Game Dev Talks/Lectures

[Dinosaursssssss]

So, with the abundance of conferences and such related to game design and development these days, I'm sure there are just about a million interesting/useful/inspirational talks floating around. Let's share and get our learn on!

 

This is a recent favorite, Jan Willem Nijman from Vlambeer talking about "The Art of Screenshake." I really like this talk, from both a content perspective, and in how Jan illustrates his talking points with a game that's iterated on over the course of the talk. This really informed my understanding of what it is that makes Vlambeers games so damn good; it's a thing that's hard to put into words, and I think that's what makes this presentation so effective.

 

[Joewintergreen]

 

This is one of my favourite talks, I use Chet's "sharpening your pencils" analogy all the time.

[empika]

Heres the talks from the latest DICE and Steam Dev Days

[eot]

Here's a talk I like by Jonathan Blow and Marc Ten Bosch.

It's a bit hard to summarise, but they basically define a set of values in mechanics and puzzles that they think make for good games from a certain aesthetic point of view.

[Dinosaursssssss]

[Chet Faliszek on how to get into the industry]

 

This is one of my favourite talks, I use Chet's "sharpening your pencils" analogy all the time.

 

This is great, and will be my new answer whenever anyone asks about how to get in the industry. Really can't agree enough with him about the importance of scoping appropriately and just making things. I was totally with him all the way up until the end, when he's a bit disparaging towards game school programs (which is a bit silly given the focus on Portal in the talk).

[Joewintergreen]

In my experience, Digipen is the only games school/course that isn't a complete waste of time, so I agree with him on that one tbh

[Dinosaursssssss]

In my experience, Digipen is the only games school/course that isn't a complete waste of time, so I agree with him on that one tbh

 

I know folks who have completed a handful of different programs and came out with good experience and some smarts, which leads me to believe there's potentially a lot of value in those programs. A lot of it may simply be that you get some experience working on games with a team. But what do I know, I went to a liberal arts school. 

 

Anyway, another interesting talk: here's Gabe Newell speaking about...how games can change the world? Educational applications of games,  how the hat economy will end poverty. and then a rambling question that the asker answers himself.

 

 

And a really specific one...this is a GDC Vault talk from Bioware about QA test automation. I found it fascinating, your mileage may vary. (requires gdc vault access)

 

http://gdcvault.com/play/1015598/The-Automation-Trap-and-How

[UltimateHurl]

Here's a business-oriented talk from one Steve Gaynor, which I really liked. I think the recognition of 'tiers' of indie and the fact that following success has benefits that finding success doesn't is really interesting.

 

[lordgankoo]

This one's CCP's Hilmar Petursson putting some interesting framing around a few anecdotes from EVE regarding player experience of games, amongst a few other topics.

 

[Murdoc]

I'm sure the thumbs and forums have talked about them before and as of 3-5 years ago they were easily accessible, but now a bit harder to find, but Warren Spectors Master Classes are pretty great for one part history and one part theory.

 

[Dinosaursssssss]

This one's CCP's Hilmar Petursson putting some interesting framing around a few anecdotes from EVE regarding player experience of games, amongst a few other topics.

 

 

Ah this is great, I actually just linked this Polygon article to a few friends at work that has a few quotes from Petursson along the same lines as what he says in that talk. He actually uses the same anecdote about losing a ship while in the bathroom in both, too. The article itself feels a bit like it lacks purpose to me, but I think some of the quotes from the Petursson and the players interviewed are really interesting and framed well. This is probably my favorite tidbit from Petursson:

 

"We had never made a computer game, and we didn't even know anyone who had made a computer game," Pétursson says. "But we had done a lot of things. We'd done 3-D, we'd done multi-user, we'd done a board game. Then we came up with this thesis of, 'OK, we have $3 million, we have 30 people, so we have to do as little as possible and be very effective in what we do. We can't just create a lot of content for the game because that is labor-intensive, and it's a much bigger production.'

"So we basically built an operating system for a world, and it's a world where you can make all the things in it and sell them on an open market. You can form corporations, and those corporations can claim territory and vie for strategic dominance. That sounds like a system that can be done by 30 people, and then the people who join the game after that, they will do the rest."

 

Anyway, here's another one! This was actually mentioned on the cast a while back, Rob Daviau talking at NYU Practice about Risk Legacy. Really fascinating, though a lot of it isn't necessarily directly relevant to video games.

 

[Juan Raigada]

This is one of my favorites, specially because of how directly you can apply it in pretty much any game:

 

[Dinosaursssssss]

This was actually linked on Kotaku earlier so I'm sure some folks have seen it. Kind of a weird fit for this thread (more about the AAA business than anything else), but I found it incredibly interesting so maybe you all will enjoy it as well. Here's Rich Hilleman, Chief Creative Officer at EA and 39th (!) EA employee, talking about...lots of stuff. Being a manager/producer, metrics, free to play, history and structure of EA.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9Am5_5cYkc

 

And a text summary:

http://kotaku.com/surprisingly-real-talk-from-a-top-man-at-ea-1538708191

[BigJKO]

My favorite bit (of many favorite bits) in that transcript was how a third of their Android customers think they have an iPhone.

[Dinosaursssssss]

My favorite bit (of many favorite bits) in that transcript was how a third of their Android customers think they have an iPhone.

 

I like what he infers from it as well; I don't have the exact quote, but I believe it was "it's not that they don't know, it's that they don't care" which I think is pretty telling of that market.

[Eftervind]

Here's a fun one from one of my favorite developers.

[senator_FuenteZ]

I'm not sure where I first found this video (it could have been on this site), but I do like this talk about game design. I went and checked out The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell right after watching this talk. (The book is also referenced by an audience member in the Gabe Newell talk above.)

I like how the speaker uses Pac Man and other games to reference exactly what he is talking about with experience and flow.

[Dinosaursssssss]

Looks like GDC 2014 talks are up on the Vault now, if you have access 

 

Also about a week ago I was looking for a summary of Tom Betts' (of Big Robot / Sir, You Are Being Hunted) GDC talk on procedural world generation 'cause I'm foolish and didn't take any notes, and instead stumbled upon a talk he gave at the Unity conference that seems to cover a lot of the same ground. The knowledge here is pretty specific and technical, but I found it really interesting and bits were definitely still relevant to a 2D project I'm working on.

 

 

And here's the GDC Vault version:

 

http://gdcvault.com/play/1020340/Creating-FPS-Open-Worlds-Using

 

EDIT: I forgot there are also a ton of free talks too! I don't have specific recommendations from this list but there are some interesting sounding ones in there.

 

http://www.gdcvault.com/free/gdc-14

[Dijonjon]

Just to add to Dinosaursssssss' post, I would recommend these two talks.
 

• Jiro Dreams of Game Design by Brenda Romero
  • It's not a technical talk, but I think it's a really great examination of game design (and/or general game development) and craftsmanship.
  • http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020496/Jiro-Dreams-of-Game
• A Study in Transparency: How Boardgames Matter by Soren Johnson
  • Not exactly novel, but I thought it was a good talk about the value that transparent systems (most commonly seen in board games) offer
  • http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020408/A-Study-in-Transparency-How

[Spenny]

Here are a few I picked out from the offerings of free GDC talks. 

 

Fewer Tifas or More Sephiroths? Male Sexualization in Games. Totes funny and probably my favourite session from all of GDC:

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020520/Fewer-Tifas-or-More-Sephiroths

 

Scoops talkin' 'bout why Gone Home is a game:

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020376/Why-Is-Gone-Home-a

 

The dudes who made Monaco talkin' 'bout how to interpret feedback:

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020495/Monaco-What-s-Yours-Is

[Dinosaursssssss]

This is Zach Gage / @helvetica's tumblr, "Great Talks About Games"

 

http://talksaboutgames.tumblr.com/

[I_smell]

Chris mentioned this on a recent cast:

 

Design in Detail: Changing the Time Between Shots for the Sniper Rifle from 0.5 to 0.7 Seconds for Halo 3

http://gdcvault.com/play/1012211/Design-in-Detail-Changing-the

 

It's a talk about weapon design in Halo, and how to think about design and balancing for stuff like this. It's fun, it's nice, I liked it.

[clyde]

I'm reading this chapter over and over again. The introduction to this book makes me think that it contains exactly the type of wisdom I want to internalize at an early stage of learning how to write script, but it's so difficult to do the necessary visualization when I have so little experience. Anyway, I think this may be a useful resource for some of you too.

http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/command.html

[Cpt Pantaloons]

Alexander Bruce's (Antichamber developer) emotional journey to release:

 

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020776/Antichamber-An-Overnight-Success-Seven

[sclpls]

Loosely related, but Soren Johnson, designer of Civ 4, is on twitch now, and has been streaming a game of Civ 4. He goes into a lot of details about how the game works, design compromises he isn't totally satisfied with, and other details that basically make the stream one of the most compelling post-mortems I can think of. Worth checking out!