Austin GDC Program Guide 2008

September 15-17, 2008 A ust i n C onvent i on C ent er • A ust i n , TX SESSIONS – WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 viable and most effective options? How do you create a successful promotion when consumers have control? We’ll provide a first-hand look using Weeworld as the example of how marketers can effectively engage consumers through social media and leverage self-selected promotions to create viral power through consumer endorsement. It will explore successful campaigns with the world’s most recognized brands – from a prom-themed campaign for a top packaged goods company, music promotions for RCA Record artists Avril Lavigne and Alicia Keys and partnerships with organizations such as Bono’s RED, to Skittles-themed bikinis, the WeeMee takeover of the USA Network Character Game Lounge and branded make up kits that generated user backlash at the campaign’s close. TEChnOlOGy & SErvICES – lECTurE of writing for user-centric games in social networks where expectations are quite different. prizeD ColleCtion will be demonstrated, and user feedback and behaviors gleaned from the first few months of the game’s operations will be shared. AuDIO – PAnEl SOCIAl nETWOrkInG & COMMunITy – lECTurE Ye Olde Towne Hall Meeting Audio Advisory Board 4:30 - 5:30PM | Room 10 Hear ye, hear ye, come one come all, yes all you audio folks! You have a voice in how this audio track is created. Suggestions made at previous Towne Hall Meetings have been incorporated into our track, and we strive to provide the kind of content the people want. It’s up to you, come to the meeting, voice your opinion(s), and then we’ll all go somewhere afterward and plan the domination of the game audio industry. BuSInESS & MArkETInG – rOunDTABlE ARGs: Fake Websites, Invented Stories, Automated Phone Calls and Other Methods to Earn the Trust of a Community Elan Lee (Fourth Wall Studios) 4:30 - 5:30PM | Room 9 An Alternate Reality Game is an interactive story that massive communities explore with the tools of their lives. One of the key success factors to this new form of entertainment is its ability to inspire and maintain large communities. Why do these communities trust the game designers enough to visit strange websites, brave hurricanes to answer ringing payphones, and tattoo game logos on their bodies? This talk will explore the communities that form around Alternate Reality Games, why they form, why they grow, and ultimately, why they trust this new form of storytelling to entertain them. TEChnOlOGy & SErvICES – lECTurE Efficient Robust Networking Ben Garney (PushButton Labs) 3 - 4PM | Room 4 Good networked games are hard to develop, be they FPS, RTS, or MMO. Bandwidth costs money, and networks are never entirely reliable, introducing delays and losing packets. Cheaters and hackers are ready to take advantage of any flaw in your protocols. Learn battle-tested techniques for maximizing your game’s networking code. Both architecture and implementation details are discussed, drawing from experience with the Torque Networking Library (www.opentnl.org), based on the award winning networking in triBeS and triBeS 2. WrITInG FOr GAMES – lECTurE My Game, My Rules: the Power and Pitfalls of End User License Agreements in Games Sean Kane (Drakeford & Kane LLC), J. Michael Monahan (Pattishall, McAuliffe, Newbury, Hilliard & Geralds) 4:30 - 5:30PM | Room 7 As more Virtual Worlds and Online Games are developed, the EULA is an increasingly important game element. This session will review the nature and elements of the standard EULA and discuss the inherent benefits and shortcomings of the EULA model, including as it relates to licensing, liability and laws. DESIGn – lECTurE The Server Technology of eve online: How to Cope With 300,000 Players on One Server Halldor Fannar Guðjónsson (CCP) 4:30 - 5:30PM | Room 4 Most MMOGs separate their players onto multiple servers in order to scale; these servers are often called shards. The shards are essentially instances of the game world and the player base is thus broken into segments, based on which shard (server) they are playing on. eve online takes a different approach: the technology and the game is developed around the goal of one unified world. All the players log onto the same server and play in the same world. This session will explore the technology developed by CCP to achieve this goal and discuss the technology choices made by CCP, both on the hardware and software side. WrITInG FOr GAMES – lECTurE We Tell Stories - A New Form of Storytelling Adrian Hon (Six to Start) 3 - 4PM | Ballroom B In We tell StorieS, we worked with six bestselling novelists from Penguin to create original stories tailored for an interactive audience. This talk will involve a demo of the six stories and a walkthrough of the development process. Unlike most games, the writers for We tell StorieS were highly involved in the game design, and vice versa, to the point where some of the writers essentially became game designers. This was even more unusual due to the fact that none of the writers had ever written for games before, being professional novelists first and foremost. WrITInG FOr GAMES – lECTurE What Your Mother and Your Ten-Year Old Can Teach You About MMOs Nick Fortugno (Rebel Monkey) 4:30 - 5:30PM | Room 5 While interest in MMOs have been growing enormously the last couple of years, the focus has still largely been on the tradition gamer demographics: hardcore players (WoW, eve) and DIY enthusiasts (SeConD life). But the latest areas of commercial success and game innovation have come from a totally different direction: web-based multiplayer games for casual gamers. This session will look at some of the ways casual games are reshaping the MMO landscape, and what lessons casual games have to teach us about reaching a broader audience for multiplayer experiences. Special Ops: The Writer of the Future Flint Dille (Ground Zero Productions) 4:30 - 5:30PM | Ballroom B SPEC OPS – THE WRITER YOU WILL NEED TO BE: The future writer will need to be fast and versatile to survive in a constantly changing and adapting mediasphere.They will have to survive both on the assigned project and the spec project and must know how to budget time, effort and resources to balance their attack. This talk will also cover the skills, tools and attitudes the future writer will need. Writing for Socially Networked Games: Blending User-Generated Content with Storytelling Christopher Cunningham (rmbr), Gabe Zichermann (rmbr) 3 - 4PM | Room 3 Social network games (games in social networks that use the network’s components as assets) have thus far focused almost exclusively on usergenerated storytelling. Some have concluded that this trend imperils traditional game writing in a socially networked context. This session will provide an in-depth look at the risks and unique process Austin Game Developers Conference | September 15-17, 2008 | Austin Convention Center | Austin, Texas | www.AustinGDC.net 17 https://www.cmpevents.com/GDAU08/a.asp?option=C&V=1&cid=AGC08_PGWPX2 http://www.opentnl.org http://www.AustinGDC.net

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Austin GDC Program Guide 2008

Austin GDC Program Guide 2008 Contents Conference-at-a-Glance General Information Conference Overview Advisory Board Keynote Speakers Conference Sessions Game Career Seminar Worlds in Motion Summit Austin GDC Events Austin GDC Evening Events Speakers Sponsors & Media Partners Exhibitor Directory Expo Hall Map & Exhibitors

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