Author: by Beth A.

ACM SIGGRAPH is hosting a two-day video game symposium on July 29 and 30 in 2006, co-located with SIGGRAPH 06 in Boston, MA, USA. The symposium will consist of keynotes, panels, and papers. In addition, a "Hot Games" session will preview unreleased titles from major game companies and indie developers. A number of the presentations will be available through a live stream on Breeze. On Saturday, July 29, 2006, the live streaming Breeze session will feature topics of game design. Greg Costikyan, CEO of Manifesto Games, a start-up devoted to creating a viable path to market for independently developed games, is the keynote speaker for "Designing Games for Process Intensity." Costikyan leads into his keynote as follows: "Back in the 1980s, Chris Crawford theorized that games should be designed for process intensity rather than use of content. At the time, his point was that with $64,000 to work with, you should exploit the ability of machines to use algorithms rather than data, since you could keep only a limited amount of data in working memory. As Moore's Law did its work, that argument became moot, and games began to bloat with enormous numbers of visual and audio assets—and the cost of generating those assets ran budgets up a curve nearly as steep as Moore's Law. Today, virtually all of the cycles consumed by games are used to push pixels—and actual gameplay calculations consume only a tiny portion of a machine's resources. Perhaps, however, this approach is reaching a point of diminishing returns, as graphics become close to photorealistic—and perhaps it time to re-examine the ways in which harnessing different algorithms can produce novel gameplay experiences." Other Saturday panels include "That Cloud Game: Dreaming (and Doing) Innovative Game Design," with University of Southern California faculty and graduates Tracy Fullerton, Jenova Chen, Kellee Santiago, Erik Nelson, Vincent Diamante, Aaron Meyers, and Electronic Arts' Glenn Song and John DeWeese. Presence from the University of Southern California remains prevalent in "Game Development for Experience Through Staying There," with speakers Tim Marsh, Kiyoung Yang, and Cyrus Shahabi. Game industry also has representation in presentations such as "In the Trenches: Game Developers and the Crisis of Creativity," a panel with Jason Della Rocca, Hank Howie, Steve Meretsky, Joe Minton, Kent Quirk, and Tracy Rosenthal-Newsom. On Sunday, July 30, 2006, the live streaming Breeze session will include issues of players, government, and industry. Ian Shaw, Chief Technology Officer of Electronic Arts UK, says the following of his keynote "Players in the Development Game": "Making a great game can take a lot of game makers. What do all those people actually do? How can a large team still have creative energy? And how does this make the game better? Let's examine the key players in modern game development. Find out what they do every day, their top issues, motivations, and concerns. How do they relate to each other? What are the team dynamics that make or break a game? From the executive-producer to the engine-programmer and shader-artist, everyone has shifted up a gear to get to this next-generation of consoles. You're invited to an insider's view of how Electronic Arts is shaping development teams in response to these challenges." Additional Sunday papers and panels address "Making Things Public: Democracy and Government-Funded Video Games and Virtual Reality Simulations," led by Elizabeth Losh from the University of California, as well as "Games and Accessibility" with speakers Matthew T Atkinson, Kevin Bierre, Giannis Georgalis, and Michelle Hinn. Industry again makes an appearance in "The Passion of the Developer: ea_spouse in the h_ouse! a Panel on Labor Relations and Quality of Life in the Industry." For more information on presentations and speakers that will be available by stream or on-site only at the ACM SIGGRAPH Sandbox Symposium, explore their program web site.