GDC Preview

As the Game Developers Conference gets under way this week in San Francisco, GamesIndustry.biz highlights some of the key sessions, announcements, companies and games at the annual business event.

Our team will be at the Moscone Centre throughout the week, reporting live from the event, documenting the most important sessions, gaining exclusive access to industry executives and publishing interviews with the key players at GDC 2008. Our sister site, Eurogamer.net will also be at the show, reporting the major consumer announcements and covering some of the key sessions live using the site's LiveText system.

Monday's big draw is Areae's Raph Koster, speaking at the Worlds in Motion Summit. With work on Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies under his belt, he's perfect to address "Why Gamers should Care about Virtual Worlds," discussing the growth of online spaces and how they are influencing videogame design. Also expect Koster to throw in a few tidbits about his latest project, MetaPlace.

With the market for casual games growing and more publishers dedicating separate divisions to the phenomenon, the Casual Games Summit will surely benefit from a busy presence this year. Microsoft's Chris Early will deliver the keynote, offering advice on design, development, funding and selling casual games. Also look out for casual experts PopCap Games, Big Fish Games and EA/Pogo during the two day summit.

Microsoft's John Schappert, Xbox Live boss, will be taking to the main stage on Wednesday to discuss the company's market leading console online service. If his session entitled "A Future Wide Open: Unleashing the Creative Community" hints at anything, it's that Microsoft is prepared to discuss the next stage of Xbox Live, with possible mention of plans for user-generated content, episodic gaming and its delivery. Xbox Live Arcade portfolio planner David Edery has already told GamesIndustry.biz that "everyone internally is really excited about user-created content," and with the company planning to make Schappert's keynote available to consumers via Xbox Live, we can expect Microsoft's session to be one of the busiest at the show.

Described by Forbes as "the ultimate thinking machine" Ray Kurzweil's session on Thursday should be incredibly insightful as he discusses "The Next 20 Years of Gaming". It's a daunting topic, but an inventor of Kurzweil's calibre tackling the future of videogaming should provide inspiration and excitement among the attendees. Coming from outside of the industry and with no hidden agenda we can expect Kurzweil to be as frank and open as he will be thought-provoking.

Although not strictly a keynote, God of War designer David Jaffe is on hand on Friday offering career lessons in the session "From Grunt to Startup". Always outspoken and sure to throw in a few expletives to liven things up, Jaffe will share his experiences on how to split time between design and production, and starting up his own indie studio after working with industry powerhouse Sony.

Anyone with an interest in videogaming will surely appreciate true industry veterans Allan Alcorn and Ralph Baer as they discuss "How to Create an Industry: The Making of the Brown Box and PONG" on Wednesday afternoon. Baer and Alcorn will share experiences of the genesis of the industry from their pioneering days in the 60's and 70's and offer insight into what went right - and wrong - in those early days.

RealTime Worlds scored a massive hit last year with Crackdown, and studio boss Dave Jones will tackle "My first MMO" on Thursday, looking at the company's work on forthcoming title APB. Fellow Brit Peter Molyneux will also be at the event, to unveil the "The Big Three Features" of upcoming RPG Fable 2.

President and creative director of 2K Boston Ken Levine will be discussing the narrative of one of last year's most-praised videogames. "Storytelling in BioShock: Empowering Players to Care about Your Stupid Story" will look at narrative in the first-person shooter, and how to break away from the traditional action-cutscene-action attitude to storytelling in games.

With EA's Madden franchise entering its 20th year, Philip Holt, general manager of EA Tiburon will discuss "Living with Madden: The Drive for Consistent Excellence," looking at the continual evolution of one of the industry's strongest franchises. And while we're on the subject of strong franchises, team Bungie will be delivering no less than five different sessions on Halo 3, discussing lighting, map making, cinematics and the role of the community.

With Nintendo seemingly trampling the competition, three sessions from the Japanese giant are sure to offer insight into the unique hardware and software experts. "Wii Fit: Creating a Brand New interface for the Home Console" will discuss the evolution of the one million unit shifting peripheral, while "Building Characters: The Super Smash Bros Brawl Postmortum" will dissect another million seller before the game is released in the US and Europe later this year. But perhaps the most revealing session will be "Planning the Wii Menu: From Pre-Launch to WiiWare" delivered by Takashi Aoyama and sure to be on opening up Nintendo's forthcoming downloads service to the public for the first time since WiiWare was announced last year.

Game Developers Conference 2008 takes place February 18 — 22 in San Francisco. The official web site is here.