GDC 2011 post-mortems and lectures available
The Game Developers Conference is offering a wide selection of its classic game post-mortems and lectures for free, and through sponsorships.
You may have missed out on some of this year's Game Developers Conference panels, but not to worry. The GDC Vault is offering a bevy of videos and slides from the conference sessions. The classic game post-mortems are being offered without advertisement, while the various lectures are sponsored and require users to be registered.
The classic game post-mortems cover titles like Prince of Persia and Out of This World, while the lectures go for tech-savvy topics like monetization strategies and the future of mobile games.
Check below for a sample of the offered content. The full listing can be found at the GDC Vault.
Satoru Iwata's keynote, Video Games Turn 25: A Historical Perspective and Vision for the Future:
For a quarter of a century, the engine of video games has been must have - the viral communication of what a gamer simply can't do without. Sometimes it's hardware, sometimes software, sometimes an accessory, but must have always describes an experience that can't be missed the next big thing. Along the way, innovation has continuously reinvented the game experience in terms of graphics, player control and pure game design. But in the process, part of the magic of those early days of game creation has been lost. As a leading player during all 25 years of the modern video gaming era, Nintendo has a unique perspective on what makes gamers grin, what defines the term gamer and what is essential to ensuring industry growth. Nintendo President, Satoru Iwata, will draw from his development roots and talk not only about how video gaming has evolved, but also, more importantly, he will offer his views on where we go from here.
John Romero's Classic Game Post-Mortem, DOOM:
Few games can match the ubiquity and legacy of DOOM, the seminal first-person shooter that ushered in thousands of mods, clones, and successors. Nearly every significant FPS, from RESISTANCE to HALF-LIFE, CALL OF DUTY to HALO, owes its success in part to the Id Software game. Programmer, Game Designer, Level Designer and DOOM II final boss, John Romero, will deliver a postmortem on the game showing never-before-seen material, memorializing its immersive but nerve-wracking 3D environments, networked multiplayer deathmatches, Satanic imagery and themes, Barney WADs, exploding barrels, and BFG 9000. Romero was a co-founder of id Software, among other companies, and also worked on other significant shooters like WOLFENSTEIN 3D and QUAKE.
Peter Molyneux's Classic Game Post-Mortem, Populous:
One of the first god games ever released, Bullfrog's POPULOUS beguiled players with its premise of playing as an all-powerful divine being capable of shaping the earth, growing and guiding a civilization, attracting worshippers, unleashing natural disasters (e.g. floods, earthquakes, and more) against enemies, and sending out knights to obliterate rival deity's followers. POPULOUS' always entertaining designer, Peter Molyneux, who went on to found Lionhead Studios, where he helped create the game's spiritual descendant BLACK & WHITE and popular RPG series FABLE, will talk about his work on the ground-breaking (and -raising and -lowering) isometric sim.
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Comment on GDC 2011 post-mortems and lectures available, by Steve Watts.