If you’re headed over to San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference in a couple of weeks… well, first off, consider yourself lucky as it looks like the entire conference is going to be pretty spectacular this year! On our end, we’re feeling pretty excited about GDC09 as well since three Naughty Dogs will be taking part in three separate sessions during the week.

If you happen to be in town early to check out the GDC Summits you can catch, Christian Gyrling, Programmer, speak during a session during the new AI Summit. He’ll be talking about how AI and animation are getting closely integrated during game development as more powerful hardware and ambitious game design are increasing the challenges programmers and animators face. The session is called “(307) Animating in a Complex World: Integrating AI and Animation” and it takes place from 11:15 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. on Monday, March 23, 2009 in room 2018 in the West Hall.

Next up, Richard Lemarchand, Co-Lead Game Designer on UNCHARTED 2, curates a panel with an interesting and awesome premise: he has managed to grab 10 amazing speakers from various facets of the game industry to give micro-presentations about contemporary game design – everyone gets only twenty slides and about five-and-a-half minutes to give their talk. The impressive line-up includes:

• Robin Hunicke (Game Designer, BOOM BLOX/EA)
• Eric Zimmerman (Co-Founder and CEO, GameLab)
• N’Gai Croal (General Editor at Newsweek)
• Frank Lantz (Co-Founder and Creative Director, AREA/CODE)
• Tracy Fullerton (Interactive Media Division of the USC School of Cinematic Arts)
• John Sharp (SCAD-Atlanta)
• Jenova Chen (FLOW, FLOWER, thatgamecompany)
• Clint Hocking (Game Director, FAR CRY 2/Ubisoft)
• Jane McGonigal (Game Designer, Researcher and Future Forecaster)

Catch Richard’s session, “GDC Microtalks - One Hour, Ten Speakers, Unlimited Ideas” on Thursday, March 26, 2009, from 9:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m. in room 2007 in the West Hall.

Rounding out the week, Jason Gregory, Generalist Programmer, delves into the state-based scripting system we have been using during development of both our UNCHARTED games. I caught Jason’s talk last week when he did a practice run to a bunch of us here at the studio and I think we all came away quite impressed with the presentation – and I learned a lot about how we make games here to boot. Jason’s session, “State-Based Scripting in UNCHARTED: DRAKE’S FORTUNE and UNCHARTED 2: AMONG THIEVES,” will take place from 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. on Friday, March 27, 2009, in room 2018 in the West Hall.

If you’re at GDC09, we hope to see you there!

Photo courtesy of the Game Developers Conference.

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Posted by: arne
Tags: talks, programming, gdc09, game design