My Notes: GDC 2014 – Day 5 – More Expo and some Lectures

The GDC 2014 in San Francisco happened one month ago and I am going to bring you a post every day like a diary for the next few days =)
This was my first GDC in the States and I took some pictures and wrote a lot of notes about my daily stuff, the talks / lectures and what I have experienced.

 It’s Thursday and I visited the Expo again and had some cool talks and not to forget the Ubisoft Party ;)

We had breakfast at Cafe Mason, its amazing there, you should visit the location if you have the chance.

Breakfast and morning stuff =)

Expo Impressions

Some Lectures

Ubisoft Party

Sessionlist + Notes:

I’ll link all sessions to the GDC-Vault, if possible to the free stuff.
All notes are my private quick notes, ask me if i need to clarify them.

• The Art of making Guacamelee
  • Finding and creating the art style
  • love the colorwork and lighting
  • Get presentation and stuff
  • Different worlds and colorstyles
  • Good prototype and nice techdemos
  • Blocking out (pixelart) and simple shapes for colorthen drawing details
  • Art in 3Dmax
  • 2d game in 3d engine
    • Light and colorlayers can be added easily
    • and easy parlaxing
  • Integrating graphics with comments so that everybody can understand (and for documentation)
  • Tips:
    • Design from inside to outside
      • start with the core and build from that
    • Make mistakes, make them early and frequently
      • Early iteration and early feedback
    • Ugly drawings have the best personality
      • The goal of the drawing is to communicate, not to look good
    • Collaboration
      • Collaboration does not happen by chance, it needs to be cultivated
    • Trust your instinct
      • Being genuine is more important than trying to please everyone
  • About 3 month pre-production
  • Pitch and concept video was made in flash and hand-animated and drawn
  • Get feedback from locals if you are making a game for another culture or with another culture involved and decide wisely what stereotype you want to use
• Using Youtube and Twitch to market your Game
  • Single people with more than 1.5 million subscriber
  • Indies love word of mouth and also do mobile game developer
  • YouTube videos of fans playing the game binding of Isaac raised the copies sold per day by more than 1000%
  • Papers please got greenlighted due to attention by youtubers
  • Videogamecaster.com / big-list-of-youtubers
  • If you contact a YouTube or streamer:
    • Use mail
    • Include a code or build
    • Be brief
    • Explain your games value ()
    • Use twitter
    • Don’t use youtubemessages
    • Don’t do interestchecks
    • Don’t feel inferior
  • There are about 5 games a day… don’t get in touch to late
  • Lot of streamers and youtubers there
  • Follow him at Twitter @northernlionLP 
• Managing Cross-Cultural Teams
  • I was a bit late and my notes were pretty quick and dirty
  • If you are in the position managing or working with a multicultural team, have a look