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Swiss Art Council to Bring Indie Game Studios to GDC 2023

Swiss Art Council to Bring Indie Game Studios to GDC 2023

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Over 15 Indie game development studios will travel to the 2023 GDC to be held this March in San Francisco California. The Swiss Art Council Pro Helvetia made the announcement on February 24, indicating that there will be a special group under its  SwissGame delegation. Switzerland has long been a promoter of the studios with up to 20 showcases per year. The SACPro is weighing heavily that this delegation made up of the 15 indie studios will be able spearhead putting the Swiss gaming on the map.  Swiss gaming has been lagging behind in popularity when compared to other world studios across the European Union. France and England have long been popular sets with renowned game developers and studios. This year’s SwissGame delegation sheds more light on an internal challenge that lines the Swiss gaming industry. The participants were hand selected by a jury, instead of a popular voting sequence, seen in other European giants.  Nonetheless, there is hope that the plethora of Swiss talents will be able to display

Welcome To GDC Summer

Welcome To GDC Summer

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It’s time once again for the Game Developers Conference! And if you haven’t already guessed, it’s gone streamy! GDC Summer is the new name for this year’s conference, featuring speeches and stories by top video game professionals from all corners of the video game industry. Watch, listen and learn. What’s different besides the medium? The interactive elements you can participate in through your computer….for example, there will be an interactive series of Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions with industry veterans, and you’ll probably stand a better shot of getting your question through than you would have by raising your hand in a crowded auditorium. “Our goal with GDC Summer is to bring the same expert content, networking opportunities, and chance to come together as a community that attendees have come to expect from a GDC event,” says GDC General Manager Katie Stern. “We’re very pleased to be able to capitalize on the virtual nature of the conference with new ways to connect with each other and unique sessions such as

Roberta Williams To Be Honored With GDC Pioneer Award

Roberta Williams To Be Honored With GDC Pioneer Award

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Any fan of PC gaming history knows who Roberta Williams is. As one of the co-founders of Sierra On-Line, she and her husband Ken revolutionized the industry with their innovative (and frustratingly obtuse) adventure titles. Now she’s picking up another award for her contributions, the GDC Pioneer Award. The story goes that Roberta was stuck at home when Ken brought in a computer from work. Back then, in the primitive days, computer adventure games were told entirely with text. Frustrated with this, Roberta set out to make the kind of games she wanted to play, and in 1980 she and Ken self-published Mystery House, Sierra’s first title and the venture that snowballed into beloved projects like the King’s Quest series. “It’s hard to truly measure the impact of Roberta Williams’ landmark titles; they not only pushed the technological envelope at the time, but they helped establish video games as a legitimate storytelling medium, and one that could appeal to men and women alike,” says  Katie Stern, general manager of GDC.

The GDC Main Stage Returns With The Developer’s Impact, a Marquee Multi-Part Talk on Socially Conscious Game Creation

The GDC Main Stage Returns With The Developer’s Impact, a Marquee Multi-Part Talk on Socially Conscious Game Creation

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Organizers of the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2020 will host ‘The Developer’s Impact,’ the second annual installment of the GDC Main Stage and a follow up to last year’s talk, ‘The Developer’s Journey.’ The multi-part presentation will be delivered by three esteemed game creators: Osama Dorias, lead game designer at Warner Brothers Games Montreal, Ziba Scott, the “Optimist” at Popcannibal, and Lyndsay Pearson, lead producer and GM for The Sims at Maxis, a studio of Electronic Arts. Each of these three game makers has deep and varied development experience, and will share with the GDC community their struggles and triumphs implementing socially conscious design decisions within each of their distinct projects. The GDC Main Stage presentation, ‘The Developer’s Impact,’ will take place at the Moscone Convention Center’s West Hall, on Wednesday, March 18, 2020. Developer Osama Dorias will detail the creation and evolution of a game parable that took on themes of xenophobia and Islamophobia by drawing on his own personal story as a Muslim Arab in the West. Developer

Independent Games Festival Awards Nominations Announced

Independent Games Festival Awards Nominations Announced

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The Independent Games Festival has revealed their list of finalists for the 22nd annual IGF Awards. Yes, a certain naughty goose is after the grand prize, but there are others: Mutazione, a post-apocalyptic adventure game described as a “mutant soap opera,” is not only up for the grand prize but leads the nominees by qualifying for three other categories. Other nominees include Zachtronics’ Eliza and Slay The Spire from Mega Crit Games. The winners of the Independent Games Festival Awards are eligible for over $20,000 in prizes — the Grand Prize is worth half that alone — and each finalist receives a $1,000 stipend. As per tradition, the awards ceremony will take place during the Game Developers Conference and will be free for anyone attending, but if you can’t make it, you can also watch the livestream at http://twitch.tv/gdc. The full list of nominees is reproduced below. Seumas McNally Grand Prize Eliza (Zachtronics) A Short Hike (Adam Robinson-Yu) Untitled Goose Game (House House) Mutazione (Die Gute Fabrik) Slay the Spire

Sonic The Hedgehog Had Some Bizarre Origin Concepts

Sonic The Hedgehog Had Some Bizarre Origin Concepts

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Yesterday during GDC, two men who worked on the original Sonic the Hedgehog game — character designer Naoto Oshima and game designer Hirokazu Yasuhara — took to the stage to show off some previously unseen proto-Sonic sketches and explain the thinking behind one of the most iconic game characters ever. Some of what they revealed, we knew already. We knew Sonic is blue because the Sega logo is blue. We knew Sega toyed around with various animals like a rabbit and a dog before settling on a hedgehog. What we didn’t know is that all those drawings were made at once and shown off during a meeting between high-ups at Sega of Japan and America. Then they took a trip to Central Park and asked random citizens which drawing they liked best. The hedgehog won the vote. The second most popular choice? An egg-shaped man with a huge mustache. Sega decided to keep him and make him the villain. Now here’s where things get weird. Oshima revealed at one point,

GameMaker Studio 2 Is (Temporarily) Free

GameMaker Studio 2 Is (Temporarily) Free

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For those unfamiliar with YoYo Games’ GameMaker product, it’s grown to become a popular method of making 2D games for people who aren’t thoroughly skilled in the art of coding. The engine is intuitive enough that you can snap together a simple game without much knowhow, but rich enough that you can dive in further and make more complicated things as your skills grow. The best thing about it is that you can authentically publish your creations with Steam and other legit markets. The worst thing about it is the prohibitive cost. Doing anything serious with GameMaker requires a heavy investment of several hundred dollars, and the modules are divided by the format you wish to publish on: one for PC, one for HTML5, one for each console. PC and Mac development is cheapest at $39. But for PS4 and XBox One, Sony and Microsoft want $800 each! (Note: a Switch module is coming this summer, and official development software costs $400, so we would anticipate the GameMaker version to

Pokemon GO Gyms To Change

Pokemon GO Gyms To Change

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Pokemon GO nails the feeling of being a Pokemon trainer in many ways. You have to walk around to get Pokemon, you have a partner Pokemon travel with you, there are other trainers in the world, etc. However, the one major way it’s not like a regular Pokemon game or like the Pokemon anime is that the Gym Battles don’t resemble anything like their counterparts. In the game, Gyms are constantly changing their owners, but, you don’t have to be active in the game to lose your gym, and the battles themselves are very linear. At GDC, Developer Niantic spoke with Polygon and admitted that the Gym Battles have to change. “The gym portion [of Pokémon Go] needs a lot more work, and we are trying to improve it and make a bigger change to how the system works,” says Nomura. “Overall, I think we need a little bit more time to think through how we do it.” “We needed to define [gyms] in a way that works in a

The Problem With Game Preservation

The Problem With Game Preservation

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This week during the Game Developers Conference, Frank Cifaldi, head of restoration at developer Digital Eclipse, hosted an hour-long talk on game preservation. Frank’s company is frequently hired to get older games working on modern systems; one of Digital Eclipse’s most recent projects was transferring the original 8-bit Mega Man game into a format that would play on today’s consoles and phones. Polygon was there and wrote down the most interesting points. What got Frank interested in game preservation was what happened to films when there was no preservation effort for media of any kind. “According to the Film Foundation, over half the films made before 1950 are gone,” Cifaldi said. “I don’t mean that you can’t buy these on DVD. I mean they’re gone. They don’t exist anymore.” Cifaldi went on to say the figure prior to 1920 is even worse at an 80 percent loss. “That terrified me. I wasn’t particularly a film buff, but the idea of these works just disappearing forever and never being recoverable scared

Star Crusade: War For The Expanse Gets New Trailer

Star Crusade: War For The Expanse Gets New Trailer

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Star Crusade: War For The Expanse, developed by ZiMAD Games, has gotten a new trailer, as well as some new screenshots at this years Game Developers Conference (GDC). You can watch the new trailer for the game below. Currently in beta onSteam, the game will put players in control of one of six mighty factions vying for power in a faraway sector of outer space. Star Crusade: War for the Expanse will offer a deep and highly customizable card battle experience with more than 400 playable cards set in a rich sci-fi universe with multiple play modes, including single-player matches, ranked matches and random draft “raid” battles. The game also emphasizes strategic deck construction by letting players vary the size of their decks from 25 to 40 cards; smaller decks start the game first and develop more quickly, but larger decks have more survivability. Speaking about the game, ZiMAD producer Alex Rechevskiy said: “There are few truly dominant players in the digital CCG scene, but we intend to change that. We feel so strongly

Pamela Is Coming To An Arm Near You

Pamela Is Coming To An Arm Near You

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A new survival horror game called Pamela is under development at Toronto-based NVYVE Studios. The game was unveiled mere hours ago at the Game Developer’s Conference, and here are some of the details courtesy of Polygon. First of all, who is Pamela? She’s the Cortana-like AI that guides the player through the island resort of Eden (which is far from a paradise, at least in the state you’re introduced to it). The character you play, which will be randomly generated each time, will sport a bionic arm that Pamela can talk to you through. According to lead developer Christian McDonald, Pamela can run on that arm because…..Pamela uses the 90% of your brain that you don’t use…..because you don’t eat a vegan diet, so you don’t have superpowers…..seriously, what is it going to take to kill this myth? I guess the problem is that it’s too full of narrative potential to get rid of. A plague has infected the island and people are transforming into murderous monsters left and right.