Category: News

You’ll have your pick of a boatload of interesting talks when you come to the Game Developers Conference in March, including a behind-the-scenes look at the design of Guerrilla Games’ hit game Horizon: Zero Dawn.

Guerrilla’s Eric Boltjes is coming to GDC 2018 to present “‘Horizon: Zero Dawn‘: A Game Design Postmortem,”  a Design track talk that will run you through through early prototypes and delving into design decisions and processes that shaped development of the 2017 game.

You’ll want to make time for this, because Boltjes plans to give you insight into the journey Horizon‘s game design went through while moving from an ambitious paper concept to a finished open world action RPG, with all of the small and large design decisions and choices that had to be made along the way.

You won’t want to miss it, as well as the many more GDC 2018 announcements we’ll be making in the coming months! For more information about GDC 2018 head over to the show’s official website, and subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.

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3D artists have to create environments and worlds largely from their own imagination. In Forza Motorsport 5, designers had to piece together elements from the real world and their own fiction in order to place a race track right in the heart of Prague.

In this GDC 2015 session, Microsoft Studios’ Arthur Shek discusses the technologies behind gathering reference data for Forza Motorsport 5, explaining how the method can be used to create more assets at a lower cost.

The talk goes over best practices for taking environment references, where Shek explains reference planning as the process of documenting everything about a space so that environment artists can create those results in 3D. He goes on to highlight how this gathering technique became the foundation for creating content quickly and efficiently.

Artists interested in utilizing the same techniques in their own work can now watch the talk completely free via the official GDC YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Americas

Researchers from the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) have released a mod for Civilization V that introduces superintelligent AI into the game. 

The project was managed by CSER’s Dr. Shahar Avin, who specifically chose Civilization V to draw attention to the impact and risks AI can have if they become smarter than humans, because of the educational benefits games provide.

“We want to let players experience the complex tensions and difficult decisions that the path to superintelligent AI would generate,” explains Avin. “Games are an excellent way to deliver a complex message to a wide audience. The Civilization games series has an amazing track record of presenting very complex and interlocking systems in a fun and educating way.”

As Rock Paper Shotgun notes, the Superintelligence mod adds AI technology to the tech tree, which includes players interacting with concepts like machine learning and constructing AI research labs in order to compete and be the first to develop artificial superintelliegence. 

If players don’t manage their resources carefully, then an unaligned superintelligent AI will be created and all civilizations will be destroyed. CSER developed this mod to explore future risks derived from AI, and it can be downloaded on Steam. 

– Co-founder of Amplitude Studios Romain de Waubert on embracing imbalance in faction designs 

In an interview with PC Gamer, Co-founder of Amplitude Studios Romain de Waubert and narrative director on the Endless Space series Jeff Spock discuss how the design philosophy of creating imbalance among factions led to a new take on the on 4X strategy genre.

Each faction in Endless Space is incredibly different, and that’s on purpose. “With every other faction [apart from humans], we try to break at least one major rule,” explains de Waubert. 

“They have to break the game, otherwise the whole imagination of the sci-fi universe is broken,” Says de Waubert. These extremes exist among many factions, where the groups have caveats that limit their actions. The Riftborn spend industry to reproduce (because they’re manufactured and can’t reproduce) whereas The Roving Clans can’t declare war but exert their power through the Marketplace instead. 

De Waubert admits that the imbalances make the game seem intimidating to new players, but Amplitude tackled the game with new players in mind. “When you’re starting on a blank page, you can do things differently.”

The design philosophy Amplitude established for the Endless series is in large part due to community feedback given to the studio over a number of years. “We had a bunch of ideas, but didn’t know how to make 4X,” de Waubert explains.

Devs curious to learn more about the design philosophy driving the Endless series should check out the full interview on PC Gamer’s website. 

LawBreakers publisher Nexon blames PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds for the poor reception of their multi-player shooter from Boss Key Productions.

Nexon’s financials were recently published, and during a conversation with investors Nexon exec Shiro Uemera pointed to Battlegrounds as the reason for the $36.6 million shortfall which LawBreakers was meant to fill.

As Eurogamer notes, Uemura discusses how LawBreakers sold below their expectations, even with a lot of optimism surrounding the game before launch. With Battlegrounds releasing around the same time, Uemura took that as the reason behind their failure.

 “The timing of its launch turned out to be unfortunate, specifically the blockbuster PC online game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds came out right about the same time, making the market environment very tough for first-person shooters in general and for LawBreakers,” Uemura told Eurogamer.

Independent game developer Lislore Goedhard proposed to Ted Martens using a custom build of Crypt of the NecroDancer with the help of designer Ryan Clark and composer Danny Baranowsky.

Martens is a pixel artist and animator on Crypt of the NecroDancer, and Goedhard enlisted his fellow NecroDancer colleagues Clark and Baranowsky to aide in her proposal. 

Announced on Twitter, Goedhart explained how the collaboration came to be, thanking Clark for assistance in designing the build and Baranowsky for composing a remix wedding song from zone one level one of the game. 

This isn’t the first time developers have used games to propose to their loved ones, but this gesture went the extra mile through its inclusion of custom made assets. 

Screenshots provide a look at the content created for the proposal, including a pixilated ring used to pop the question (to which he said yes).