gdc-2011 posts

Alan Wake was first announced and demoed at E3 2005 as a PC game by Finland developer Remedy. In 2006 Microsoft got the publishing rights and announced that the horror-themed action-adventure game would come to the Xbox 360 as well as the PC. Then came the three year cone of silence that surrounded the game. Remedy and Microsoft finally demoed the game at E3 2009 but on an Xbox 360 console and refused to comment on the PC version.

In early 2010 Microsoft finally confirmed that there would not be a PC port of Alan Wake saying that they felt the game was best played "from the couch in front of a larger TV screen." This week at GDC 2011 during a panel on Alan Wake Computer and Video Games asked Remedy's head man Markus Maki about the canceled PC port. However Maki still is keeping most of the reasons close to the chest, saying, "I can't really discuss that. I will say that it wasn't a technological call. And it wasn't made in Finland."

Populous is still considered to be one of the truly great PC games of all time. Designed by Peter Molyneux for his former development studio Bullfrog, the game was released back in 1989 and is considered by many to be the first "god game" where the player is controlling events and characters on a massive scale as a unnamed god figure.

During a panel at GDC 2011 this week that looked back at the making of the game, Molyneux surprised the audience by demoing a very early version of FeedMe, a version of the original Populous that supports a whopping 256 players. Our sister site Joystiq reports that the demo had some issues before Molyneux was able to get it running but the fact that he is even working on such a game in his spare time is pretty cool. There's no word yet on when, or even if, anyone will play this game.

Unreal Engine 3 got a new tech demo that was shown at GDC 2011 this week at Epic Games' booth. The level of detail and visual effects in the demo was pretty staggering, according to reports, and a trailer showing off the demo will be released next week.

But most PCs currently wouldn't be able to run the live demo well, according to PC Gamer. The GDC 2011 build was running on a PC with three Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 graphics cards installed. Epic Games' VP Mark Rein stated, "Maybe the next Nvidia graphics card bump means we can use two, we don't need three. And maybe the next bump means we can use just one. And the next bump after that means that we can use the mid-range card."

The point of the GDC 2011 Unreal Engine 3 demo was to show the press and game developers what might be possible for game graphics in the next few years with Rein stating, "This is our proposal for what the next big generational leap of gaming should be." Those features include things like water puddles on the ground that reflect neon signs or highly detailed facial textures for characters or clothing that realistically flaps via hardware physics. Rein stated that this year's demo took 12 people two months to complete, adding that Epic Games puts in "tens of millions of dollars into these R&D experiments."

As we reported earlier this week Unreal Engine 3 and UDK users will soon get an update that adds DirectX 11 graphical features into the latest build.

While there have been lots of rumors about what the next game from Halo creator Bungie will be like, it seems like a lecture at GDC 2011 has confirmed that the title won't be "just" a first person shooter. IGN reports that Bungie ead network engineer David Aldridge told the GDC 2011 audience that the developer's next game would be a "massively multiplayer action game."

Details about the game are still under lockdown at Bungie and the game's publisher Activision but Aldridge did say that the game is not "WoW in space." That would seem to indicate that perhaps the game willl turn away from the sci-fi roots that Bungie established in its highly successful Halo shoter series.

[Via VG247.com]

The OnLive streaming gaming service will continues to add new features for its users, according to a panel on the service at GDC 2011 this week. According to our sister site Joystiq OnLive's VP of engineering, Joe Bentley, stated that OnLive will have support for game achievements at some point in the future.

Other upcoming features include voice chat, games invites and the ability for users to upload OnLive's cool Brag Clips feature (where you can record and save cool gameplay from your titles) to YouTube. Theses features are expected to be made available before the end of the year.

After winning two awards, including the Grand Prize, at the 2011 Independent Games Festival, the hit sandbox game Minecraft turned around and took on the big game developers at the Game Developers Choices Awards during GDC 2011 on Wednesday night.

Minecraft managed to win three awards last night, according to Game Informer, making the game the only PC title to actually win any awards during the ceremony. It won the Innovation Award, beating out big budget console exclusive titles like Heavy Rain and Dance Central. Minecraft also won for Best Downloadable Game and also for Best Debut Game, winning against titles like Super Meat Boy and Monday Night Combat, among others.

As expected the sandbox game hit Minecraft and the first person adventure game Amnesia The Dark Decent were the big winners in the 2011 Independent Games Festival awards ceremony during GDC 2011 on Wednesday. Minecraft took the big Seumas McNally Grand Prize worth $20,000 as well as the $2,000 Audience Award according to Game Informer.

Amnesia The Dark Decent won in three catagories including Technical Excellence, Excellence in Audio and the Direct2Drive-sponsored Vision award. Other winners included Bit.Trip Runner for Excellence in Visual Arts, Desktop Dungeons for Excellent in Design, Nidhogg with the Nuovo Award and Fract for Best Student Game.

Earlier this week, Epic Games announced that it would be adding DirectX 11 graphical features in a new update for both its professional Unreal Engine 3 tools and its free UDK tool. This week the company is showing off a new Unreal Engine 3 tech demo to the press and game developers at GDC 2011.

Screenshots from the "Samaritan" demo build shown today to the press definitely show some higher quality details including broken depth of field visuals, higher quality shadows and more. Kotaku reports that a trailer that shows off the new Unreal Engine 3 features will be released to the public sometime next week.

Electronic Arts is switching around two of its executives this week. VG247.com reports that at a GDC 2011 related press event David DeMartini, the long time head of the EA Partners division, announced that he would now be the head of the publisher's e-commerce division. Taking his place is Brian Neider who will take on those duties in addition to being Chief Operating Officer of EA Games.

DeMartini has been with EA since 1998 and for the past several years has been head of the EA Partners division which works to publish and/or distribute games that are not developed or owned by the publisher. DeMartini helped to bring titles like the Left 4 Dead series, Bulletstorm and upcoming titles like Crysis 2 and the unnamed game from Respawn Entertainment to the EA Partners brand.

It's been over a year since several developers of successful PC indie game titles announced plans for the Indie Fund, an organization dedicated to helping fund promising indie game titles. PC Gamer reports that during a panel at GDC 2011 today the Indie Fund finally revealed which games would receive its first phase of grants.

One of the games is one some of you may have heard of: Monaco, the winner of the grand prize in the 2010 Independent Games Festival. The top down stealth action game comes from the one man team (Andy Schatz) at Pocketwatch Games. The second title is Shadow Physics, a platformer set in a world of shadows cast by shadows. The final game title to receive funding is Q.U.B.E., a title from Toxic Games that's a first person puzzle title with some similarities to Portal. There's no word on how much money each development team received from the Indie Fund. Meanwhile the organization still has half of its money and is still taking submissions from other indie game developers.