One of the perennial discussions of game designers is whether games can be "art" - but few people bring art history into the discussion. Many of the challenges of today's game designers were already solved by artists hundreds of years ago. Ian Schreiber describes how art history can be used to solve game design problems, and how video games fit into the framework of contemporary art.

Game AI has been used to help shape the player experience since the earliest days of video gaming. This session will present a brief history of game AI and describe the difference between game AI and "real" AI. There will also be a discussion of various do's and don'ts when creating game AI. Finally, the session will show various examples of game AI and demonstrate how they shape the player experience.

Even the best designers create bad work sometimes--which leaves little hope for the rest. However, there are six patterns that result in most of the near-misses, almost-greats and sometimes even colossal failures. John Sharp will discuss these and provide a nearly bullet-proof solution to avoiding letting them ruin the best-designed plans.

Long before "World of Warcraft" and other massive multiplayer games, gamers were doing it "live." Serving as analog prototypes, Live Action Roleplaying Games have wrestled with the problems and design issues inherent to pvp, player communities, simulated economies and character class balance. Chris Dodson will provide game design tips and secrets from 15 years of LARPing experience.

As with humans, common opinion correctly assumes that Ms. Pac-Man is superior to Pac-Man. But why is Ms. Pac-Man the way it is? In this talk, Ian Bogost explains everything you never knew you wanted to know about the matter, covering all aspects of the game from its microchips to its marketing.

This is a cautionary tale of what happens when the +10 Epic Helm of Passion is utilized for good in a game development environment and how the wielder can avoid being blinded to its limitations and impacts on the end product. The story in three acts:

Act One - The Passion and the Pain
Act Two - The Oracle Speaks
Act Three- Enlightenment

Due to inductive reasoning combined with 26 years of the same thing repeating over and over, like some kind of horrible game sound, The Fat Man feels he can now dare to presume to pass on some of the things he suspects to be true. Among these will likely be: -Mistakes every single client will definitely make, and that the designer can safely predict to their faces if the designer wants to seem like an evil wizard with unholy powers of foresight

-The secret of happiness

-The most glaring game audio problems (no, not "issues." "Problems.") that will need to be addressed 20 years ago or something will have gone badly awry

-Best practices that could start now and would make impossible things not only easy but pretty much inevitable

-Other stuff he hasn't thought of yet

Video games have a cultural image problem that blocks them from being accepted as a serious artistic medium. Defenders of the medium blame the image problem on the close-mindedness of Roger Ebert and the rest of his oldster, Luddite buddies. With time, say these defenders, games will ascend to their natural place at the altar of high culture. But if game designers take an honest look at the medium, they must acknowledge that the root of the problem runs much deeper, leading to the heart of what consumers--the gamers themselves--demand and expect from video games. The image problem won't clear up unless developers and designers make a concerted effort from inside the medium to stop pandering to these demands.

So you're an artist that wants a job. But you have to ask yourself -- does my portfolio repel jobs? It's more likely than you think, but it's easy to avoid if you know what to look for! This talk will cover the topics of how to design a killer portfolio, how to avoid the legion of very common and very avoidable portfolio pitfalls artists make, and offers a boatload of advice on increasing your chances of catching a hiring manager's attention. And it's all straight from the mouth of a guy that reviews portfolios and hires artists for a living!

Harmonix was founded by artists and musicians with the goal of sharing the joy of making music with the world. Since the first console title, "Frequency", the studio has established a culture and mission that continue to thrive. Learn how the core values survived after MTV Games bought the company, which experienced intense growth to create the "Rock Band" franchise.

Too few developers seem to understand the several roles of writers in games. Too few writers understand their roles any better! This talk will focus on how the writer can be a rational, indeed critical, member of the team when properly understood and nurtured. Included by the designers at the very start of the conceptual stage--along with the conceptual artist--writers bring a significantly different skill set and perspective to game construction than the other members of the team: They can bring the heart of an idea to breathing life, provide context for gameplay and continuity between levels, and construct characters and situations that drive the story, all using techniques that do not brawl with gameplay, but embrace it.

Creating a realistic military scenario is a specialized field that requires knowledge of how military operations are run and how to talk to the various Subject Matter Experts (SME's) to obtain information for the scenario. As games and gaming technology permeate the military, the need for game designers capable of performing these tasks will increase. Victor Jimenez will discuss the various types of missions, what they mean and how they can be used for training, as well as the different components that need to be planned. Finally, he will examine what goes into creating a military simulation scenario, particularly for an air task involving a combat search and rescue.

"Oblivion." "GTA 4." "Fallout 3." Open worlds are hot, and the sales are through the roof. The games are getting bigger, the narratives more vast, and the design challenges more complex. Simply producing the massive amount of content necessary is daunting--producing good content often seems to be an insurmountable task. Mark Nelson examines the risks involved and the mistakes often made in creating large open-world RPGs. With anecdotes and lessons learned during the creation of "Morrowind," "Oblivion" and "Fallout 3," Nelson will explore the challenges of world building, the perils of story writing and the myths of good quest design. He also will discuss the role rookie designers are playing in the creation of a new title in the genre, with a focus on the unique challenges they must face in order to succeed.

In this session, Michael Sweet will provide an overview of the current models of interactive scoring for games including branching and looping, crossfading, stem mixing and additive intensity levels. In addition he'll look at current trends with audio middleware development, and where that might lead the next generation of composers to develop even more sophisticated interactive scores. Attendees will take away a knowledge of how to design an effective interactive musical score for a game and what the future might bring to game music.

Students hoping to enter the industry have a lot of questions. What should be in their portfolios? How do they make contacts? How much do game designers make? What should they wear to interviews? In this fast-paced and comedic presentation, Brenda Brathwaite answers these questions and many, many more, including the ones you didn't know to ask. The presentation will help attendees discover the moxie and mindset needed to become a game developer. Attendees will leave the presentation with a better sense of what the game industry is and how the professionals operate in it. They will also learn how newcomers can present themselves in a way that will give them a leg up when it comes time to get a job in the industry.

In this session, Andrew Bains will discuss the theory of level design in the production of AAA games and highlight considerations for working in a large, team-based production setting. He will also outline the steps that the "Gears of War" team uses in its level creation process and share tips on how to find a level design job in the game industry.

Around the third year of a given console generation, everyone starts to speculate about what the next generation of technology will be like. But for the first time ever, the biggest change that faces the game industry is not a technological one but a demographic one. Almost all players of modern video games -- and almost all developers of modern video games -- up to this point in history have been the males of Generation X. This has had powerful, far-reaching repercussions on the field of game design. As Generation X is rapidly overwhelmed by the much larger Generation Y demographic and other new gaming demographics, the old Gen X concepts of what a game is and what a game should be are changing. In this presentation, Clint Hocking looks at the repercussions those changes will have on the industry.