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  GDC 2005 Report: What Makes Music for Games 'Music For Games' [03.18.05] One of the final panels of this year's GDC discussed the nature of game music; video games, being their own mode of expression with their own demands, require a different scoring approach from other forms.
 GDC 2005 Report: Storytelling Across Genres: BioWare’s Perspective [03.17.05] At this year's GDC, Greg Zeschuk of BioWare explained the role of stories in videogames such as Baldur's Gate and the forthcoming Jade Empire, detailing the process that takes place at BioWare to generate the narrative component for its games.
 GDC 2005 Report: Global Mobile Games: New Business Models, Hit Games, and Mobile People from Around the Planet [03.17.05] In his roundtable, Dave Collier moderates this discussion regarding the international mobile games market and how to move mobile games toward mass audiences.
 Question of the Week Responses: Technical Innovations in Next Generation Consoles [03.16.05] After taking a break for GDC coverage, the Question of the Week returns, with the replies to: "What hardware or software technical innovations are going to be particularly important to game creators for the next generation of console hardware?"
 GDC 2005 Report: Puzzle Pirates: Lessons from an Indie MMOG [03.15.05] When Daniel James, CEO of Three Rings Design, Inc., started the session by serving everyone a shot of Captain Morgan rum, one could almost hear the circular pen strokes of everyone voting unanimous fives all around on their audience feedback sheet. In the relaxed atmosphere, he gave his lecture on the story behind Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates.
 GDC 2005 Report: The Future of Content [03.15.05] Will Wright is suddenly the man of the hour, as his new title Spore rocked the GDC to its core. The game is not the only story, however; Wright believes there's still a way for our method of creating next-generation games to be flipped on its head, and this detailed report of his GDC lecture tries to explain his thinking.
 GDC 2005 Report: Audio Production for Halo 2 [03.14.05] Bungie's Marty O'Donnell and Jay Weinland held their GDC presentation on the implementation of their audio work on Halo 2. For voices to background sound, it's all here in this GDC report.
 Postcard From GDC 2005: GDC Photos - Friday, March 11th [03.11.05] In the third and final gallery of photos from GDC 2005, Aaron Meyers captures some a little bit of everything from the IGF and Game Developers Choice Awards to sessions and the expo floor leaving a lasting impression of this year's show.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: Hal Barwood on Integrating Narrative into Play [03.11.05] As this year's Game Developers Conference draws to a close, Hal Barwood illustrated the different ways a story can be integrated into gameplay referencing his own work as well as such strong narrative games as Grand Theft Auto and Beyond Good and Evil.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: Rolling the Dice: The Risks and Rewards of Developing Katamari Damacy [03.11.05] Keita Takahashi, creator of Katamari Damacy, opened his talk with a puppet of the Prince from his game on his hand. “Hello, I'm Keita Takahashi,” the prince said. “And I'm still tired.” The evening prior, just after arriving from Japan , Takahashi won awards for both game design and innovation. He then went on to talk about the risk and rewards of developing such a critically-lauded game.
 Postcard From GDC 2005: Why Isn't the Game Industry Making Interactive Stories? [03.11.05] During GDC 2005, four professional game designers and one research professor got together to look at the future of interactive stories, and industry obstacles and gamer wants took center stage before an audience of developers and academics.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: The International Game Designers Panel [03.11.05] The International Game Designers’ Panel, featuring a big name cast of Clint Hocking, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Toru Iwatani and, Alex Rigopulos, and moderated by Mark Cerny, convened at GDC on Friday morning to discuss American and Japanese perspectives on twenty-first century game design.
 GDC 2005 Proceeding: Handling Complexity in the Halo 2 AI [03.11.05] How can you add complexity to a brain while maintaining the transparency of a small system? In this proceeding, Damian Isla describes some of the techniques Bungie used in the design of the Halo 2 AI in pursuit of a beautiful, clean and ultimately scalable brain architecture.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: Normal and Displacement Map, Sitting in a Tree [03.11.05] In his Wednesday morning lecture, Factor 5 designer Matthias Worch explored the benefits of maquette development, focusing on distinctions between full-on digital and maquette models, with the help of his guest star "Leon."
 Postcard from GDC 2005: Real-time 3D Movies in Resident Evil 4 [03.11.05] In his Thursday lecture, Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, lead designer on Capcom's Resident Evil 4, goes into his reasoning behind why realtime cutscenes make for a more involving gameplay experience.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: Lessons from Viewtiful Joe: Making a Creatively and Financially Successful New Game [03.11.05] It is always a challenge to maintain the balance between creating a great game vs. producing a financial hit. As a game developer, the goal is to make a game that is creatively successful. As a producer, the goal is to create a game that is financially successful. Ensuring that these dual goals are achieved can be very difficult if not sometimes impossible. In his lecture, Inaba focused on the daunting process of making a creatively and financially successful original game, utilizing three of his projects as examples: Steel Battalion, Viewtiful Joe, and the upcoming Okami.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: The Japanese Game Industry: Past, Present and Future [03.11.05] Kenzo Tsujimoto is not only the CEO of Capcom, but also the chair of CESA, Japan 's Consumer Entertainment Supplier's Association. In his talk he takes a look at the past, present, and future of the Japanese game industry.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: Fable: Lessons Learned [03.11.05] Peter Molyneux appeared for the second time in this year's Game Developers Conference for a public postmortem of one of his latest creations, the game Fable. The session ranged from “making of” style comments to pure post-mortem material in the form of the rights and wrongs of a project that took over five years, several major redesigns, and some extreme resizing, to complete.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: Designing the AAA Title: Letters from the Trenches [03.11.05] As part of this year's GDC business and legal track, on Tuesday Daniel Arey, Creative Director from Naughty Dog surveyed the requirements to create AAA titles both for this and next generation platforms. The session was structured as a series of pre-recorded interviews with studio leaders such as Will Wright, Louis Castle, Jason Rubin or David Perry. In these interviews, many subjects were subjects were commented, from budgeting to project management and IP building.
 Postcard From GDC 2005: Photo Gallery, Thursday, March 10 [03.10.05] In a second gallery of photos from GDC 2005, Aaron Meyers captures some of the action on the GDC expo show floor, from whirling motion capture artists, through briefcases full of money, all the way to kung fu monkey action.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: Interactive Narratives Revisited: Ten Years of Research [03.10.05] Ten years ago, also at the Game Developers Conference, Adams addressed the difficulty in videogame narration in a lecture titled “The Challenge of the Interactive Movie” concluding that there was no such creature as an “interactive movie,” and that we should abandon all notions to the contrary, suggesting instead that we should be focusing on what he calls interactive narratives. Today he revisits interactive narratives with ten years of research.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: Fluid Loop: Science Design in Cinema, Games, and Life [03.10.05] At GDC on Thursday, John Underkoffler, science and technology advisor on films such as Minority Report and The Hulk, discussed the intermingling of science and cinema in the twenty-first century entertainment. Using extensive examples from "Minority Report," Underkoffler demonstrated the myriad of ways in which that movie's design team used real science to help Spielberg bring the future to life.
 Postcard From GDC 2005 - Interview with the Maestro: Nobuo Uematsu [03.10.05] Even in the face of an increasingly antsy crowd of game audio professionals and Final Fantasy admirers, Nobuo Uematsu strolled into the room, fashionably late, relaxed as ever. Between the aficianados who mobbed the Final Fantasy composer before the interview session and the fans who surrounded him after, Uematsu maintained his calm composure.
 Postcard From GDC 2005: Akira Yamaoka on Silent Hill, Fear, and Audio For Games [03.10.05] At the 2005 GDC game design track, Silent Hill's producer and sound director Akira Yamaoka gave an overview of the design process behind the cult horror game series, while exploring the design and audio issues found in the terror and survival horror genre.
 GDC 2005 Proceeding: Online Game Architecture: Back-end Strategies [03.10.05] In this GDC 2005 proceeding, Esbensen comments: "Globally, the MMORPG market is expected to reach $3.2 billion dollars in the next two years... Yet, in spite of these numbers, many businesses are hesitant to invest their resources because the high cost of maintaining the necessary infrastructure outweighs substantial profits. How is a company supposed to cope?"
 Postcard From GDC 2005: Wrap-up: Game Connection - Alternative Networking at GDC [03.10.05] Cifaldi investigates GDC's Game Connection, the concept of which is really quite simple: give developers some quiet meeting-room space, give publishers easy access to schedule discussions with them, and then, with the exception of cocktails and lunch, leave them the hell alone for two days.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: How Can MMOs Develop Mass Appeal in the US? [03.09.05] Rich Vogel of Sony Online Entertainment looks at the barrier between massively multiplayer games and mass market audiences in the U.S. and reaches a number of realizations.
 Postcard From GDC 2005: Photo Gallery, Wednesday, March 9 [03.09.05] In this first gallery of specially selected photos from GDC, Aaron Meyers showcases some of the action from the IGF stand, the Vision track lectures, and the always entertaining Game Design Challenge, this year based on the poetry of Emily Dickinson.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: Gameplay Moves Forward into the 21st Century [03.09.05] Peter Molyneux, founder of Lionhead Studios, spoke at GDC Wednesday about the importance of building accessibility and simplicity into the next generation of games. Drawing on examples from Black and White 2 and The Movies, Molyneux gave GDC-goers a behind-the-scenes look at his unique approach to the future of game design.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: SGS - Playing Games with Jim: Demonstrating the Important Learning Found in COTS Games [03.09.05] In his talk, Gee demonstrated what consumer off-the-shelf (COTS) games have to teach us about design, and about the process of learning in general. The specific game used was Ninja Gaiden, described by the professor as a tough game that will be hard, but always fair. The game teaches you to be good at it, which is not very sophisticated learning, but teaches you basic things very effectively without beating you over the head.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: Game Technology and Content Creation for the Next Generation [03.09.05] Tim Sweeney, Founder and Technical Director of Epic Games, spoke at GDC Wednesday about Epic's strategy for developing the next generation of its Unreal Engine. The key: bringing the power of next-gen consoles directly to the hands of its artists.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: Microsoft Keynote: The Future of Games - Unlocking The Opportunity [03.09.05] Microsoft's keynote at the 2005 Game Developers Conference, presented by chief XNA architect J Allard, was a heady blend of big ideas and a few tantalizing specifics on Microsoft's plans for the next generation, with a big, showboating prize surprise finish that left many attendees literally speechless.
 Postcard from GDC Mobile 2005: The Tipping Point in Wireless Gaming [03.09.05] Just as when Super Mario Bros. appeared in the home console market, and as Doom came to PC gaming platforms and grew multiplayer network gaming, mobile games are at the tipping point for a game explosion, according to Mike Yuen at GDC Mobile 2005.
 Postcard From GDC 2005: Quality of Life Summit - Labor Relations 101 [03.09.05] Gina Neff, from UC San Diego, took the podium at the Quality Of Life summit to address the audience on the growing question of unionization in the videogame industry. Rather than push any one answer, Neff's goal was to clear some misconceptions about unions, and to offer a palette of options, to get the audience thinking about what the industry really needs, perhaps to craft its own solution.
 Postcard From GDC 2005: GDC Mobile - Novel Ways to Use Audio in Games [03.09.05] As developers look for more ways to add value, Jukka Holm and other researchers at the Nokia Research Center in Finland are finding ways to have audio and music drive video game content in the relatively ignored mobile audio space, in this lecture report from GDC Mobile 2005.
 Postcard From GDC 2005: GDC Mobile - The Consolidation and Specialization of the Mobile Game Industry [03.09.05] In this GDC Mobile lecture, Paul Maglione, Senior VP of Publishing and Marketing at Digital Bridges, presented facts on the changing of the mobile game landscape, arguing: "Every part is becoming more specialized, but that's just new opportunity for all kinds of business."
 Postcard From GDC 2005 - Quality of Life Summit: The Business Case for Improved Production Practices [03.09.05] Part of the IGDA's Quality Of Life Summit, Steve McConnell, Chief Engineer of Construx Software discussed the value of improved planning in software development for development teams and management alike, arguing that proven practices were readily available, although they might have been proved in other industries.
 GDC 2005 Proceeding: IP Deal Breakers: The Five Intellectual Property Rights Developers Should Not Bargain Away [03.09.05] This proceeding shows the way in which developer rights are bargained away and the critical mistakes developers can no longer afford to make. In particular, the developer's failure to use the multiple components of IP rights to maximize negotiation opportunities, and the developer's lack of understanding of the true cost of the IP rights that are given up, are addressed.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: SGS - Making Game-Based Learning & Training Pervasive in the Armed Forces and Elsewhere [03.09.05] The military is very heavily invested in the 'serious games' industry, as interviews with companies such as BreakAway Games support. Michael Macedonia, CTO of the government-owned U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation, knows this better than many, and discussed it in detail in his lecture on the first day of the Serious Games Summit at GDC 2005.
 Postcard from GDC Mobile 2005: Academic Experts on Mobile Game Design [03.08.05] Instructors at Helsinki and Lancaster universities think the answer to mobile game stagnation lies in student developers, and took the opportunity to discuss their programs and progress in a panel discussion on mobile games in academia.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: Dear Friends: The Music of Final Fantasy [03.08.05] This year's Game Developers Conference coincided with a two-hour orchestral concert based on the music of Nobuo Uematsu of Final Fantasy fame. Entitled “Dear Friends: The Music of Final Fantasy,” the concert was performed by conductor Arnie Roth and the Symphony Silicon Valley for a packed house at San Francisco's Masonic Auditorium on Monday night.
 Postcard from GDC Mobile 2005: Final Fantasy for Mobile: A Case Study [03.08.05] Kosei Ito of Square Enix shares with mobile developers some of the problems and successes in moving one of the most recognizable game brands in the world to mobile platforms.
 GDC 2005 Proceeding: Interactive 3D Lighting in Sprites Rendering [03.08.05] This proceeding covers several techniques and methods to create sprites that are interactively lit by 3D lights, adding a better sense of depth and integration to finished images. Also covered are the unique benefits and drawbacks of each method.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: Tutorial - Machine Learning [03.08.05] This tutorial provided a gentle but thorough overview about machine learning (ML): the techniques and costs implied, and how games can benefit from it citing such games as The Sims and Black and White as new game genres made possible by machine learning.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: GDC Mobile - Tales from the Multiplayer Frontier [03.08.05] Developers from the edge of the multiplayer mobile gaming world
gathered to talk about what went right, what went wrong, and who is to
blame for the current state of mobile game technology. Carriers,
developers, and research professors all had many things to say about
how to push further into the frontier.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: Serious Games Summit: How Serious Games is Helping the Commercial Industry [03.08.05] Moderated by Sherpa Games founder and president Warren Currell, this question and answer session addressed the convergence of commercial and serious games and how they can further benefit each other.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: Serious Games Summit: Advergaming for Private and Public Interests [03.07.05] The first session after the keynote at the Serious Games track at GDC 2005 was Ian Bogost's look at advergaming, proposing that a "third way" between the two main types of advertising could give rise to useful applications in the serious games sphere.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: Serious Games Summit Keynote - Raph Koster - A Theory of Fun [03.07.05] In the early hours of the Serious Games Summit, Sony Online's Chief Creative Officer Raph Koster talks about what games are, what games aren't, and what game designers should be doing with them as the non-gaming world takes notice.
 Postcard from GDC 2005: Casual Games Summit: Web & Downloadable Panel [03.07.05] The all-day Casual Games Summit addressed the issue of simple, deceptively time-consuming games that are quickly becoming a larger part of the industry. This panel takes a look at the present state and future potential of casual games.
 Interview: From Redmond With Love? Microsoft's Chris Satchell On XNA Studio [03.07.05] In relation to Microsoft's major GDC announcement of the XNA Studio team-based development environment, Carless interviews XNA general manager Chris Satchell on the details of the product that's intended to make next-gen game development and asset management significantly less painful.
 GDC 2005 Proceeding: Ghost Redux - Production Challenges for Ghost Recon 2 Xbox [03.07.05] This GDC 2005 written proceeding discusses the production of the Xbox Live version of Ghost Recon 2, and the production challenges encountered while developing an Xbox game for a demanding fan base and for players new to the franchise.
 Game Developers Conference 2005 Preview [03.07.05] Originally part of the February 2005 issue of Game Developer magazine, editor Simon Carless presents a detailed preview of the 2005 Game Developers Conference, including picks for particularly intriguing sessions to check out from the whole editorial staff.
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