Introducing the PlayStation®3 Motion Controller
Speakers: David Coombes, Platform Research Manager, SCEA Developer Support; Kirk Bender, SCEA Developer Support
Date/Time: Thursday (March 11, 2010), 3:00pm — 4:00pm
Location (room): Room 121, North Hall
Description: The Motion Controller for PlayStation3 will allow developers to create new game play experiences, by allowing players to interact with their console in high definition using their bodies. The Motion Controller uses 3D position and orientation tracking, camera input and a controllable RGB LED to bridge the gap between camera, motion and traditional interfaces.

PlayStation(R) Business and Platform Update!
Speaker: Justin Cooney (Senior Account Manager, Sony Computer Entertainment)Date/Time: Thursday (March 11, 2010) 1:30pm — 2:30pm
Location (room): Room 121, North Hall
Description: This session is meant to inform developers not only the great marketplace the PlayStation(R)Network (PSN) is, but also to inform the independent developer of all the great business opportunities that exist on the PlayStation platform. Topics covered will range from PSN to BD-Live to PSP(R), and everything in between.

Managing Your Memory
Speaker: John McCutchan (Simulation Lead, SCEA Developer Support, Sony)
Date/Time: Thursday (March 11, 2010) 4:30pm — 5:30pm
Location (room): Room 121, North Hall
Description: Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) Developer Support has been working on a tool that will help developers automate catching memory management errors and profile memory management in their games. The tool and the architecture behind the tool will be presented.

PlayStation®Home Sessions

Advanced Game Design & Development for Playstation(R)Home
Speakers: James Cox (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe) and Martijn van der Meulen (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe) 
Date/time: Friday 1:30- 2:30
Location (room): Room 300, South Hall
Description: PlayStation(R)Home is an online social gaming platform, exclusive to PlayStation(R)3, that allows developers to build unique, cost-effective game titles and interactive content. With its robust online infrastructure, multi-million user installbase and easy to use development tools it's a rapidly evolving platform that offers interesting opportunities to developers worldwide. This talk covers advanced game and content design guidance for the platform, plus an overview of how to get the most out of the Home Development Kit (HDK).

PlayStation(R)Home: A Gaming Platform
Speakers: Jack Buser (Sony Computer Entertainment America) 
Date/time: Saturday 10:30-11:30
Location (room): Room 123, North Hall
Description: Since launching in open beta in December 2008 exclusively for PlayStation(R)3 (PS3(TM)), PlayStation(R)Home has evolved beyond a simple 3D social gaming community into a true game platform that features not only mini games but also immersive gaming experiences. Learn more about this new frontier in game development, from the business benefits for game developers to what it takes to develop for this exciting new gaming platform.

Exploring PlayStation(R)Home's Lua API: Bringing Content to Life
Speakers: Neil Littlejohns (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe) 
Date/time: Saturday 1:30- 2:30
Location (room): Room 121, North Hall
Description: PlayStation(R)Home offers a unique opportunity to create social gaming content that reaches an ever-expanding and highly dedicated community. The Home Development Kit is freely available to all registered PS3(TM) and PS Home developers and provides a wealth of tools that enable developers to deliver exciting content to millions of users. See how easy it is to get the most out of your content and discover how the platform's Lua API has expanded with even more ways to provide an engaging social experience.

Creating Convincing Environments and Avatar Clothing for PlayStation(R)Home
Speakers: David Hamblin (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe) and Robin Ledger (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe) 
Date/time: Saturday 3:00- 4:00
Location (room): Room 121, North Hall
Description: PlayStation(R)Home and its development kit (HDK) offer developers an abundance of creative possibilities. This talk lifts the lid on the latest art and asset development pipeline.

SCEA Santa Monica Studio

Animation Process of God of War III
Speakers: Bruno Velazquez (Sony Santa Monica) 
Date/time: Friday 4:30- 5:30
Location (room): Room 132, North Hall
Description: The main purpose of the presentation is to talk about some of the animation process of God of War III. This will be covered by addressing some of the following points and providing examples: 

- Animating Characters from the concept phase: 
A discussion of the animation process of a character form the concept phase to the in-game phase. 
- Creating exciting Contact Sensitive moves:
A talk about some of the techniques used to create these elaborate sequences. 
- Kratos:
This section would be about the challenges of keeping the character consistent. 
- The Balance between Gameplay and Animation: 
A presentation of the importance of balance between gameplay and animation.

God of War III: Shadows
Speaker: Ben Diamand (Sony Santa Monica)  
Date/Time: Thursday 4:30- 5:30
Location (room): Room 304, South Hall
Description: This session provides a detailed view of Sony Santa Monica's approach to shadows in its upcoming title, God of War III. It covers the general techniques employed, and a variety of specific details about what features were supported and what tradeoffs were made. Information about timing, descriptions of what was tried and thrown away, as well as what wound up in the final product will be presented.

Naughty Dog

Among Friends - An Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Post-Mortem
Speaker: Richard Lemarchand (Naughty Dog)  
Date/Time: Thursday 1:30- 2:30
Location (room): 30 Room 134, North Hall
Description: Naughty Dog faced many entirely new challenges in the creation of 'Uncharted 2: Among Thieves' - in expanding our gameplay through the use of new traversal, combat and AI technologies, introducing characters that shed new light on our hero Nathan Drake, and tackling our first foray into multiplayer in four years. 

Co-Lead Game Designer Richard Lemarchand will candidly describe how we tackled the problems that we faced, and how the studio's philosophy of collaboration, open communication and investment of responsibility in the people who create the game allowed Naughty Dog to surpass the accomplishment of our first PlayStation 3 hit. 

He will also discuss how our small studio of around one hundred people tackled the issues we faced in executing our most complex production yet, giving practical examples and telling interesting stories of crisis points overcome and valuable lessons learned.

Creating the Active Cinematic Experience of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Speakers: Neil Druckmann (Naughty Dog) and Bruce Straley (Naughty Dog)  
Date/Time: Friday 1:30- 2:30 
Location (room): Room 305, South Hall
Description: In creating UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves we strived to create an interactive summer blockbuster. We not only wanted you to play big, over-the-top action set pieces, but we also wanted you to have an emotional investment in those sequences' outcome by establishing relationships with grounded, empathetic allies. This talk will explore how Naughty Dog used The Active Cinematic Experience to parallel gameplay and storytelling in UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves. We'll break down two examples of in-game narrative sequences from UNCHARTED 2, discussing the different techniques we used to achieve some of the more interesting plot turns in the game.

Uncharted 2 Character Pipeline: An In-depth Look at the  Creation of U2's Characters
Speakers: Judd Simantov (Naughty Dog Inc) and Richard Diamant (Naughty Dog Inc.)  
Date/Time: Saturday 10:30-11:30 
Location (room): Room 135, North Hall
Description: Some of the topics covered will include how we used our propriety modeling and UV tools to deal with output a variety of meshes in an efficient manner. How we use Maya referencing to allow us to maintain one skeleton for all the different outfits. Our facial rigging setup and how we are able to use one skeleton for both male and female characters. 

The process of sculpting our character, building our arbitrary meshes and sampling the hi-resolution detail down to this new mesh. Dealing with seams created by UV border. As well as all the other interesting challenges and solutions we encountered and solved during production.

Uncharted 2 Art Direction
Speakers: Robh Ruppel (Naughty Dog) and Erick Pangilinan (Naughty Dog)  
Date/Time: Friday 4:30- 5:30
Location (room): Room 306, South Hall
Description: This session presents an overview of Naughty Dog's art production pipeline. It will cover the visual development process of our environments, and walk you through how we apply our design principles to translate a 2d concept art to a full 3d interactive environment. Our examples will include the design thought process in creating one of our most challenging organic environments. We will discuss how we tried to differentiate it from a similar level of Uncharted 1, and the tools and tech that enable us to make it possible to run in game.

Behind the Scenes: Uncharted 2's Unique Cinematic Production Process
Speakers: Amy Hennig (Naughty Dog, Inc.) and Josh Scherr (Naughty Dog)  
Date/Time: Thursday 3:00- 4:00
Location (room): Room 303, South Hall
Description: The development and production process behind the acclaimed characters and cinematics in UNCHARTED 2 is labor-intensive and demands both time and flexibility. But theres a method to our madness, and in this session, we'll be sharing what's different and unique about our approach, covering both the how, and more importantly, the why behind that process. Topics we'll cover include casting, motion capture production, writing, our animation pipeline, and how we adapted our process for an ambitious production scope and demanding schedule.

Animation and Player Control in Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and Uncharted II: Among Thieves
Speaker/s: Travis McIntosh (Naughty Dog Inc.) 
Date/Time: Saturday 1:30- 2:30
Location (room): Room 135, North Hall
Description: A look at the techniques used by Uncharted: Drake's fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves for implementing the player character's animation and control. Partial and additive animations, layering, remapping, flipping, performance and memory considerations are all examined in depth, as well as particular focus on the the player's core movement implementation. This is a look at what worked, and what didn't work, how we did what we did, how we're going to improve it in the future, and what non-standard animation features proved particularly valuable for the player's look and feel in the Uncharted series.

Uncharted 2: HDR Lighting
Speaker: John Hable (Naughty Dog) 
Date/time: Saturday 3:00- 4:00
Location (room): Room 305, South Hall
Description: This session talks about HDR Lighting in Uncharted 2. The main focus will be Gamma/Linear-Space Lighting, Filmic Tonemapping, and Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion. Throughout the session, we will talk about all the little details that no one tells you, like why our SSAO only affects ambient light, how our highlights avoid clamping, and if specular maps should be stored in linear or gamma space.

Insomniac Games

Three Big Lies: Typical Design Failures in Game Programming
Speaker: Mike Acton (Engine Director, Insomniac Games)
Date/Time: Saturday (March 13, 2010) 9:00am — 10:00am
Location (room): Room 125, North Hall
Description: In this session, game programmers are presented with three big lies that represent commonly accepted and used programming practices in game development. Those typical practices are challenged and some obvious and not so obvious costs to performance, memory, stability and concurrency are discussed through a series of small examples and anecdotes. Programmers are presented basics of an alternative data-oriented approach where data is more important than code and an understanding of both the hardware and the data itself are critical for a practical, performant solution.

Paint-by-Gender: How to Add Pink Gameplay to Your 'Blue' Title (and Still Keep All the Boys Happy)
Speaker: Jennifer Canada (Designer, Insomniac Games)
Date/Time: Saturday (March 13, 2010) 9:35am — 10:00am
Location (room): Room 132, North Hall
Description: As the gaming market expands, it is more important than ever to design games that appeal to both genders. This session focuses on clear and straightforward ways in which game developers can attract greater numbers of female players through female-friendly gameplay design - without alienating the game's male audience. Gameplay design strategies are derived from contemporary research and are illustrated in the presentation using comparisons to popular video games that are successful with both genders.

Community 2.0: Integrating Social Design into the Production Pipeline
Speakers: Ryan Schneider (Director of Brand Development, Insomniac Games, Inc.), Dan Hsu (Co-Founder, Bitmob.com), Brian Jarrard (Community & PR Director, Bungie Studios), Nathan Fouts (President and Founder, Mommy's Best Games), Christian Arca (Studio Director, Toy Studio)
Date/Time: Thursday (March 11, 2010) 1:30pm — 2:30pm
Location (room): Room 309, South Hall
Description: We're in the midst of a Community Revolution (Version 2.0) in the games industry. Community is being more heavily integrated into production, the ripple effects changing (not without struggle) how games are designed and marketed. Panelists from today's most respected developers will share examples of successful community integration at their studios while offering glimpses into how and why such changes were enacted. They'll also address thorny topics such as whether community-building falls under game design or marketing, whether community can be measured and monetized, and when should community be tuned out during development. Are you participating in the Community Revolution or watching from the sidelines?

Sucker Punch Productions

Reading the Player's Mind Through His Thumbs: Inferring Player Intent Through Controller Input
Speaker: Chris Zimmerman (Director of Development, Sucker Punch Productions)
Date/Time: Friday (March 12, 2010) 4:30pm — 5:30pm
Location (room): Room 304, South Hall
Description: A core challenge in making immersive video games is mapping the limited set of actions the player can perform with the controller onto the much broader set of possible player intents in the game world. If done successfully, the player has an immersive experience, that is the player thinks only about what they're doing in the game, not about how to manipulate the controller to get some desired result. This lecture focuses on how we approached this problem in two key areas of inFamous: the aiming/shooting system, and the jumping/climbing system. The core concept presented is to provide intelligent augmentation of the user input, slightly guiding or amending player input towards likely intents.

Building an Open-World Game Without Hiring an Army
Speaker: Nate Fox (Game Director, Sucker Punch Productions)
Date/Time: Thursday (March 11, 2010) 9:00am — 10:00am
Location (room): Room 131, North Hall
Description: Creating the environment for an open-world game is difficult; doing so without hiring an army of content creators is more so. For inFamous we built a massive, realistic open-world city, at urban density levels and post-riot amounts of trash and debris. We did this with a team of roughly a dozen artists, without outsourcing any content creation. How is this possible? Come to the session and learn all the cheap tricks Sucker Punch uses to maximize our precious Artist’s time. A detailed explanation of our systems for hex bases tiling, building footprint standardization and city layout shortcuts will all be illustrated.

Vision, Cameras, and More

3D Game Creation on PlayStation 3
Speaker: Ian Bickerstaff (Senior Engineer, 3D Team, Sony Computer Entertainment), Simon Benson (Senior Development Manager, 3D Team, Sony Computer Entertainment)
Date/Time: Saturday (March 13, 2010) 1:30pm — 2:30pm
Location (room): Room 125, North Hall
Description: This session presents an introduction to stereoscopic 3D and looks at the advantages 3D brings to PlayStation 3 games. The principals of stereography are presented, demonstrating how quality can be maximised while working within the constraints of a 3D display. The theory is then put into practice on the PS3 using a simple, three step process. Case studies of several existing 3D games are presented, each highlighting real world issues and solutions. The session will conclude with a look at some of the techniques currently used in the movie industry that could benefit stereoscopic computer games in the near future.

Making Robust Computer Vision in Games
Speaker: Diarmid Campbell (Principal Programmer, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe)
Date/Time: Friday (March 12, 2010) 1:30pm — 2:30pm
Location (room): Room 131, North Hall
Description: Computer vision is a growing discipline in the games industry. From the PlayStation Eye to mobile phones to the looming Natal, cameras are becoming a common sight on gaming platforms. Diarmid Campbell, head of Sony's London Studio Vision R&D group, presents what his group has learned creating computer vision algorithms for games. We give an overview of modern computer vision approaches with specific examples from the PS3 game EyePet, how research fits into the game development process and how game design can play its part. The session will involve lots of live demos and videos.

Behind the Curtains of Buzz! The Multi-Million Seller of SCEE Franchise
Speakers: Vanessa Wood (Localization Services Manager, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe), Fabio Ravetto (International Project Manager Coord., Binari Sonori), Sophie Krauss (Localization Manager, Relentless Software)
Date/Time: Tuesday (March 9, 2010) 5:15pm — 6:00pm
Location (room): Room 300, South Hall
Description: Buzz! is one of the most successful casual game franchises of the world. Since its launch in 2005, the quiz game series has sold over 8 millions copies in more than 15 territories. Such success requires the creation of a large pool of fresh questions targeted to various groups of players in many different countries. This session covers the refined localization techniques in place to manage a product that contains huge volumes of text and a considerable amount of audio, and to ensure that the questions are prepared carefully through a combination of translating, adapting, creating, ranking and testing the questions.

How to Manage an Exploratory Development Process
Speaker: Kellee Santiago (President and Co Founder, thatgamecompany), Robin Hunicke (Producer & Game Designer, thatgamecompany)
Date/Time: Wednesday (March 10, 2010) 10:00am — 11:00am
Location (room): Room 135, North Hall
Description: Experimental, exploratory, efficient? Can a team manage all of these production goals simultaneously? And what if there's a publisher involved? In this talk, Kellee Santiago and Robin Hunicke will discuss thatgamecompany's experiences in managing a creative process that needs to be exploratory and experimental without leaving the team feeling aimless. thatgamecompany emphasizes a creative process, which is dependent upon the ability to go when & where inspiration strikes, but they also make commercial games, which need to be completed within a reasonable time frame. Kellee and Robin will detail production techniques that help them achieve these goals.

QA's 10 Commandments: What?! Only 10?
Speaker: Chuck McFadden (Home Operations Supervisor, Sony Computer Entertainment America)
Date/Time: Saturday (March 13, 2010) 1:30pm — 1:55pm
Location (room): Room 130, North Hall
Description: This session will run through a series of Power Point slides to explain the 10 Commandments. The speaker will explain why these principles were considered important, and occasionally describe how they may be flawed in today's business environment. The speaker will encourage attendees to improve their QA practices by examining the 10 Commandments, but not necessarily following them to the letter.

PlayStation: Evolving User Testing to Social, Casual and Portable Gaming
Speaker: David Tisserand (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Limited)  
Date/Time: Friday 1:30- 2:30
Location (room): Room 133, North Hall
Description: User testing has been part of PlayStation (SCE WWS) games development process for the last 15 years. The session unveils how it started and how the methods evolved over the years in order to cope with market changes, broader audience and innovative technologies. We will share fun, surprising and unexpected stories to support the delivery of our best practices (sometimes learned from our worst failures). Our development teams agreed to share the most challenging usability issues they faced, for the benefit of everybody in the industry.

Sound

Sound and Music as Narrative In Flower
Speakers: Steve Johnson (Sony Computer Entertainment America) and Vincent Diamante (contractor)  
Date/Time: Saturday 10:30-11:30
Location (room): Room 112, North Hall
Description: Thatgamecompany's Flower was an ambitious and unconventional game that saw fruition through an equally unconventional development cycle. This session features a discussion from the composer and sound designer about the audio, covering how their process, source materials, implementation, and unique method of collaboration came together to convey a narrative without words. The dissection of Flower's audio will cover dynamic sound, scripting, sound creation, mixing, surround usage, stream management, interactive music design, and composition. These aspects will be highlighted alongside a demo of the game as attention is given to the unique challenges of working with an experimental developer with indie and academic roots.

Adaptive Music: The Secret Lies Within Music Itself
Speaker: Clint Bajakian (Senior Music Supervisor, Sony Computer Entertainment America)
Date/Time: Saturday (March 13, 2010) 1:30pm — 2:30pm
Location (room): Room 110, North Hall
Description: Adaptive music is often discussed in terms of how it is accomplished using adaptive authoring tools, scripting and audio technology. This is helpful, but comparatively little has been discussed about music itself and how its structure can be leveraged to yield best practices in adaptive music authoring. In this lecture, music will be examined for its textural components, such as melody, harmony, rhythm and form, to expose how these elements can be manipulated to optimize musical integrity in adaptive soundtracks.

Procedural Audio for Video Games: Are we there yet? 
Speaker: Nicolas Fournel (Principal Audio Programmer, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe)
Date/Time: Friday (March 12, 2010) 1:30pm — 2:30pm
Location (room): Room 112, North Hall
Description: Explosion of content, non-repetitive sound effects, need for interactive music: these are some of the challenges the game industry faces today to provide a better audio experience. Procedural audio is a compelling solution to all these problems and the computational power of the new generation of consoles certainly allows for in-game real-time sound synthesis. But are we ready for it? After defining procedural audio in the context of video games, this presentation examines each step of its implementation during the production cycle and the challenges associated with it. Topics addressed range from design choices to typical game sound models, and from tools and engines requirements to quality assurance.

http://playstationatgdc.eventnewscenter.com/contents/details/678-playstation-sessions

Hmmm... Interesting...

Can someone tell me why reading the OP bored me shitless?

wow it seems that each developer is sharing what makes their titles special. U2 with bringing art to life and its cinematic nature and lighting, gow3 with its animations and lighting, sucker punch with their good controls, flower with their brilliant music etc.

sony is really sharing a lot of knowledge!

Thursday evening? Why did I think it would be sooner.

First time I've ever been anticipating a conference from Sony...

yea, it is pretty d@mn cool, it's one of those thing's that kind of open's up more opportunity

hell sucker punch's developer spent 2 year's of his life do this for the PS3 and i must say it was a great game

one of my fav. this generation Infamous was fantastic.

so was uncharted 1, 2 loved them both.

lol. well they do release info durring the day, so since there is one of the VGchartz member's there, I think were good to go.

You guys need to realize that GDC is for Devs, not press. So nothing new is going to come out of most of these. However, there IS a Sony press conference and party which VGChartz is going to. So any new info and updates will be shared with all of you guys right away :)

thank you, but some INFO may get leaked, glad there is someone there.