gdc

We just got an early look at the latest chapter in one of the most storied PC game franchises of all time, Civilization V. Originally created by industry legend Sid Meier, the series is known for its mix of diplomacy and military combat, and for the vibrant community of modders who continually create new content for the game.

If you're a Civ fan, you're no doubt waiting to hear how this new entry changes things from the award-winning Civilization IV. While it looks as if the core of the game remains mostly unchanged, the main difference we were … Read more

There is no shortage of games that follow the stylistic lead of the classic Grand Theft Auto series, taking an urban crime action/adventure and setting it in a free-roaming sandbox city. One of the variations on this theme we've been most excited about is the 1940s-1950s-set Mafia II -- itself a sequel to an earlier cult favorite. After seeing the game demoed a few times over the past year, we finally got a chance to sit down and play it ourselves.

All the hallmarks of the genre are there, from stealing cars to period music playing on a … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--For game developers whose industry experience predates not just Facebook but even Mark Zuckerberg, you might expect that abandoning making big, complex games for simple titles like Farmville and similar social projects would be anathema.

But to hear a panel of respected industry veterans who spoke before a packed house in a huge room at the Game Developers Conference here Tuesday, the truth is exactly the opposite. In fact, to these four speakers at least, this may be the opporunity of a lifetime--making a transition from working on $25 million console-level games that take years to build to small … Read more

Both Twitter and Facebook are immensely popular social networking tools that offer real-time sharing of ideas and updates--but of the two, only Facebook has a second life as a huge gaming platform. After all, the sheer simplicity of Twitter makes it hard to imagine what kind of games could even be developed for it.

BackChatter is a project created especially for the Game Developers Conference, using Twitter as the basis of what is being called a "massively multiplayer GDC game." Though that might conjure up images of World of Warcraft, the actual game uses the definition of a … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Getting one of the most advanced 3D game engines onto the iPhone has not been an easy task for Epic Games. But they're close to getting into the hands of developers, and gamers alike.

The makers of the Unreal Engine now say they've kept approximately 90 percent of the code from the PC version, but that process of getting it from PC to Mac, then to the iPhone has been cumbersome.

In a talk to developers at Tuesday's Game Developers Conference, Epic Games' senior console programmer Josh Adams illustrated some of the pitfalls in taking the Unreal Engine, which is--and always has been developed in Windows, over to other platforms. In this case it was Apple's iPhone, which despite being one of the faster smartphones on the market, does not compare to a multi-core gaming PC.

The Unreal Engine is what powers many of today's popular PC and console titles like Gears of War, BioShock, Mass Effect, and of course Epic's Unreal Tournament. What the company builds for its own games, it then licenses out, meaning other publishers can use it on their own titles. The company also has a development kit, which anyone can use (not just big studios), then sell their games for a small fee and a chunk of any revenues. In that regard, it's in the company's benefit to get it ready as something it can sell to other developers, as well as port in-house titles out as iPhone games.

Adams said that the single most pressing issue Epic has run into while porting UE3 to the iPhone, is simply getting the various systems to talk to each other. The engine itself consists of 2 million lines of code, many of which depend on Windows-specific features. In porting it over to the iPhone, Epic has had to make a number of workarounds and simply cut out things that were either too taxing or completely incompatible. … Read more

This week on preGAME, hosts Jeff Bakalar and Mark Licea take a sneak peek at God of War III! Join us as we play it live on the show and talk to the game's lead designer, Todd Papy. We chat with Todd about wrapping up Kratos' epic saga, some of the new elements found in the game, and pushing the PlayStation 3 to its limits.

But before the demo, we kick off with some headlines that include a breaking announcement about a new game in the Rock Band franchise. That's right; Rock Band 3 will be hitting consoles … Read more

Ngmoco's Eliminate for the iPhone was a groundbreaking game in two ways. One was its pay-to-score business model, which offered the game for free, but required users to have virtual energy units (which could be bought) to gain rank and equipment bonuses. The second, and more important one, was the back-end server technology that let players hop onto online matches over 3G.

This feature was not so simple to implement, as Ngmoco's director of engineering Stephen Detwiler and lead engineer James Marr mapped out during a talk at Tuesday's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. As Marr … Read more

Announced Tuesday at the start of the Game Developers Conference, Power Gig: Rise of the SixString is a novel approach to the well-trod music game genre.

Instead of using plastic simulations of guitars that are essentially just dressed-up plastic game controllers, the game uses fully functional six-string guitars that control the game, but can also be played in real life.

As one might imagine, the game is being developed by a company connected with the guitar business. Developer/publisher Seven45 Studios is a sister company of First Act, a leading musical-instrument maker responsible for making the entry-level guitars, basses, and … Read more

If you had any doubts that the iPhone must now be considered one of the world's most important gaming platforms, this week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco will try to put them to rest once and for all.

For years, GDC, as it's known, has hosted two days of "summits" early in the week, before the main keynote address and the bulk of the panels and sessions begin, including the longstanding GDC Mobile, which dealt with just about every issue a developer could want on mobile and handheld devices.

And this year is no … Read more