CONFERENCE
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GAME DESIGN
Creating compelling, immersive games requires understanding, visualizing, demonstrating, and tuning the interactions of an ever-increasing number of game tools and systems. While game designers need to understand the possibilities of new technologies, the Game Design Track reminds developers that they must also continue to master the traditional disciplines of drama, game play, and psychology.
View all GDC China 2012 sessions
HIGHLIGHTED SESSIONS
Working the Crowd: Engaging Players through the User Interface
Joe Kowalski (Double Fine Productions)
The first thing a player encounters when they start up a game is the main menu. This is an opportunity to make an impression and forge an emotional connection with the player, yet most games underutilize it. In this context, I will examine my own work as a user interface designer, which includes Guitar Hero and Brutal Legend, and I will discuss why game UIs should consider emotion an important part of the user experience.
Making Games for Gamers in HTML5
Henric Suuronen (NonStop Games)
Mobile and tablet gaming is the hottest area of gaming at the moment. When looking at the top grossing charts on these platforms it seems that lately more and more games with deeper gameplay have started dominating the charts. Games with a more serious style or real social interaction such as PvP, alliances, chats and community are on a strong rise. This session will dive deep into how design deeper games and not just cow clickers, games that attract for the gameplay not for the animation. The session will also argue why core games is actually the right way to go when developing games in the much hyped technology html5.
Little Hands, Foul Moods, and Runny Noses: Developmental Research Meets Emerging Technologies
Carla Fisher (No Crusts Interactive)
Children have unique intellectual and physical needs that designers must take into account in order to create engaging gaming experiences. This session aims to help developers build a foundation of knowledge by uncovering existing research on children and technology from a variety of fields, including child developmental psychology, human computer interaction, television, and market research. The discussion will provide information on developmental psychology specific to games, UI design and input control considerations, co-play, and age-appropriate storytelling. Guidelines will focus on touchscreens and physically active devices, however, most findings can be easily applied to any children's game design product, regardless of platform.
The Business of Art Direction: 7 Critical Precepts
Rick Stringfellow (EA Sports)
Making games is getting increasingly complex, with new genres, more platforms and wider audiences. Within the context of EA Sports, we deliver over 14 titles per year on at least 9 different platforms, from multiple studios. Everybody's role is expanding to deal with this. Over the past decade, Rick has been using 7 precepts in Art Direction to help him manage every aspect of production, from debugging difficult digital content to establishing new visual processes. This talk will focus on how these precepts are applied to solving everyday visual challenges within game development across all types of game, platform and audience.
From Console to Mobile: the Best Practices to Build Multi-Platform Games
Xu Wang (Ubisoft Shanghai)
The differences between mobile and console are reflected in different aspects, like complexity, production value, design methodology, technical requirement, update method and scale of the team. This will naturally drive console development to put more focus on pipeline, technology and communication, while all these will also bring huge benefits to mobile products development. This session will focus on sharing how to apply these best practices in console development to mobile products development.
The 5 Domains of Play: Applying Psychology's Big 5 Motivation Domains to Games
Jason VandenBerghe (Ubisoft)
The 'Big 5' model of human behavior has come to dominate the world of motivation psychology. Its facts-and-figures approach to the human mind seems that it should have a lot to offer game design. The speaker has spent much of the past year translating the principles of the Big 5 into guidance for designers, in order to improve our models of "player archetypes". Ever wondered what the opposite of an 'achievement player' is? Neither had the speaker, until the Big 5 showed the way.
ALL GAME DESIGN SESSIONS
| From Console to Mobile: the Best Practices to Build Multi-Platform Games Xu Wang (Ubisoft Shanghai) |
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| Improve Your Games' Quality by Managing your Designers Florian Dhesse (Virtuos) |
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| Little Hands, Foul Moods, and Runny Noses: Developmental Research Meets Emerging Technologies Carla Fisher (No Crusts Interactive) |
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| Making Games for Gamers in HTML5 Henric Suuronen (NonStop Games) |
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| The 5 Domains of Play: Applying Psychology's Big 5 Motivation Domains to Games Jason VandenBerghe (Ubisoft) |
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| The Business of Art Direction: 7 Critical Precepts Rick Stringfellow (EA Sports) |
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| Working the Crowd: Engaging Players through the User Interface Joe Kowalski (Double Fine Productions) |
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