GDC Vault Debuts Raph Koster, Riot Games Videos, Free GDC Online Slides

The GDC Vault service is proud to announce that videos and slides for last month's GDC Online are now available, with free videos that include Playdom's Raph Koster on social media convergence, BioWare San Francisco on Dragon Age Legends, and Riot Games on poor design decisions.

Along with these free videos, slides for all of GDC Online's sessions are now available for free, providing a glimpse into the range of notable topics discussed at the recent show.

The full catalog of video for GDC Online is also now available to GDC Vault members, which now includes All-Access Pass holders from last month's show in Austin, Texas.

The following lectures are the first highlights to be made available for free from GDC Online 2011:

- Over in the show's Customer Experience track, Playdom's Raph Koster hosted "It's All Games Now! How Games and Social Media are Converging," a talk that notes the ways in which games and social media are becoming more alike, and examines what this means for game developers. Koster frames his talk with a fantastical allegory for game development, illustrating how the games industry exists in its own "magic circle."

- Next, the GDC Vault offers a Business track talk hosted by BioWare San Francisco's Ethan Levy. His talk, "Dragon Age: Legends' Road to 100K Likes," looks back on the development and promotion of Dragon Age's recent Facebook spinoff, pointing to the challenges that come with building momentum for an online social game. Along the way, Levy offers tips to help developers plan and promote their games for long-term success on social networks.

- The final talk to be made available for free is "Designers are Human Too - Causes of Poor Design Decisions," from Tom Cadwell of Riot Games. Here, Cadwell teaches developers to let go of design ideas if they won't work in the game. Drawing from a number of League of Legends anecdotes, he explains what happens when teams spend too much time on ideas that just don't work.

For more on these or other GDC Online videos and slides, please check out the GDC Vault.

As the group behind the leading worldwide gaming conferences, GDC organizers remain committed to making the event's best current and historical lectures available for free to the global game community, and will continue to release new free content throughout the rest of the year.

Full GDC Vault access is available to GDC Online All-Access Pass holders, speakers, and All-Access Pass buyers to other GDC events during 2011. (Subscribers having issues accessing content should contact GDC Vault admins.)

Individual Vault subscriptions not tied to All-Access passes are now available in a limited-edition Beta invite process -- those interested in signing up to be invited in on a first come, first served basis should visit the GDC Vault website.

In addition, game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company. More information on this option is available via viewing an online demonstration.

GDC organizers are also committed to making more archival content free for all during 2011, following a successful 'GDC 25 Chronicles' digitization project. In addition, GDC historian Jason Scott will continue to digitize the extensive Game Developers Conference archives, with his 'Tales From The GDC Vault' series.

GDC Vault Debuts Game Ratings, Shadow Complex, Far Cry 2 Free Videos

This week, the GDC Vault service has debuted specially picked free videos from previous Game Developers Conferences, including talks on the problems with game ratings, reflections on Chair's Shadow Complex, and design lessons from Far Cry 2.

These talks come from various GDC events from the past few years, and cover some particularly notable games and issues, providing just a glimpse of what the Game Developers Conference has to offer.

The following are the newest free video lectures to be made available on the GDC Vault:

- In the GDC Europe 2011 talk, "Game Content Rating Systems Must Change," Quantic Dream's Guillaume de Fondaumiere (Heavy Rain) contrasts video game ratings to those of film and other media, arguing that video game ratings are far more strict than they should be.

These restrictions, de Fondaumiere says, are hurting the industry, and this session explains why game developers need to do a better job of protecting their creations.

- During GDC 2010, Chair Entertainment's Donald Mustard reflected on the studio's hit XBLA title in a session titled, "Designing Shadow Complex." Here, Mustard points out the key pitfalls the team encountered during the game's development, and how the team learned to embrace the limitations of the platform to streamline Shadow Complex's design.

- This week's final talk comes from GDC 2009, and features Ubisoft's Jonathan Morin as he outlines the ways in which the critically acclaimed Far Cry 2 strove to support player expression in its game design. The session, dubbed, "Player's Expression: The Level Design Structure Behind Far Cry 2 and Beyond?," explores the game's open design and explains how lessons learned from this project could apply to other games.

These sessions join the host of other free content on the GDC Vault, including many classic and recent lecture videos and slides from tens of GDC shows.

Full GDC Vault access is available to GDC Europe All-Access Pass holders, speakers, and All-Access Pass buyers to other GDC events for the rest of 2011. (Subscribers having issues accessing content should contact GDC Vault admins.)

Individual Vault subscriptions not tied to All-Access passes are now available in a limited-edition Beta invite process -- those interested in signing up to be invited in on a first come, first served basis should visit the GDC Vault website.

In addition, game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company. More information on this option is available via viewing an online demonstration.

GDC organizers are also committed to making more archival content free for all during 2011, following a successful 'GDC 25 Chronicles' digitization project. GDC historian Jason Scott has signed on for the rest of 2011 to continue digitizing the extensive Game Developers Conference archives, with his 'Tales From The GDC Vault' series.

GDC Vault Adds Free Jon Blow, Douglas Wilson, Zombie Lane Talks

The GDC Vault service has debuted its second group of free lectures from last month's GDC Europe, this time featuring Douglas Wilson on intentionally broken games, Digital Chocolate on Zombie Lane, and Braid creator Jonathan Blow on truth in game design.

In addition to these and other videos, slides for all of GDC Europe's sessions are now available for free, providing a glimpse into the wide range of notable topics discussed at the show.

GDC Vault also hosts videos from previous conferences, including the classic postmortem series from GDC 2011, and other recently-debuted free videos such as this trio of strategy game lectures from some of the industry's top developers.

The following are the newest free videos to make their debut on GDC Vault:

- As part of the show's Independent Games Summit, Copenhagen Game Collective co-founder Douglas Wilson hosted a lecture titled, "Intentionally Broken Game Design and the Art of 'Deputizing' Players," exploring how "incomplete" games can still be successful. Drawing from his experience working on the IGF finalist B.U.T.T.O.N. and titles like Johann Sebastian Joust, Wilson explains how games can encourage players to improvise their own rules.

- In the Social Games Summit, Digital Chocolate's Rob Unsworth provided an in-depth look at the development of the studio's hit Facebook title Zombie Lane. The session, dubbed, "The Evolution of Zombie Lane - How to Successfully Develop a Casual Social Game with a Hardcore theme," examines the studio's "rigorous end-user focused creative process," and how it helped the team create a game that appealed to seasoned and novice gamers alike.

- Elsewhere, in the show's Design track, Braid creator Jonathan Blow gave a cerebral talk on the nature of games in "Truth in Game Design." Here, Blow explains how "we can use games as instruments, like telescopes or electron microscopes, to observe aspects of the universe that we would not normally have access to."

As the group behind the leading worldwide gaming conference, GDC organizers remain committed to making the event's best current and historical lectures available for free to the global game community, and will continue to release new free content throughout 2011.

Full GDC Vault access is available to GDC Europe All-Access Pass holders, speakers, and All-Access Pass buyers to other GDC events for the rest of 2011. (Subscribers having issues accessing content should contact GDC Vault admins.)

Individual Vault subscriptions not tied to All-Access passes are now available in a limited-edition Beta invite process -- those interested in signing up to be invited in on a first come, first served basis should visit the GDC Vault website.

In addition, game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company. More information on this option is available via viewing an online demonstration.

GDC organizers are also committed to making more archival content free for all during 2011, following a successful 'GDC 25 Chronicles' digitization project. GDC historian Jason Scott has signed on for the rest of 2011 to continue digitizing the extensive Game Developers Conference archives, with his 'Tales From The GDC Vault' series.