"Split/Second" began life with a problem. Racing games are usually set in static environments, but we wanted our track to change dynamically as you drove through it. Was it possible to capture the over-the-top action of a Hollywood movie in a racing game? Could we collapse bridges, explode freeways and bring down airliners in real time?

We'll look at the creation some of the biggest moments in "Split/Second", the challenges they presented and the breathing exercises that helped us when we saw the concept art for the first time.

Tom is the Technical Director of Black Rock Studio, who are currently hard at work on the upcoming "Split/Second". He's been at the studio for ten years during which time he's worked as a programmer, team lead and overseen the technical development of the MotoGP series and Pure.

Black Rock Studio, formerly known as Climax Racing, was established in Brighton in early 2000 and is one of the industry's top racing studios. Now part of the Walt Disney Company, Black Rock produces original racing games.

This session presents an overview of Quantic Dream’s art production pipeline on Heavy Rain™. It will cover the visual development process of environments, characters, animations, and walk you through how we applied design and technical principles normally used in film to create the game’s distinctive ambiance. We will in particular discuss how we developed tools and technologies enabling us to fulfil the game director’s vision.

Christophe Brusseaux started his career in the games industry in 1992 at Delphine Software as digital artist on "Fade to Black"™, "Moto Racer"™ and "Darkstone"™. He worked as a freelance artist on games such as "Antz Racing"™ and "Gremlins"™ for Dreamworks/Warner Interactive/LSP and accomplished digital works for TV and Film studio "Canal+". Brusseaux joined Quantic Dream in 2001 as Graphics Manager on "Fahrenheit™ / Indigo Prophecy"™ and later "Heavy Rain".

Quantic Dream was founded by David Cage in 1997 in Paris, France. Since its creation, the studio has gained international recognition for its contribution to interactive narration and emotion in games.
We are the creators of "Omikron-The Nomad Soul" featuring recording artist David Bowie and "Fahrenheit" ("Indigo Prophecy" in North America). In February 2010, we released "Heavy Rain"™ exclusively for the Playstation 3 system. The game has been heralded by the specialized and mainstream press for its highly innovative approach and recognized as an important landmark for the medium. Quantic Dream boasts today a unique infrastructure adapted to AAA games development, including a large Motion Capture set coupled with a state of the art 3D scanner. Over the last ten years the studio has developed proprietary technologies, including some very advanced tools and a unique approach to the production pipeline.

Procedural animation presents special challenges for visual representation. Unlike pre-animated characters, procedural characters can change form at run-time in unexpected ways. Just as procedural animation itself requires fundamentally new approaches to movement, effective modeling of characters who move procedurally requires a new set of approaches, involving aesthetically tunable run-time methods. This talk will show such methods, and will show how they are integrated into the creative process for creating effective and believable responsive character animation.

Ken Perlin, a professor in the NYU CS Department, directs the NYU Games for Learning Institute and is Chief Technology Advisor to ActorMachine, Inc. He was founding director of the Media Research Laboratory and directed the NYU Center for Advanced Technology. His research interests are graphics, animation, user interfaces, science education, multimedia. Ken received, amongst others, an Academy Award® for Technical Achievement, the 2008 ACM/SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award, a TrapCode Award, and the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award. He was also a featured artist at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Ken received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from NYU and B.A. in theoretical mathematics from Harvard.

For hundreds of years artists have used fundamental and well accepted concepts of visual language to tell storiesin their mediums and clearly film has been the most successful at using these concepts to tell stories. Using visual storytelling to create strong and lasting emotional connections in interactive experiences from interfaces to games has proven much more difficult. This lecture will explore how some of the “traditional” techniques should and should not be used to create compelling interactive experiences.

Evan Hirsch joined THQ as Vice President of Creative Development in October 2009 where is he is responsible for raising production values and creative processes across the company’s nine studios and portfolio of core games. Prior to joining THQ he was the Creative Director at Microsoft’s Live Labs. During his tenure at Microsoft, he was also the Creative Director responsible for the launch of Surface, the first widely manufactured and distributed multi-touch computer. Before joining Microsoft, Hirsch held roles in the Visual Effects and Feature Animation industries in London and worked at Electronic Arts in a variety of roles culminating in his position as Head of Visual Development for EA Worldwide Studios. Hirsch is the Chair for Interactive and Real Time Rendering for ACM SIGGRAPH 2009 and 2010, and is member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

Bob Nicoll, has been both production artist and teacher for over twenty-five years. His production experience spans Broadcast, Film, and Games. He's been a CG production artist, Compositor, Art Director, Designer, and Teacher. His training experience includes four years as college professor and over 15 years as an instructor in the entertainment industry.

"Fight Night 4" from Electronic Arts was released in summer 2009 and is available on Xbox 360 and PS3. FN4 features a very innovative combination of physics driven animation and visuals. We have integrated a full rigid body physics simulation with our motion capture based state flow animation system. The result is compelling and believable character animation that uses sampled mocap data as its foundation, but that expresses unlimited variations in response to changing physical conditions and interactions. On the rendering side we have developed a system of secondary bones and special shaders that are also driven by the physics data to create such effects as muscle flex, fat jiggle, dynamic spit, sweat and blood that are all driven by and integrated with the animation. There are also advanced lighting methods including dynamic sweat, subsurface light scatter, screen space ambient occlusion and pose driven animating normal maps. This talk by CG Supervisor Frank Vitz will explore the technical and esthetic challenges of applying a physics driven approach to animation in realistic 3D fighting game.

Frank Vitz has been designing computer graphics, animation and visual effects since the 1980’s having created some of the first CG effects in a motion picture for the original movie "Tron" at Robert Abel and Associates. During the 90’s Frank worked as an independent feature film VFX supervisor on movies such as "Stargate", "XMen" 1 and 2. He also designed visuals for several Theme Park rides including “The Adventures of Spiderman” in Orlando. Frank is currently at Electronic Arts in Canada, leveraging the convergence of Hollywood visual effects with the world of video games. His most recent project was "Fight Night Round 4".

Electronic Arts, Inc. (EA) (NASDAQ: ERTS) is an international developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games.

This talk will encompass the art direction and the challenges encountered during the art development of "Batman: Arkham Asylum". Attendees will discover how the team created the dark and gothic mood of "Batman: Arkham Asylum", from the concept phase into the final phase of implementation in the game. The process of visual narration, lighting, colours and different stages of creation will be explained from theory to examples taken from the game. The talk will also focus on how the hyper-realistic approach was taken through details and shader treatment.

David Hego has been working in the video game industry for 17 years. After studying computer arts at SupInfoCom in the early nineties, David moved into the video game industry at a time when 3D pre-rendered games on CD-rom blossomed. From then David worked on games such as Dragon Lore, Mission Impossible, Red Dog, Swat GST, Urban Chaos: Riot Response and lately Batman: Arkham Asylum. Through his career David worked consecutively as an environment artist, cinematic artist, VFX artist, before moving to art direction 4 years ago.

Founded in 2004, Rocksteady Studios is based in North London, in a spacious, purpose built converted factory stuffed with plants and flat screens. Rocksteady is formed by a core team of senior industry professionals who have known and worked with each other for many years. This gives the company an ideal balance of drive, talent, proven methods, experience and cutting edge technology.Rocksteady has strong company values and a clear strategy for the future. Now employing over 70 people, Rocksteady's mission is to be a highly professional, efficient company whose purpose is to make great games, and have happy and healthy team members. This philosophy is at the heart of the company

Producing good looking dynamic shadows in a medium like games where time budgets are measured in milliseconds is an interesting challenge. This talk will explain the basics of how dynamic shadows are achieved in our games, and will delve into the details of the shadowing techniques for Sony's latest PlayStation title: "God of War III". Along with plenty of pictures to explain the rendering ideas, this talk will touch on some of the real technical underpinnings for the solutions we chose.

Ben Diamand is a Senior Staff Programmer at Sony's Santa Monica Studio and has been making games (professionally) for the past 15 years. While his focus today is real-time graphics, he's had the opportunity to develop technology for many aspects of games, from networking to compression to haptics and AI and a whole bunch in between.

Sony is a leader in the creation of audio, video, communications, and IT products for consumers and professionals alike. Its PlayStation brand helps redefine interactive consumer entertainment with ground-breaking games such as "Little Big Planet", "Uncharted", "Resistance" and "God of War".

This talk steps through the development of a complex facial customisation system from its first concepting and prototyping stage to its delivery in a full multi-format game and its reuse in other new projects. Takeaways for attendees include suggestions on focused prototyping, effective art pipelines and balancing flexibility against system complexity.

Jolyon Webb trained and worked as an illustrator for 10 years before entering the games industry. He then worked for 12 years as an Art Director and Lead Technical Artist on a range of titles over many formats. More recently he has researched ‘next generation’ art pipeline issues within a technology team and directed art in Serious Games development at BGS’ TruSim division. His current role is R&D Art Director for the studio with ongoing responsibility over making realistic and stylised humans more engaging in games.

Blitz Games Studios is one of the most stable and respected development studios in the world. Currently boasting 5 distinct divisions, the company has come a long way from its roots as a well-known developer of 'family games'. Today, the different Blitz divisions are working on mature titles, serious games, downloadable games and games technology. In addition to our diversified portfolio of interests, we are also heavily involved in working with education and government for the long-term benefit of the UK games development industry.

Art Director Saku Lehtinen talks about the development of one of the most anticipated games in 2010, "Alan Wake" for Xbox360. How did Remedy, known for their successful "Max Payne" games, tackle the challenge of creating a new story-driven action title along with stunning visuals, technology and style that would be true to company’s heritage and the description ‘Psychological Action Thriller’.

Saku Lehtinen (b. 1973) is the director of the audiovisual experience of "Alan Wake". Saku published his first game over 20 years ago and joined Remedy in 1996. In "Max Payne" games he was the director of art and cinematics working also in level design and tools development. Saku has studied architecture, arts and film.

Remedy Entertainment Ltd., a Finnish game developer was founded in 1995 and focused to be the leading developer of action games, game franchises and game technology. Remedy's best known 'Max Payne' games have sold over 7 million units on several platforms. Their next game "Alan Wake" will be launched in May 2010.

Japan has always been the home of game innovation. This year mobile social networks exploded with a handful of companies doing over $100M revenue. All through sales of virtual items on social games.
Come to this presentation to find out what new types of social games are popular in Japan, and how Japan's leading edge signals the next wave of mobile social games worldwide.

DC runs Pikkle KK, a social game publisher in Tokyo. Previously DC was the Business Creator for Namco in Tokyo, overseeing expansion into new markets such as China. In 1996 DC founded Gamelet in San Francisco, one of the first producers of internet based games. Gamelet was acquired by PacketVideo Corporation prior to their closing a $100M funding round in 2001. In the early '90s, DC founded Game Developer TripMedia in London, designing "Burn:Cycle" and "Virtual Nightclub" CD ROM games. He wrote "Colliers´ Rules", a required text at many design colleges, and also runs "JGram", a community site for students of Japanese grammar.

Pikkle is a social game publisher based in Tokyo. Their breakthrough social game titles blend new social gameplay mechanics with a Japanese visual sense. Pikkle is funded by top japanese VCs and also Mixi, the #1 Japanese social network. We are working with Social Game companies.

The main purpose of the presentation is to illuminate the animation process for "God of War III". This will be covered by addressing some of the following points: animating characters from the concept phase to the in-game phase, creating exciting contact sensitive moves for elaborate sequences and how to keep the character consistent by the example of Kratos.

Bruno Velazquez started his game career in 2002 after graduating for the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia CA, with a Bachelors degree in art Character Animation. He managed to combine his passion of animation and video games by starting his career working as a computer animator on various Playstation 2 titles. Some of his most notable titles include "Mortal Kombat": "Shaolin Monks" and "God of War 2". His path has taken him to work with some very talented teams in Midway games and Sony computer Entertainment over the past 8 years. Bruno is currently the Lead in game animator for "God of War 3" which will be released on Mach 16th 2010 for Playstation 3.

Founded in 1994, Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. Its PlayStation brand continues to redefine interactive consumer entertainment with the ground-breaking products that include the PlayStation®3 (PS3™) computer entertainment system, the PlayStation®2 (PS2™), PlayStation®Portable (PSP®) and PSP® go handheld entertainment systems, and its online and network services, the PlayStation®Network and PlayStation®Store.