Schedule is subject to change.
Thursday, April 10
4 p.m. — Registration
5 p.m. — Introductory remarks: Matthew Maloney, academic director of the SCAD-Atlanta animation department
5:10 p.m. — Panel discussion
6:30 p.m. — Roundtable discussions
7:30 p.m. — Roundtable discussions
8:15 p.m. — Reception
Panel discussion: With Ian Bogost, Ph.D., as moderator, guest speakers Greg Costikyan, Tracy Fullerton and Eric Zimmerman will discuss topics related to this year's theme: alternative gaming and emerging game concepts. The panel and moderator also will open the floor to attendees for questions or comments.
Roundtable discussions: Conference speakers will host informal small-group conversations with attendees on varying topics specific to their expertise.
Reception: Conference speakers and attendees are invited to enjoy a night of entertainment featuring "Entelechy," the SCAD interactive design and game development juried student exhibition. Entertainment also includes music by David Spencer and the audiovisual talents of Sandro Imperato, Ph.D. The GDX reception will be simulcast within the virtual world of Second Life.
Friday, April 11
The keynote address features Eric Zimmerman, noted game author, co-founder of Gamelab and advocate of independent gaming and alternative uses of games.
Attendees have the option to choose from a variety of conference sessions, which will be divided into five subject areas: design, production, distribution, audience and industry. The audience subject area is sponsored by Women in Games International (WIGI).
The day will conclude with closing remarks and the announcement of category winners of the "Entelechy" student exhibition and competition.
Session Descriptions
Eric Zimmerman — Keynote
Going Indie: An Independent Game Developer's Survival Guide
In this wide-ranging and hard-hitting talk, game designer and independent game developer Eric Zimmerman draws from 14 years of experience to share the highs and lows of being an indie in the game industry. From cash flow to company culture, he will cover the tangibles and intangibles of what it takes to survive as an indie — and why game designers might or might not want to go independent in the first place. Along the way, he'll address bigger questions, such as what's wrong with the game industry today, why other forms of pop culture seem to have more independent creators, and what might be in store for the future of independent games.
Asante Bradford
Virtual Georgia — The Road Ahead
Georgia will become a major player in the $9.9 billion United States video game industry. Why would the state want to get aggressive in recruiting video game companies here? Because it's big business! Georgia legislators have no illusions about the state becoming Silicon Valley overnight, but they definitely have a new economic-development strategy for the short term, and want Georgia to be the hub for video graphics and the video gaming production industry in the Eastern U.S. in the long term. Georgia offers game publishers a tax-incentive program similar to the one the state used to build its film industry. The Georgia state legislature has enacted tax code changes allowing digital entertainment producers to gain new savings on products developed in-state. Legislators are particularly interested in making sure game companies offer an ample supply of jobs that interest young people, keeping local college graduates close to home and preventing the state's brightest young people from moving away. In turn, legislators hope these highly skilled students will attract game publishers to the region and even launch their own companies.
Brenda Brathwaite
100 Questions, 97 Answers, 56 Minutes (on 300 Slides)
Students hoping to enter the industry have a lot of questions. What should be in their portfolios? How do they make contacts? How much do game designers make? What should they wear to interviews? In this fast-paced and entertaining lecture, Brathwaite answers these questions and many, many more.
Greg Costikyan
The Fall and Rise of the Independent Developer
For a decade or more independent developers have been gradually disappearing, either into publishers' maws or into the mists of history. Conditions in the conventional game industry seem, if anything, more difficult than ever. However, casual games have allowed the emergence of a new ecosystem that's more favorable to independent developers; perhaps this is just the beginning of a sea-change in how games are created and distributed. Participants will look at several ways developers are exploring to find audiences for—and revenues from—games created outside the mainstream market.
Chris Crawford
How to Pick up the Pieces
It is now generally accepted that games are creatively stagnant. To break out of the straitjacket of conventional design, game designers must go back to basics to understand the appeal of games: interactivity that challenges mental modules that people value. Current games challenge spatial reasoning, resource management, puzzle-solving and hand-eye coordination skills. Glaringly obvious is any challenge to social reasoning — and therein lies the key to the future. Unfortunately, the design of interactive entertainment that challenges social reasoning skills is immensely more difficult than conventional game design. It requires the creation of a toy language that reflects some subset of social reality.
Linda Currie
What Is Agile … Is it a Process? A Philosophy? A Bird? A Plane? Oh, and Where Does Design Fit in?
What’s Agile all about? It sure sounds awesome — it offers close collaboration between the team and the customer; face-to-face communication over written documentation; frequent iterations delivering visible results; software that’s shippable all the time; tight, self-organizing teams; and a philosophy that change isn’t bad … it’s good! Oh, and there is no big design up front. So where does design fit into an Agile project? In this interactive session, participants will talk about Agile … and see that it really sounds great. Then the group will explore questions — and first-time users in an Agile environment usually have lots and lots of questions. Currie also will talk about her real-life experiences with Agile.
Matt Dominianni
Machinima: The Missing Link Between Gamers and the Rest of the World
A long-time machinima (in-game video) director, Dominianni will show examples and discuss the growing role that machinima plays in game development, as well as how machinima is helping to bridge the gap between mainstream media and gaming.
Tracy Fullerton
Game Innovation and the Potential of Play
In the shadow of the commercial game entertainment industry, independent and serious game makers are exploring the nature of games, play and learning in projects that have the potential to change the way that our society views and values participatory media. This session is a discussion of game innovation, with examples of projects that address innovative subject matter, inspire activism, promote learning and experiment with games as an expressive medium.
Frank Lantz
Alternate Approaches to Alternate Reality: Designing a Different Kind of ARG
Alternate Reality Games are an emerging, experimental game genre that combines various forms of media and real-world presence to create an experience that actively blurs the border between fiction and reality. "Chain Factor," an ARG designed for the CBS TV show "Numb3rs," was an attempt to try a new approach to this genre, one that delivered on the promise of large-scale collaboration and participatory narrative while providing a core gameplay experience that was more accessible and compelling than many previous ARGs. This talk provides an insider's view of the design problems, inspirations and creative methods involved in developing "Chain Factor" and an overview of the process of designing, building and running a game of this type.
Elan Lee
Playing with Reality
The designer of "I Love Bees," "The Beast" and "NIN: Year Zero" talks about the secrets of his Alternate Reality Games, how they work, and why so many games escape the screen to use players' lives as game boards.
Marcus Matthews
The New Generation of Gaming
The world is changing. Today's youth spend more time online using social networks, instant messaging and gaming than watching TV. Devices are getting smaller and multi-functional (iPods play games, phones play MP3s, the Wii has a browser). These new devices are also constantly connected to the Internet via the wireless Web, wi-fi and broadband. In addition, casual gamers have become a major, definable market. People are now looking to access their content on any device, anywhere, anytime. How do these dynamics change the gaming industry's future? What opportunities exist for students today to explore? Obviously, new game designers and companies will emerge. The question becomes how to interact with, monetize and create games around this emerging trend.
Ali Mazalek, Ph.D., and Michael Nitsche
Tangible Interfaces for Game Worlds
Machinima uses game worlds as expressive 3-D performance spaces and continues to open new expressive powers with an increase of the quality of underlying graphic and animation systems. Nevertheless, the lack of intuitive control mechanisms limits the development of this new form. Set direction and acting are limited by tools that were designed to create and play video games, rather than produce expressive performance pieces. Game controls usually do a poor job of capturing the performative expression that characterizes more mature media such as film or theater. Tangible interfaces can help open game systems for the more intuitive character control needed for a greater level of expression in the digital real-time world. Mazalek and Nitsche have been working on the development of different interfaces that deal with the new challenges to production and performance in virtual worlds, and on presenting new approaches to performances in game spaces that — they hope — widen the range of expression available to users in these digital worlds.
Scott Mercer
Beyond the Gameplay: Integrating Lore and Story into the Design Process
Epic gameplay that is “easy to learn, hard to master” has always been the core of Blizzard Entertainment games, but another important element of game design for the company's developers is attention to lore and story. Creating an immersive game experience isn’t just about fun gameplay, but also about building places, characters and stories that together create a lasting impression for the player. In this presentation, Mercer discusses how lore and story elements influence the game design of Blizzard Entertainment games.
Marx Myth
Promoting Yourself in the Games Arena: Creating Your Art Portfolio Packet
Myth reviews what potential job applicants should and should not put in their artwork/portfolio. Topics include demo tape/DVD, résumé, cover letter, Web site, flatbook/portfolio, self-promotional flyer and business card/postcard. There is no magic bullet, but with proper preparation, applicants can dazzle art managers and directors. Drawing from his own career, Myth will share what he found intriguing about the artists he ended up hiring.
Allen Partridge, Ph.D.
Director in the Next Dimension
This session examines Adobe Director as a tool for application authoring with an emphasis on 3-D game and application development. Partridge demonstrates Director Physics and 3-D capabilities, and discusses the use of Director as a tool for creating casual games, 3-D games and rapid prototyping.
Celia Pearce, Ph.D.
Gaming and the Baby Boomers
The vast majority of research on gamers has been conducted on children. However, the fastest growing audience is adults. Within that, Baby Boomer women have been identified as the fastest growing segment. Pearce has utilized a range of research methodologies to understand the interests and habits of Baby Boomer gamers. The results of this research serve as the foundation of this presentation about an under-considered but increasingly important audience.
Antony Petersen
Making Money in Mobile Gaming
With worldwide revenue projections of $11 billion by 2010, mobile gaming is making bank. In this session, Petersen will discuss how to turn mobile game ideas into reality. He will discuss setting a budget, the development process, handset porting, carrier testing, off-deck delivery and alternate ways of getting paid, as well as case studies from some of MTV Networks' biggest brands.
Joseph Saulter
Games and the Minority Audience
Increasingly, the gamer audience in North America is diversifying. The interests of African-American, Hispanic and Asian players should be taken into account in concert with the traditional gamer audience. Saulter speaks about the benefits of diversification and the need to consider ethical, racial and cultural variety within the gamer audience.
Ian Schreiber
Living with Programmers: What Game Designers Need to Know
As game design becomes its own specialized field, a growing number of designers lack strong technical skills. In this session, participants will learn some ways to use game design to solve programming problems, and vice versa. They also will find out how to teach themselves game programming, even if they have never taken a programming class before.
Rahul Sood
The Video Game Entrepreneur
In 1991, Sood, a 17-year-old high school graduate, started a personal computer company out of the back of a flooring store. The company, VoodooPC, soon became one of the leading brands of high-performance personal computers in the world, creating some of the finest "desktop Ferraris" and eventually attracting the likes of Dell and Hewlett Packard. In 2006, Sood and his team merged VoodooPC with Hewlett Packard and he became an executive in the Fortune 11 company, which employs 150,000 people worldwide. Sood will discuss his experiences through this journey and provide insight into good and bad aspects of the video game entrepreneur path.
Scott Thomas
Reinventing Traditional Distribution Windows
How advances in digital distribution and expanding broadband access are allowing for changes to the way the games industry releases new titles.
Dan Waters
3-D XNA from Scratch: From Idea to Implementation
One of the most sought-after tutorials in the game community covers the creation of 3-D content and how to process it through the pipeline into a game. In this session, Waters (academic evangelist at Microsoft) will teach participants how to build a 3-D game from start to finish, including the models, step-by-step, in one hour. Participants will learn how to create, rig and animate a character model in SOFTIMAGE | XSI Mod Tool, import it into the XNA content pipeline, and create gameplay logic around the model to effectively build a simple 3-D game. By the end of the session, participants will know enough about each aspect of this process to create a game on their own.
Thursday, April 10
4 p.m. — Registration
5 p.m. — Introductory remarks: Matthew Maloney, academic director of the SCAD-Atlanta animation department
5:10 p.m. — Panel discussion
6:30 p.m. — Roundtable discussions
7:30 p.m. — Roundtable discussions
8:15 p.m. — Reception
Panel discussion: With Ian Bogost, Ph.D., as moderator, guest speakers Greg Costikyan, Tracy Fullerton and Eric Zimmerman will discuss topics related to this year's theme: alternative gaming and emerging game concepts. The panel and moderator also will open the floor to attendees for questions or comments.
Roundtable discussions: Conference speakers will host informal small-group conversations with attendees on varying topics specific to their expertise.
Reception: Conference speakers and attendees are invited to enjoy a night of entertainment featuring "Entelechy," the SCAD interactive design and game development juried student exhibition. Entertainment also includes music by David Spencer and the audiovisual talents of Sandro Imperato, Ph.D. The GDX reception will be simulcast within the virtual world of Second Life.
Friday, April 11
The keynote address features Eric Zimmerman, noted game author, co-founder of Gamelab and advocate of independent gaming and alternative uses of games.
Attendees have the option to choose from a variety of conference sessions, which will be divided into five subject areas: design, production, distribution, audience and industry. The audience subject area is sponsored by Women in Games International (WIGI).
The day will conclude with closing remarks and the announcement of category winners of the "Entelechy" student exhibition and competition.
Session Descriptions
Eric Zimmerman — Keynote
Going Indie: An Independent Game Developer's Survival Guide
In this wide-ranging and hard-hitting talk, game designer and independent game developer Eric Zimmerman draws from 14 years of experience to share the highs and lows of being an indie in the game industry. From cash flow to company culture, he will cover the tangibles and intangibles of what it takes to survive as an indie — and why game designers might or might not want to go independent in the first place. Along the way, he'll address bigger questions, such as what's wrong with the game industry today, why other forms of pop culture seem to have more independent creators, and what might be in store for the future of independent games.
Asante Bradford
Virtual Georgia — The Road Ahead
Georgia will become a major player in the $9.9 billion United States video game industry. Why would the state want to get aggressive in recruiting video game companies here? Because it's big business! Georgia legislators have no illusions about the state becoming Silicon Valley overnight, but they definitely have a new economic-development strategy for the short term, and want Georgia to be the hub for video graphics and the video gaming production industry in the Eastern U.S. in the long term. Georgia offers game publishers a tax-incentive program similar to the one the state used to build its film industry. The Georgia state legislature has enacted tax code changes allowing digital entertainment producers to gain new savings on products developed in-state. Legislators are particularly interested in making sure game companies offer an ample supply of jobs that interest young people, keeping local college graduates close to home and preventing the state's brightest young people from moving away. In turn, legislators hope these highly skilled students will attract game publishers to the region and even launch their own companies.
Brenda Brathwaite
100 Questions, 97 Answers, 56 Minutes (on 300 Slides)
Students hoping to enter the industry have a lot of questions. What should be in their portfolios? How do they make contacts? How much do game designers make? What should they wear to interviews? In this fast-paced and entertaining lecture, Brathwaite answers these questions and many, many more.
Greg Costikyan
The Fall and Rise of the Independent Developer
For a decade or more independent developers have been gradually disappearing, either into publishers' maws or into the mists of history. Conditions in the conventional game industry seem, if anything, more difficult than ever. However, casual games have allowed the emergence of a new ecosystem that's more favorable to independent developers; perhaps this is just the beginning of a sea-change in how games are created and distributed. Participants will look at several ways developers are exploring to find audiences for—and revenues from—games created outside the mainstream market.
Chris Crawford
How to Pick up the Pieces
It is now generally accepted that games are creatively stagnant. To break out of the straitjacket of conventional design, game designers must go back to basics to understand the appeal of games: interactivity that challenges mental modules that people value. Current games challenge spatial reasoning, resource management, puzzle-solving and hand-eye coordination skills. Glaringly obvious is any challenge to social reasoning — and therein lies the key to the future. Unfortunately, the design of interactive entertainment that challenges social reasoning skills is immensely more difficult than conventional game design. It requires the creation of a toy language that reflects some subset of social reality.
Linda Currie
What Is Agile … Is it a Process? A Philosophy? A Bird? A Plane? Oh, and Where Does Design Fit in?
What’s Agile all about? It sure sounds awesome — it offers close collaboration between the team and the customer; face-to-face communication over written documentation; frequent iterations delivering visible results; software that’s shippable all the time; tight, self-organizing teams; and a philosophy that change isn’t bad … it’s good! Oh, and there is no big design up front. So where does design fit into an Agile project? In this interactive session, participants will talk about Agile … and see that it really sounds great. Then the group will explore questions — and first-time users in an Agile environment usually have lots and lots of questions. Currie also will talk about her real-life experiences with Agile.
Matt Dominianni
Machinima: The Missing Link Between Gamers and the Rest of the World
A long-time machinima (in-game video) director, Dominianni will show examples and discuss the growing role that machinima plays in game development, as well as how machinima is helping to bridge the gap between mainstream media and gaming.
Tracy Fullerton
Game Innovation and the Potential of Play
In the shadow of the commercial game entertainment industry, independent and serious game makers are exploring the nature of games, play and learning in projects that have the potential to change the way that our society views and values participatory media. This session is a discussion of game innovation, with examples of projects that address innovative subject matter, inspire activism, promote learning and experiment with games as an expressive medium.
Frank Lantz
Alternate Approaches to Alternate Reality: Designing a Different Kind of ARG
Alternate Reality Games are an emerging, experimental game genre that combines various forms of media and real-world presence to create an experience that actively blurs the border between fiction and reality. "Chain Factor," an ARG designed for the CBS TV show "Numb3rs," was an attempt to try a new approach to this genre, one that delivered on the promise of large-scale collaboration and participatory narrative while providing a core gameplay experience that was more accessible and compelling than many previous ARGs. This talk provides an insider's view of the design problems, inspirations and creative methods involved in developing "Chain Factor" and an overview of the process of designing, building and running a game of this type.
Elan Lee
Playing with Reality
The designer of "I Love Bees," "The Beast" and "NIN: Year Zero" talks about the secrets of his Alternate Reality Games, how they work, and why so many games escape the screen to use players' lives as game boards.
Marcus Matthews
The New Generation of Gaming
The world is changing. Today's youth spend more time online using social networks, instant messaging and gaming than watching TV. Devices are getting smaller and multi-functional (iPods play games, phones play MP3s, the Wii has a browser). These new devices are also constantly connected to the Internet via the wireless Web, wi-fi and broadband. In addition, casual gamers have become a major, definable market. People are now looking to access their content on any device, anywhere, anytime. How do these dynamics change the gaming industry's future? What opportunities exist for students today to explore? Obviously, new game designers and companies will emerge. The question becomes how to interact with, monetize and create games around this emerging trend.
Ali Mazalek, Ph.D., and Michael Nitsche
Tangible Interfaces for Game Worlds
Machinima uses game worlds as expressive 3-D performance spaces and continues to open new expressive powers with an increase of the quality of underlying graphic and animation systems. Nevertheless, the lack of intuitive control mechanisms limits the development of this new form. Set direction and acting are limited by tools that were designed to create and play video games, rather than produce expressive performance pieces. Game controls usually do a poor job of capturing the performative expression that characterizes more mature media such as film or theater. Tangible interfaces can help open game systems for the more intuitive character control needed for a greater level of expression in the digital real-time world. Mazalek and Nitsche have been working on the development of different interfaces that deal with the new challenges to production and performance in virtual worlds, and on presenting new approaches to performances in game spaces that — they hope — widen the range of expression available to users in these digital worlds.
Scott Mercer
Beyond the Gameplay: Integrating Lore and Story into the Design Process
Epic gameplay that is “easy to learn, hard to master” has always been the core of Blizzard Entertainment games, but another important element of game design for the company's developers is attention to lore and story. Creating an immersive game experience isn’t just about fun gameplay, but also about building places, characters and stories that together create a lasting impression for the player. In this presentation, Mercer discusses how lore and story elements influence the game design of Blizzard Entertainment games.
Marx Myth
Promoting Yourself in the Games Arena: Creating Your Art Portfolio Packet
Myth reviews what potential job applicants should and should not put in their artwork/portfolio. Topics include demo tape/DVD, résumé, cover letter, Web site, flatbook/portfolio, self-promotional flyer and business card/postcard. There is no magic bullet, but with proper preparation, applicants can dazzle art managers and directors. Drawing from his own career, Myth will share what he found intriguing about the artists he ended up hiring.
Allen Partridge, Ph.D.
Director in the Next Dimension
This session examines Adobe Director as a tool for application authoring with an emphasis on 3-D game and application development. Partridge demonstrates Director Physics and 3-D capabilities, and discusses the use of Director as a tool for creating casual games, 3-D games and rapid prototyping.
Celia Pearce, Ph.D.
Gaming and the Baby Boomers
The vast majority of research on gamers has been conducted on children. However, the fastest growing audience is adults. Within that, Baby Boomer women have been identified as the fastest growing segment. Pearce has utilized a range of research methodologies to understand the interests and habits of Baby Boomer gamers. The results of this research serve as the foundation of this presentation about an under-considered but increasingly important audience.
Antony Petersen
Making Money in Mobile Gaming
With worldwide revenue projections of $11 billion by 2010, mobile gaming is making bank. In this session, Petersen will discuss how to turn mobile game ideas into reality. He will discuss setting a budget, the development process, handset porting, carrier testing, off-deck delivery and alternate ways of getting paid, as well as case studies from some of MTV Networks' biggest brands.
Joseph Saulter
Games and the Minority Audience
Increasingly, the gamer audience in North America is diversifying. The interests of African-American, Hispanic and Asian players should be taken into account in concert with the traditional gamer audience. Saulter speaks about the benefits of diversification and the need to consider ethical, racial and cultural variety within the gamer audience.
Ian Schreiber
Living with Programmers: What Game Designers Need to Know
As game design becomes its own specialized field, a growing number of designers lack strong technical skills. In this session, participants will learn some ways to use game design to solve programming problems, and vice versa. They also will find out how to teach themselves game programming, even if they have never taken a programming class before.
Rahul Sood
The Video Game Entrepreneur
In 1991, Sood, a 17-year-old high school graduate, started a personal computer company out of the back of a flooring store. The company, VoodooPC, soon became one of the leading brands of high-performance personal computers in the world, creating some of the finest "desktop Ferraris" and eventually attracting the likes of Dell and Hewlett Packard. In 2006, Sood and his team merged VoodooPC with Hewlett Packard and he became an executive in the Fortune 11 company, which employs 150,000 people worldwide. Sood will discuss his experiences through this journey and provide insight into good and bad aspects of the video game entrepreneur path.
Scott Thomas
Reinventing Traditional Distribution Windows
How advances in digital distribution and expanding broadband access are allowing for changes to the way the games industry releases new titles.
Dan Waters
3-D XNA from Scratch: From Idea to Implementation
One of the most sought-after tutorials in the game community covers the creation of 3-D content and how to process it through the pipeline into a game. In this session, Waters (academic evangelist at Microsoft) will teach participants how to build a 3-D game from start to finish, including the models, step-by-step, in one hour. Participants will learn how to create, rig and animate a character model in SOFTIMAGE | XSI Mod Tool, import it into the XNA content pipeline, and create gameplay logic around the model to effectively build a simple 3-D game. By the end of the session, participants will know enough about each aspect of this process to create a game on their own.