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SAN FRANCISCO–The 2010 Game Developers Conference began today with the Independent Games Summit kickoff, a session on “guerilla” development, and a (very) brief talk by Caleb Arseneaux from Scribblenauts developer 5TH Cell. Tomorrow morning, the main conference will start with a series of presentations, including talks by BioWare co-founder and CEO Dr. Ray Muzyka, Bungie creative director Joseph Staten, and Electronic Arts COO John Schappert.

Though not as flashy as E3, GDC still draws a big crowd of game development’s best and brightest.

The event will shift into high gear at 4 p.m. PST Wednesday, when Sony Computer Entertainment will hold a press conference. Though no details are yet public, the company is expected to use the event to show off the PlayStation 3’s motion-control system, widely believed to be called the “PlayStation Arc.” GameSpot will be on hand with both live video streaming and liveblog coverage, accessible from the main GameSpot GDC page.

Thursday will see full coverage of presentations by Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka, Metroid co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto, Naughty Dog’s Richard Lemarchand, Lionhead’s Peter Molyneux, and Blizzard Entertainment’s Rob Pardo. Besides the arrival of the latest NPD report, there will also be a special live GDC edition of Today on the Spot, broadcast from the nearby GameSpot Studios at 4 p.m. PST.

Sony is expected to show off the PS3 Motion Controller at a press event at 4 p.m. Wednesday, March 10. GameSpot will live stream and liveblog the event.

That evening, GameSpot will exclusively stream the Game Developers Choice Awards, hosted by Deus Ex and Thief creator Warren Spector, who is currently at work on Epic Mickey at Disney Interactive Studios. Uncharted 2 will be the most-nominated game at the ceremony, which will also see id Software’s John Carmack take home the Lifetime Achievement Award for over 20 years of work on the Doom and Quake series.

Valve Software’s Gabe Newell will receive the 2010 Pioneer Award for his work on the Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Portal, and Left 4 Dead series. The ceremony begins at 6:30 p.m. with the Independent Game Festival winners, followed by the main awards show approximately a half-hour later.

Friday morning coverage begins at 10:30 a.m. PST, with GameSpot’s liveblog of GDC keynote speaker Sid Meier, founder of Firaxis games and creator of the iconic Civilization strategy series. Also scheduled are write-ups of presentations by Gearbox Software’s Randy Pitchford and Final Fantasy XIII writer Motomu Toriyama, as well as sessions covering Batman: Arkham Asylum, disabled gaming, and Xbox Live achievement data.

GameSpot will also be covering a panel which will see Pardo, Muzyka, and other industry heavyweights discuss how online connectivity will become more central to games in the future. That afternoon will also see another live edition of TOTS at 4 p.m.

Warren Spector will host the 2010 Game Developers Choice Awards, streaming live at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday night.

GDC 2010 wraps up on Saturday with sessions focusing on Mass Effect 2, Shadow Complex, and Assassin’s Creed II. Ubisoft Montreal’s narrative director Richard Rouse will give a talk on evoking serious emotions, while Double Fine CEO Tim Schafer will host a panel discussing (what else?) comedy.

For more on these events and all the latest screenshots, videos, previews, interviews, and breaking news, keep your browser set to GameSpot’s ongoing 2010 Game Developers Conference coverage.

GAMESPOT’S GDC 2010 COVERAGE – SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

TUESDAY, MARCH 9

Scheduled Sessions:

–”From Big Studio to Small Indie: Guerrilla Tactics from Hello Games ” – Sean Murray (managing director, Hello Games)

–”Indies and Publishers: Fixing a System That Never Worked” – Ron Carmel (Co-founder, 2D Boy)

–”5TH Cell: From Mobile to Handheld & Beyond” – Caleb Arseneaux (Producer, 5th Cell)

–IGF KEYNOTE: “Increasing Our Reach: Designing To Grab and Retain Players” – Randy Smith (owner and game designer, Tiger Style)

BioWare CEO Ray Muzyka will share his thoughts on building blockbusters franchises like Mass Effect.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10

4 p.m. PST: SONY GDC 2010 PRESS CONFERENCE, speakers and subject TBA. – Streaming LIVE w/ text liveblog accompaniment.

Scheduled Sessions:

–”Building a Blockbuster Franchise” — Joseph Staten (Creative Director, Bungie), Ray Muzyka (CEO and General Manager, BioWare Corp.)

–Indie Gamemaker Rant! – Various speakers

–Mythbusting Fireside Chat – John Schappert (Chief operating officer, Electronic Arts)

–”The Relentless March Towards Free…and What it Means to the Games Industry” – Kristian Segerstrale (vice president and general manager, Playfish)

John Carmack gets a GDCA Lifetime Achievement Award Thursday night.

THURSDAY, MARCH 10

4 p.m. PST: Today on the Spot LIVE: Special GDC Edition

6:30 p.m. PST: Independent Game Festival Awards – Streaming LIVE!

~7 p.m. PST: Game Developers Choice Awards, hosted by Warren Spector – Streaming LIVE!

Scheduled Sessions:
–”Achievements Considered Harmful?” – Chris Hecker (definition six, inc.)

–”Among Friends – An Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Post-Mortem” – Richard Lemarchand (game designer, Naughty Dog)

–”As Long as the Audio is Fun, the Game Will Be Too” – Akira Yamaoka (Grasshopper Manufacture Studio)

–”Building an Open-World Game Without Hiring an Army” – Nate Fox (game director, Sucker Punch Productions {Infamous})

–”Creating a Unique Visual Direction: The Successes and Failures of Creating a Near-Future Cyberpunk Setting with a Renaissance Twist in Deus Ex 3 ” – Jonathan Jacques-Belletete (Art director, Eidos Montreal)

–”Epic Games/Unreal Engine 3 Media Briefing” – Speaker TBA

–”From Metroid to Tomodachi Collection to WarioWare: Different Approaches for Different Audiences” – Yoshio Sakamoto (Group manager/software planning and development department, Nintendo)

–”Making a Standard (and Trying to Stick to it!): Blizzard Design Philosophies” – Rob Pardo (VP, game design, Blizzard Entertainment)

–”Peering into the Black Box of Player Behavior: The Player Experience Panel at Microsoft Game Studios” – Bruce Phillips (User researcher, Microsoft)

–”The Complex Challenges of Intuitive Design” – Peter Molyneux (Head of studio, Lionhead Studios), Josh Atkins (studio design director, Microsoft Games Studio)

–”What Happened Here? Environmental Storytelling”- Harvey Smith (Game director, Arkane Studios), Matthias Worch (Senior level designer, Visceral Games)

Civilization creator Sid Meier will deliver a keynote at 10:30 a.m. on Friday, March 12.

FRIDAY, MARCH 12

10:10 a.m. PST: GDC KEYNOTE: “The Psychology of Game Design (Everything You Know Is Wrong)” Sid Meier (Director of creative development, Firaxis Games)

4 p.m. PST: Today on the Spot LIVE: Special GDC Edition

Scheduled Sessions:
–”Accessibility Arcade: Bringing AAA Game Titles to the Disabled Through Controller Hacks” – Michelle Hinn (Chairperson, IGDA Game Accessibility Special Interest Group), Tara Tefertiller (VP game industry relations, Right to Fun Foundation)

–”Borderlands and the 11th Hour Art Style Change. Or: Kids, Don’t Try this at Home! ” – Brian Martel (Co-Founder & chief creative officer, Gearbox Software), Randy Pitchford (President and CEO, Gearbox Software)

–”The Crystal Mythos and Final Fantasy XIII” – Motomu Toriyama (Scenario writer for Final Fantasy XIII, Square Enix)

–”The Art Direction of Batman: Arkham Asylum: Rebooting a Super Hero Video Game IP” – David Hego (Art director, Rocksteady)

–”The Connected Future of Games” – Min Kim (Vice president, Nexon America Inc.), Ray Muzyka (CEO and general manager, BioWare Corp.), Rob Pardo (VP, game design, blizzard entertainment), Brian Reynolds (Chief designer, Zynga), Jason Holtman (Director of business development, Valve)

–”Double Header Analysis: Xbox Live Achievement Data and Intellectual Property Trends in Video Games” – Geoffrey Zatkin (President & COO, Electronic Entertainment Design and Research), Jesse Divnich (Vice President of Analyst Services, EEDAR)

–”The Game Design Challenge 2010: Real-World Permadeath” – Eric Zimmerman (Independent), Heather Kelley (Founder and game designer, Kokoromi), Erin Robinson (Independent Game developer, Wadjet Eye Games), Jenova Chen (Co-founder, thatgamecompany), Kim Swift (Project lead/game designer, Airtight Games)

–”Console Wars Revisited: Are We Breaking the Mold or Reliving History?” – Don Daglow (President & CEO, Don Daglow Interactive Entertainment)

SATURDAY, MARCH 13
–”Designing Assassin’s Creed 2″ – Patrick Plourde (Lead game designer, Ubisoft)

–”Designing Shadow Complex” – Donald Mustard (Creative director, Chair Entertainment Group)

–”Five Ways a Video Game Can Make You Cry” – Richard Rouse III (Narrative director, Ubisoft Montreal)

–”Make ‘Em Laugh: Comedy in Games” – Tim Schafer (CEO, Doublefine), Rhianna Pratchett (Freelance scriptwriter and narrative designer, Independent), Sean Vanaman (Writer & designer, Telltale Games), John Teti (Games writer, The A.V. Club)

–”Rock Band Network: Postmortem” – Matthew Nordhaus (Senior producer: design, Harmonix Music Systems), Caleb Epps (Senior sound designer, Harmonix Music Systems)

–”Where Did My Inventory Go? Refining Gameplay in Mass Effect 2)” – Christina Norman (Lead gameplay designer, Bioware

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Who was there: Tiger Style Games co-owner Randy Smith delivered the 2010 Independent Game Summit keynote address at this year’s Game Developers Conference. Though Tiger Style is perhaps best known for its critically acclaimed iPhone title Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, Smith’s resume includes creative director at EA Los Angeles as well as project director of Ion Storm’s Thief: Deadly Shadows. Smith also served in a designer role at Looking Glass Studios, working on the critically acclaimed Thief: The Dark Project and Thief II: The Metal Age.

Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor certainly fared well with critics.

What he talked about: Smith’s keynote address was titled “Increasing Our Reach: Designing to Grab and Retain Players.” The veteran-turned-indie game designer offered the congregated masses tips on ways to improve game design and, in turn, help raise the profile and earning potential of smaller-scale games.

But first, Smith cautioned that his design tips don’t apply to all indie games, as many by their nature seek to push the boundaries of what interactive software can be. However, this mentality doesn’t give developers license to design bad games, he said.

Launching into his talk, Smith emphasized two key design elements that are important for indie games: immediacy and depth. Beginning with immediacy, he offered the example of Adam Atomic and Danny B’s Canabalt. The game, he said, is a great example of immediacy, thanks to its simple controls and the ease by which players can try again after failure. The game does have a low threshold for failure, though, which can have a negative initial impact on players.

Powerful immediacy can be achieved through solid “affordances,” which are essentially the things in a game that players can do. Explaining this concept, Smith said that a weak affordance would be bullets that bounce off a wall, while a strong affordance would be bullets that can deform terrain. Juicy affordances–such as accelerating and decelerating while running or adding particle effects to certain objects–are also a key element of immediacy, he said.

InMotion Software’s I Dig It is a solid example of a game that combines strong and juicy affordances, he said. In it, gamers search for treasure by digging tunnels in the ground. Smith noted the ample feedback that the game provides, as well as the strong affordance of deforming the environment.

One game that doesn’t offer particularly strong immediacy, according to Smith, is 5TH Cell’s million-unit-selling Scribblenauts. In particular, Smith takes exception with the laborious tutorial process, which prevents players from simply jumping into the game by going into intricate detail on the various ways to use its tools. He believes that it is important to show players the tools but let them figure out how to use them.

Smith thinks I Dig It offers strong immediacy and depth.

Smith then transitioned to the idea of depth in game design. Returning to I Dig It, Smith called out the positive depth mechanics of upgrades and resources, as well as multiple levels and environmental features. One negative of depth for this game, he noted, was that the core mechanic–that is, digging–is always the same.

One good strategy for getting gamers deeper into a game, he continued, was the concept of “depth on demand.” Through this design strategy, the game gives players a high rate of success but lets them pursue additional accomplishments to truly master it. To use this design method successfully, he said, it’s important to inform players about how much of the game they actually saw, so they know how much was left behind.

As a way to increase depth, Smith brought up the notions of “low- and mid-level loops.” A low-level loop relies on specific tactics and deals with what players actually do to address the problems at hand. Conversely, a mid-level loop requires more strategy and invites players to think about what they need to do to accomplish their overall goals.

Depth can also be increased through gobs of content, Smith said, using the example of Backflip Studios’ Ragdoll Blaster. The puzzle game offers nearly 200 different, short levels, and it slowly introduces new features as players progress. The additions are on the shallow side, but their cumulative effect is to provide substantially more depth to the play experience, he said.

Smith then offered two games that he regards as some of the best available from the indie community in terms of combining immediacy and depth. The first, Farbs’ Captain Forever, is an Asteroids-esque shooter that lets players customize their ships from parts salvaged in space. The game features extensive customization that impacts the actual physics of how the ship handles and performs.

As for immediacy positives, Smith said the game features a simple control scheme with clear feedback to players. It also has strong and juicy affordances, namely in the way that ships explode. As for depth, Captain Forever offers extensive and meaningful ship-building, where players are rewarded for being creative.

Because his talk aimed to improve indie game design, Smith then offered some suggestions on what Farbs could have done better. He noted that the immediacy could be improved if there were a more forgiving experimentation process with ship construction or if there were a more defined pause in which players could customize their ships. As for depth, Smith suggested giving players more of a reason to customize their ships, or adding in environmental objects, such as gravity wells and asteroids.

Spelunky will eventually make its way to XBLA.

The second game Smith was particularly keen on was Derek Yu’s Spelunky, which is a 2D platformer with an Indiana Jones theme that features deformable terrain. Again, simple controls, clear feedback, and strong affordances were hailed as positive immediacy. As for depth, the game brings many of the design mechanics of the roguelike genre (think Diablo) to platforming, so it features random content and varied level layouts. He said that it also has core game mechanics that change frequently, features a strong “depth on demand” component, and has interesting power-ups, enemies, traps, and scenarios.

As a way to improve Spelunky’s immediacy, Smith suggested a refinement to the game’s control scheme. Also, he felt that the game is currently a bit too hard.

Smith closed his keynote address by stressing that his design philosophy of immediacy with depth is just one way in which game makers can create compelling play experiences. The overall goal, though, is to elevate the indie gaming scene so that those who create innovative software can gain a higher level of recognition and support for their work.

Quote: “What I want: Indie to have more fans.”–Randy Smith

Takeaway: Smith’s design philosophy of combining immediacy with depth could help build an audience for indie games by creating more enjoyable, rewarding experiences for players. And even though indie developers are notorious for bucking the “rules,” Smith believes there is still room for making smart game design choices.

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Last week, EA Sports president Peter Moore
heavily hinted that the $125 million EA Sports Active franchise was coming to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Today, Electronic Arts officially announced EA Sports Active 2.0 for Sony’s console, as well as the Wii and iPhone operating system. It will be the third installment in the series, after last November’s EA Sports Active More Workouts for the Wii. No Xbox 360 version was mentioned in the announcement, even though the game will debut around the same time the motion-sensing Project Natal launches this fall.

EA Sports Active 2.0 will sport a heart monitor for maximum workout efficiency.

[CORRECTION] EA Sports Active will support a “innovative wireless control system, powered by new leg and arm straps with motion sensors.” The game will not, as GameSpot initially reported, support the PlayStation 3 motion controller believed to be called the “PlayStation Arc.” (GameSpot regrets the error.) It will also sport a heart-rate monitor to help players get the highest-intensity workout possible.

In development at Vancouver-based EA Canada, EA Sports Active 2.0 will also feature a nine-week, three-phase program to help motivate players to carry through their fitness regimen. The company will also be releasing new mini-program workouts as downloadable add-ons and will have new virtual trainers. The game’s release will be accompanied by the launch of an online hub that will let players upload and share their workout data. The site will also feature fitness tips, forums around certain workouts, and a messaging system that will let players interact.

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Who was there: Caleb Arseneaux, producer at Scribblenauts and Drawn to Life developer 5th Cell, appeared during the Game Developers Conference Mobile and Handheld Summit to give a presentation on his studio’s experiences going “From Mobile to Handhelds & Beyond.”

Max may not look like much here, but he’s representative of 5th Cell’s uncompromising vision.

What they talked about: Just prior to the kickoff of this year’s Game Developers Conference, 5th Cell announced its latest project, a DS sequel to last year’s hit Scribblenauts. While those enticed by a hinted switch to console development may have been disappointed by the news, there was hope for more details along those lines in Arseneaux’s presentation.

Unfortunately, that hope was fleeting. In a 15-minute presentation, Arseneaux didn’t talk about any of the company’s upcoming projects, let alone a debut on consoles. However, he did refer to 5th Cell as a developer of both handheld and console games. (The studio’s Drawn to Life franchise has appeared on the Wii, but it was developed by Planet Moon Studios.)

Arseneaux began his talk with a quick recap of the company’s history, starting as a mobile phone game developer in 2003. After a few original mobile titles, Arsenseux said the studio switched to working on licensed mobile games like Full Spectrum Warrior and Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events in order to make ends meet. Before long, the company was financially reliant on making licensed titles, which stood in stark contrast to its mission statement. The developer’s last original mobile game was to be a massively multiplayer online game, but 5th Cell was unable to sell the project, which brought an end to its time as a mobile developer.

Reinventing itself as a handheld developer, 5th Cell created the original intellectual property Drawn to Life for the DS. The gamble paid off, Arseneaux said, with the franchise selling more than 3 million titles to date.

After the success of Drawn to Life, 5th Cell received plenty of offers to make games for children, but it wanted to show that it wasn’t just a kid game developer. The result was Lock’s Quest for the DS, a mix of tower-defense strategy and action game designed to appeal to core gamers. Having established the breadth of its capabilities, the developer turned to the project that would put it on the map, Scribblenauts.

Over the last seven years, the studio has learned a number of lessons, Arseneaux said, chief among them the importance of vision. He offered advice to developers in the audience, saying that when people in the industry line up to lecture about what can’t be done, “the most important thing is to have a vision, something you believe in.”

Arseneaux also urged developers not to be afraid of competing. When first-party DS titles dominated the sales charts, 5th Cell didn’t shy away from going headfirst into the market. Instead, Arseneaux said 5th Cell designed the game with “marketable innovations” in mind, such as the Scribblenauts mechanic that let players materialize any noun in the gameworld in order to solve puzzles, or Drawn to Life’s player-created character art.

Quote: “Once you have good people, you will have a great company.”–Arseneaux, on the importance of wise hiring.

Takeaway: One point Arseneaux returned to time and again in his presentation was that developers need to commit to their visions. For example, 5th Cell sacrificed its financially viable mobile development business when it became clear it would not allow the studio to create original games. It also stuck to its vision of handheld game development in the face of conventional wisdom that said original third-party intellectual property couldn’t compete on the DS.

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The Jagged Alliance series racks up rights-holders the way its characters rack up body counts. Originally published by Sirtech in 1995, the series has also appeared under the banners of TalonSoft, Interplay, and Strategy First.

This is what Jagged Alliance 3 concept art used to look like.

Now the franchise has added another notch to its business partner bedpost, as German developer bitComposer Games today announced that it has acquired the worldwide licensing rights to the Jagged Alliance series from Strategy First, with the exception of a project the latter company is currently developing for social networks.

The first project to come from the deal will be Jagged Alliance 3, on which bitComposer has begun “preliminary development work,” with an anticipated 2011 launch date. Given its preproduction stage, the game is apparently different from the previously announced Jagged Alliance 3, which Strategy First showed off at the 2007 Electronic Entertainment Expo, with a late 2008 date expected.

While the Jagged Alliance series claims a loyal fan base, that group’s patience has been tested over the years. It’s been six years since Jagged Alliance 2: Wildfire debuted on the PC to warm reviews. In that time, the only Jagged Alliance project to find its way to release was a DS adaptation that suffered a tepid critical response.

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Who was there: The 2010 Game Developers Conference’s Independent Games Summit continued on Tuesday with a session hosted by Sean Murray, managing director of independent startup Hello Games. Murray’s four-man team boasts veterans of such studios as Criterion Games, Electronic Arts, Sumo Digital, Climax, and Kuju, having worked on such franchises as Burnout, Black, Geometry Wars, and Sega Superstars Tennis.

Evel Knievel has nothing on Joe Danger.

What they talked about: Hello Games shot to notoriety in early January after its first project, stunt racer Joe Danger, picked up Independent Game Festival nominations for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize and Technical Excellence Award. With the IGF Award ceremony occurring in lockstep with the Game Developers Choice Awards on Thursday night, Murray, along with Joe Danger artist and level designer Grant Duncan, demoed the game as part of their session, titled “From Big Studio to Small Indie: Guerrilla Tactics From Hello Games.”

Murray began by addressing why the four-man squad left their big-studio jobs to found Hello Games in mid-2008, saying that in actuality, there really wasn’t a particularly good reason. In fact, Murray, who is a programmer, said that the consensus was that leaving was “a really stupid thing.” To prove his point, he rattled off survival statistics of independent studios, saying that of the hundreds of new indie shops, one in 10 survive one year and only half go on to release a game. Of those that do, only one in 10 make it past the three-year mark.

To be among those that do survive, Murray and his team emphasize what they call “guerrilla tactics.” After all, he said, Hello Games does compete against the majors when it comes to getting its title attention. He went on to compare his crew to the likes of the A-Team, saying that Hello Games’ members are all industry veterans who know the gaming landscape well and have solid camaraderie with one another.

As for the brass tacks of actually making games, Murray and his team quickly realized that they have much more flexibility when it comes to production. Murray said that his last team comprised about 150 people. That scale, he said, leads to an institutionalized way of thinking that dictates a big team is needed to do anything.

However, the programmer did note that Hello Games maintained many of the classic methods for making games, such as milestones, prototyping, and playable iterations. The reason for this, he said, was that these techniques help ensure that important changes that need to be made to the game can be caught early when it is still easy to fix problems.

Murray also addressed the way Hello Games approaches technology, as compared to how it was done when the unit worked at the big studios. Namely, when the studio’s developers worked at a big production house, the technology was all dictated for them and well defined. However, the rigid structure hampered their ability to do things the way they wanted to do them. At Hello Games, Murray said that the studio basically “MacGyvers” technology together, forming it in the fashion that best suits their needs.

Before running out of time, Murray also briefly touched on the importance of productivity. He said that what worked best for his team was to keep detailed logs of how much time they spend a day on everything. With these, they could figure out how long they were spending on, say, programming, compiling, and debugging. In turn, this information helped streamline their development process so that they could spend more time actually making the game.

Quote: “We’re going to do this, and we’re probably going to crash and burn doing it.”–Sean Murray, on what the mentality was like when he and his partners left the big development houses to form an independent studio.

Takeaway: An independent studio allows developers far more freedom and flexibility when making games, particularly when it comes to building customized technology. However, just because a studio is indie doesn’t mean established development techniques should be tossed out the window.

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