC events, as well as specially synchronized video recordings of Game Developers Conference lectures and historical audio recordings.
The GDC Vault video technology allows users to simultaneously view a presenter's slides alongside video and audio of their presentation.
As an initial offering, the
GDC Vault free videos section has made the 5 Expo Pass-included GDC 2010 sessions available for completely free viewing.
Free GDC 2010 Lecture Recordings
Free videos debuted thus far include the following notable hour-long GDC 2010 lectures, all available permanently online:
-
'Engineering Scalable Social Games' by Dr. Robert Zubek of Zynga, a programming talk in which the veteran developer "introduces best practices for building highly scalable infrastructure for social and web games" from the viewpoint of the
Farmville creators.
- In
'Artgame Sessions', a diverse set of speakers present "an introduction to the artgame movement and a glimpse into how far you can go without abiding conventional rules and player expectations" - including talks on
Far Cry 2,
Braid, Mark Essen's games (
Flywrench), and Terry Cavanagh and Stephen Lavelle's
Judith.
- The featured Art Track talk is
'Guild Wars: The Artists' Vision, in which NCSoft's Daniel Dociu uses award-winning
Guild Wars art to explore "the practical aspects of integrating concept art into game development, such as building an art team, working with game developers, and how art goes from concept to technical implementation."
- Industry veteran Ernest Adams presents a talk called
'Single-Player, Multiplayer, MMOG: Design Psychologies for Different Social Contexts', a Design Track highlight in which he presents "a theory of player-centric game design, and then show how it diverges in four variants: for MMOGs, for multiplayer games, for single-player games and for free-to-play games."
- Finally, in
'Wake up! Your Team is on Fire!', subtitled 'Why Your Real Problems Are Cultural and How to Change Them', former Pandemic exec Michael Saladino presents a Business & Management Track talk asking a key game market-related question: "What's the difference between a manager and a leader? One key separator is the ability to drive a cultural shift on a team, in a studio or across a global organization."
Sponsored Session, Upcoming Highlights, Audio
In addition, GDC Vault's
free videos section includes sponsored GDC 2010 sessions filmed in association with companies such as Intel, Palm, and Nvidia. These include speakers from those companies, as well as from CCP (on
EVE Online) and Firaxis (on
Civilization V). Sponsored videos are free to watch after entering a valid email address for sponsor information purposes.
GDC 2010 organizers will also be posting new free-to-watch lectures bi-weekly for the rest of the year, including many of the highlights from this year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco - plus notable lectures from other GDC events, spanning GDC Europe, GDC Online, and GDC China.
(Finally, for those looking for individual session access, GDC 2010 audio recordings will be made available for individual lecture purchase
in the GDC Vault store over the next few weeks.)
GDC Vault Full Access
The free recordings being made available are a fraction of the content currently being flowed into the GDC Vault, with multiple years of historical audio and slide data scheduled to flow into the system this year, as well as near-complete video recordings from every worldwide GDC.
Full
GDC Vault access, including synchronized video recordings for over 200 of GDC 2010's sessions and hundreds of historical video and audio recordings, is available to GDC 2010 All-Access Pass holders, as well as All-Access Pass holders for other GDC events during the year. (Please contact
[email protected] if you need any aid accessing the full Vault suite.)
In addition, companies who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company. More information on this option is available by
contacting Suzanne Cunningham or viewing
an online demonstration. Individual Vault subscriptions not tied to All-Access passes are being considered for a 2011 launch.
