Despite a late night after receiving our ten wins at the Interactive Achievement Awards (we’re still beaming, by the way), we managed to get up in the morning and close out the D.I.C.E. Summit 2010. Today’s sessions had Randy Pitchford explaining the history, overall development philosophy and business management of Gearbox Software; John Schappert from EA promising not to tell us how much money he’s made and discussing EA’s publishing philosophy in these more difficult economic times; Mike Yuen from Zeebo talking about how his company is looking for success in under-served markets while fostering low development costs; Joe Madureira and David Adams from Vigil Games taking us through their development process of Darksiders as an independent studio; and, to conclude the day and the summit, Greg Short and Geoffrey Zatkin from EEDAR providing quantitative data and analysis on this console generation by looking at trends and comparisons in a variety Read more...

Even though we’ve been out celebrating, this news just can’t wait. Earlier this evening, eight Naughty Dogs including myself, attended the 13th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards ceremony as part of the D.I.C.E. Summit 2010. We didn’t know what to expect, as we were nominated in an unprecedented 15 categories and up against some very worthy games in every category—2009 was an incredible year for gaming as every game nominated was great enough to win an award. But I know we all wanted to win something, to be recognized, with the hope that the members of our industry, the members of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences thought our game was worthy of recognition, hopefully of the Game of the Year kind. Boy, did they. We’re proud, honored and exceedingly flattered to have UNCHARTED 2 nab 10 awards this evening: Game of the Year Outstanding Achievement in Game Direction Adventure Game of the Year Outstanding Achievement in Read more...

We’re about halfway through a very long day at the D.I.C.E. Summit 2010 today. Our own Richard Lemarchand kicked off the sessions for the day with his talk, “Uncharted 2 - How to Fly By the Seat of Your Pants Without Crapping Them.” His talk presented an overview of how Naughty Dog operates as a studio and an inside look at what our development process is like. I hope it was interesting to many of the developers and business folk in the audience, because I like to believe we have fairly unique and unorthodox development process, but one that at a glance may freak many people out (especially producers) used to more rigid development processes. Richard can put it far better than I could ever put it, even though I’m seen him speak about our process a handful of times already. In a nutshell, he explained how we value a highly collaborative and iterative process that can seem to outsiders extremely chaotic and on the verge of falling apart. But that Read more...

Richard Lemarchand, Co-Lead Game Designer on UNCHARTED 2, and I just arrived in Las Vegas several hours ago, where both of us will attend our first D.I.C.E. Summit. The easiest way to explain the D.I.C.E. Summit is that it’s kind of like a mini-GDC focusing on the business of making games, but really a bit more on a high level. It’s notable industry figures giving us their perceptions and big picture about making and selling games right now. And there’s no shortage of notables—just in our first session today you could spot key folks from Epic, Portalarium, Valve, Silicon Knights, Insomniac, Ubisoft, EA, Activision, and on and on and on. Not to mention we’re all essentially trapped in the same hotel the conference is at, so it’s a great time to meet new people, see old friends, catch up and share ideas, in a quieter, more subdued environment than other industry events. I really enjoyed one of the opening sessions today, “Hot Read more...