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May 16, 2007

God of War: How the Left and Right Brain Learned to Love One Another

god.jpgGamasutra is proud to present the latest free Game Developers Conference recording, part of our regular weekly GDC Radio podcasts, which include both the Tom Kim-presented Gamasutra Podcast show, alongside the best lectures, tutorials, and roundtables from this and previous years' Game Developers Conferences.

With God of War: Chains of Olympus coming to the PSP, and the extremely well received God of War II continuing to be a top seller, we take a look back at the development of the original God of War with a lecture from the 2006 Game Developers Conference.

For his "God of War: How the Left and Right Brain Learned to Love One Another" lecture, Sony Computer Entertainment America director of technology, Tim Moss looked at the left brain/right brain split between David Jaffe and the game's designers and himself and his team of programmers, and how, despite it all, the two sides managed to come together to make a hit game.

Listed as important for "programmers, designers and anyone who has to come up with a project plan that keeps them all happy," the official lecture description reads:

"God of War is a big game, lots of special case elements, high production values. Its lead designer was a Right Brain, random creative type who couldn’t really speak Programmer. Its lead programmer was a Left Brain analytical type who likes things to be methodical, well thought out and hates special cases. Through a 3 year process of arguing, designing, building, programming, and much, much more arguing they managed to find a way to make a game. This session will cover how the code, engine and tools were structured to allow the creative people on the team to make the game we they wanted."

You can now download the GDC lecture, 'God of War: How the Left and Right Brain Learned to Love One Another' (.MP3, 53 minutes, 12.2 MB).

In addition, you can subscribe to the GDC Radio podcasts by clicking this link for iTunes. You can manually subscribe to our feed in your favorite RSS reader that supports enclosures by using this URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/GDCRadio.

May 1, 2007

After the Party: Introversion Software One Year On From IGF 2006

darwinia.jpgGamasutra is proud to present the latest free Game Developers Conference recording, part of our regular weekly GDC Radio podcasts, which include both the Tom Kim-presented Gamasutra Podcast show, alongside the best lectures, tutorials, and roundtables from this and previous years' Game Developers Conferences.

Our latest podcast comes from this year's Game Developers Conference, with Introversion's managing director Mark Morris and financial director Tom Arundel talking about how winning three prizes at IGF 2006 saw a massive turnaround for the UK based, self confessed last-of-the-bedroom-programmers, Introversion Software.

"One year on," the official GDC session description writes, "Introversion returns to spill the beans on what happened when all of the hangovers, camera crews, excitement and hype surrounding IGF dissipated. We will discuss the trials and tribulations of running a small, independent games company, including topics such as:

* Advice on how to attain commercial credibility and compete with the big boys of the games industry whilst retaining creative freedom

* Maximizing the benefits whilst downplaying the limitations of running a small dev team

* Tapping in to the opportunities now present to indies via internet retail and distribution

* Why now is a better time than ever for the budding independent developer."

The session was listed as relevant to anyone "already familiar with and interested in [Introversion's] work and also to those seeking viable, working alternatives within the games industry to the traditional franchise and sequel cash-ins favored by the worst kind of profit-greedy and creatively stunted publishers."

Introversion promised to "prove to developers and publishers alike that the current approach to games development is forcing creative stagnation, but can be overturned by new openings in the industry which allow the small independent to retain creative freedom whilst remaining financially viable."

You can now download the GDC lecture, 'After the Party: Introversion Software One Year On From IGF 2006' (.MP3, 56 minutes, 12.7 MB).

In addition, you can subscribe to the GDC Radio podcasts by clicking this link for iTunes. You can manually subscribe to our feed in your favorite RSS reader that supports enclosures by using this URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/GDCRadio.

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