Kojima Productions at GDC 2015 Schedule
The annual Game Developers Conference is about to begin. The event takes place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on March 2 – 6 (with the expo being planned for March 4 – 6), and is, according the the official site, ‘the world’s largest and longest-running professionals-only game industry event’.
Kojima Productions Senior Producer Ken Imaizumi will be attending the show, as he announced on Twitter today.
“Off to GDC! Looking forward to seeing old friends. See you guys! #GDC2015.”
Robert Peeler, Community Manager for Kojima Production Los Angeles, will be attending as well.
Waiting for my flight to GDC and doing logic puzzles
— Robert Allen Peeler (@popcicle) March 2, 2015
Picture by Robert Peeler
There will also be two speakers from Kojima Productions: Geoff Evans and Julien Merceron. The schedule for their sessions is as follows.
Creating Truly Scalable Game Engines – Console to Mobile (Presented by Imagination Technologies)
Date: Tuesday, March 3
Time: 4:30pm – 5:30pm
Julien Merceron | Worldwide Technology Director, Konami
In this session, we will discuss the challenges of developing a truly scalable game engine – current gen console to embedded devices – with our panel of industry veterans.
How does the wide range of device capabilities affect art pipelines? Do the reduced-overhead APIs, such as Apple’s Metal, enable features that would not be possible with traditional APIs? Is the cost of supporting an increasing number of graphics APIs becoming a development bottleneck? Is it feasible for small studios to take on this challenge, or is it only cost effective for large-scale game and middleware development?
Takeaway
Attendees will gain an insight into the day-to-day challenges of graphics developers writing bleeding edge rendering engines for mobile devices and consoles alike.
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Technical Issues in Tools Development: Day 1
Date: Wednesday, March 4
Time: 3:30pm – 4:30pm
Technical Issues in Tools Development: Day 2
Date: Thursday, March 5
Time: 5:30pm – 6:30pm
Technical Issues in Tools Development: Day 3
Date: Friday, March 6
Time: 11:30am – 12:30pm
Geoff Evans | Technical Director, Konami, Kojima Productions
These roundtable sessions focus upon collaborative sharing of best practices, technical trade-offs and proven techniques in game tools software and services. Game development tools are constant evolving so come to share what works (and what didn’t) at your studio, and listen to a fresh take on how other studios keep their creative teams producing awesome games. Preferred topic areas are planned for each day. Wednesday will cover continuous integration, automated testing and revision control.
Takeaway
A better understanding of the state-of-the-art and trade-offs of approaches to game development tools, plug-ins, pipelines and services; advice in selection between various APIs, languages and user interface frameworks; handling increasingly complex asset pipelines, and “best practices” in building tools that work with different target platforms.
Intended Audience
Programmers, especially in senior positions. Technical artists (TDs), art/design leads and producers may find parts of the roundtable useful, but the technical aspects will dominate. Experience with existing tools and product life-cycles is desired, as they will provide the detailed experiences needed.
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Keep in mind that though some announcements have been made there in the past, GDC is mainly an event meant for developers to share their insights and ideas, and the sessions by Kojima Productions seem to be about that as well. So don’t expect big announcements meant for consumers.
Update: Konami will be making a big MGSV: TPP announcement on March 4th. We may get a release date this week after all.
A Kojima Station is also planned for Thursday the 5th of this month.
Source: Ken Imaizumi Twitter, GDC official site, Robert Peeler Twitter