The Bosslady of the Game Developers Conference has written a post updating us on what we can be expecting from the upcoming convention (March 23rd through the 27th).

Sure, we’ll get great speeches from some of the Killzone 2 devs, some Lionhead people talking on Fable II, and something or other about Far Cry 2. The bigger news to come of this…

A designer and project manager working on Mass Effect 2!

Session Description
This session examines the BioWare Mass Effect team’s new level-creation process, which is focused on maximizing iteration for quality while minimizing rework and cost. This approach to building levels strives to integrate the Design, Art, and Production teams such that the highest-risk level-creation issues are addressed early in the development cycle. Lessons learned from Mass Effect lead to a detailed description of the new level-creation process, and graphical examples of a level illustrate its progression through the necessary phases. The discussion also examines how BioWare is currently implementing this process using elements of Scrum and Lean Development.

Takeaway
Attendees will: – Gain insight into some of the major issues the development team encountered while building Mass Effect at BioWare; – Get a detailed look at the Mass Effect team’s new approach to creating levels while avoiding these issues; – Find out how this new process is working for the Mass Effect team; – Learn about new pitfalls the team discovered that can potentially be avoided on future game projects.

We will get a peak behind the art done for the “significan creative risk” known as Brutal Legend

Session Description
A behind-the-scenes look at creating the art for a highly ambitious, Heavy Metal inspired original game, this talk examines how the look of Brütal Legend was defined and realized. Details on how Double Fine met the challenge of creating a unique, stylized look while also delivering a “AAA looking” game on the current generation of consoles are revealed. Creating the art for Brütal Legend was particularly challenging, as the game features a tightly constructed, story-driven single player campaign, a free-roaming open world environment of epic proportions, and a rich multiplayer game. Several specific problems and their solutions are presented on topics such as open world terrain fidelity, the advanced materials approach applied to characters, and the implementation of a dynamic sky, lighting and weather system.

Takeaway
Attendees will take away a detailed understanding of how Double Fine develops art from initial inspiration to final execution. Attendees will also take away the knowledge of how Double Fine solved the numerous challenges of making stylized art that feels contemporary on the current generation of consoles through several specific examples. Attendees will gain an understanding of how these approaches worked and be able to apply them to similar problems in their own productions.

Lastly but not leastly, Big Huge Games (the people behind Catan, the Rise of the Nations games, and Age of Empires III) will be talking about open world games as well as their new open world RPG. It should be noted that Big Huge Games had snagged the lead designer from Oblivion and Morrowind to work on this new RPG.

Session Description
Open-world games with vast narratives are more popular than ever, with massive successes like Oblivion, GTA4, and Fallout 3 scoring big in reviews and sales. This session will focus on the challenges unique to designing one of these games, as well as how lessons learned from past projects are being applied to create another title in this growing genre.

Takeaway
By examining case histories from Oblivion and Morrowind, and seeing how lessons learned are being applied to the speakers’ new open-world RPG, attendees will gain a better insight into the unique and varied challenges associated with designing a vast open-world game, how to avoid them, and what to do when they inevitably occur. Attendees will also be given tools to re-examine their own game creation process, and how they might apply these tools to designing in an open world.

After hearing Matt Shaw of Mythic Entertainment speak at the last VGXPO, getting a peak into the development process from the makers of the games is a very interesting experience. I really hope some of the better web sites out there are able to provide some good coverage of this upcoming Game Developers Conference, not only bringing us some info on the new games, but also some stories relating to the development that went into some games we already love.

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