19th November 2008

GDC Canada Puts Out The Call For Submissions

The call for submissions to present lectures, roundtables and panel sessions for the 2009 Game Developers Conferenceregistered trademark Canada (GDC Canada) is now open through midnight, Friday, November 28, 2008. Presented by Reboot Communications and Think Services, organizers of the industry-leading Game Developers Conferenceregistered trademark, GDC Canada will take place at the Vancouver Convention and Exposition Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada May 12-13, 2009. GDC Canada will provide insight into the thriving Canadian game development community and will serve as an opportunity for developers to share best practices for fostering excellence and quality games within their region and distributed globally.

The Game Developers Conferenceregistered trademark Canada emphasizes studying the challenges and opportunities of creating games with long production cycles, large development teams, and multi-platform releases. The tracks for GDC Canada are structured according to production stages of game development and submissions should address the most pressing game development challenges that fall under the following development stages:

  • Concept/Preproduction
  • Production
  • Finalling
  • Post-Launch

Some of the Submission Guidelines Are:

The GDC Canada Advisory Board is looking for high-level, specific content that will fit into one of the tracks listed above. An extended abstract will be necessary for the advisory board to determine whether your talk will be a good fit. Concise, precise language and a discernable thesis will also help your chances in the review process.

If you are submitting a roundtable, please include the questions or themes you hope to address, and what the idea takeaway will be.

Panel sessions are discouraged from the submission process.
Submissions that appear to be advertisements for specific products or services will not be considered.

Speaker Expectations

Please read the submission guidelines and criteria before preparing a proposal.

Conference attendees expect excellence from our speakers. They will evaluate your class based on delivery, knowledge on the topic addressed, and the visuals presented.

Preparation is one of the most important factors in delivering a successful talk at GDC Canada. Please consider the following when proposing to speak:

* The proposed outline must match the talk you present at GDC Canada
* We suggest that you commit at least 6 hours to prepare for your session
* We strongly encourage that you rehearse the delivery of your session for it to be effective; preferably in front of your peers
* Your presentation materials must be completed and submitted to us four weeks before the conference

Suggested Tracks and Topics

CONCEPT/PREPRODUCTION TRACK

Successful concept development and pre-planning can be what gets you out of pre-pro and allows game production to begin. This track investigates the many factors that are involved in planning the lifecycle of game development.

Suggested topics include:

* Creating Original IP: Who sits at the table?
* The Green Light Process
* Creating concepts with mass global appeal
* Managing the Preproduction team
* Technology Roadmap: Pipeline, Tools, and Planning
* Continuous Preproduction, Multi-year production
* Planning for a predefined launch date
* Creating a Franchise Property(cross media)

This track is designed for intermediate-to-expert audiences; therefore “game development 101” presentations and general-overview topics are not appropriate for this forum.

PRODUCTION TRACK

Long production cycles and large teams bring unique challenges and opportunities to game creation. This track explores best practices for game production that result in greater efficiency, ingenuity and game quality.

Suggested topics include:

* Making the most of Co-ops and students
* Outsourcing: How to manage being the outsourcers and/or the outsourced?
* Large Development Teams: Structure, Communication, Morale, etc.
* Development Methodologies (scrum, agile, waterfall, etc.)
* Iterating in-cycle
* Scope management: dos and don’ts
* Managing stakeholders expectations
* Build management/continuous integration during production
* Focus group testing
* Security: Digital property management

This track is designed for intermediate-to-expert audiences; therefore “game development 101” presentations and general-overview topics are not appropriate for this forum.

FINALLING TRACK

Completing a game and hitting a specified launch date is often critical to the success of a game. This track investigates the many factors that lead to a successful launch.

Suggested topics include:

* Tuning across disciplines
* Balancing
* IP Submission procedures
* Preparing the business side for Launch
* Managing the transition from production to finalling to the live team
* Closing Feedback (internally)
* How to get to the gamer (Demos, Facebook, etc.
* Hitting the dates/Managing burnout
* Localization + SIM chip
* Audio: how to handle being last
* How to get to fun? Hail Mary

This track is designed for intermediate-to-expert audiences; therefore “game development 101” presentations and general-overview topics are not appropriate for this forum.

POST-LAUNCH TRACK

Is a game ever really complete? Is your community satisfied? This track investigates methods to engage your community, extend the life of your game and successfully manage the complexities of post-launch.

Suggested topics include:

* Brand Loyalty: Moving beyond the pack and the parachute
* Extensible Content
* Online Marketplace: More profit, less losses?
* Community Mgmt, support, and patching
* Multiplayer elements: Matchmaking, rankings, server management, technology infrastructure, etc.
* Downstream QA: Giving people a reason to want to patch
* Measuring results: profit, metacritic, units, etc.
* Case studies on Extension packs
* Post launch for shipped games versus MMO/Online distribution (Finite vs. multi-year, episode, version, release)
* Implications of the review score

This track is designed for intermediate-to-expert audiences; therefore “game development 101” presentations and general-overview topics are not appropriate for this forum.

If you are interested in presenting at the GDC Canada Conference, please you can being the application process at the GDC Canada site.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 7:06 pm and is filed under Associations, Careers, Education, Events, Game Dev, National News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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