Naughty Dog will give five different lectures related to Uncharted 2 and its production; In one, director Bruce Straley and co-lead designer Neil Druckmann will discuss story and gameplay integration.

Double Fine, the studio behind Brütal Legend, will send lead programmer Peter Demoreuille and artist Drew Skillman to discuss visual design for that game.

The conference will be March 9 to 13 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Naughty Dog, Double Fine to Present at GDC 2010 [CinemaBlend]

Q: Is the program available to students from all countries?
A: Yes, students from all countries are welcome to apply, though applications must be in English. The language of the conference is English.

Q: Are there restrictions on the kind of degree program?
A: Yes, undergraduate students must be enrolled in a 4-year degree program (or equivalent, or better, such as a 5 year dual degree or 5 year BS/MS). If you have questions about whether your degree program is acceptable, please contact the Student Scholarships Chair.

Q: Do I have to be a current student?
A: Yes, you must currently be enrolled as a student to apply.

Q: When will you contact the faculty member reference?
A: We plan on only contacting faculty references for those students who are in our semi-finalist pool. Once contacted, we will only ask for a few paragraphs of information. For the faculty member, the entire process should take less than 20 minutes.

Q: Who should I choose as a faculty member reference?
A: Ideally a faculty member who can discuss your game project in detail, and who understands your overall academic progress.

Q: Should applicants have a valid passport?
A: Yes, applicants should already have a valid passport, as there may not be time to get one between announcement of winners and the cruise. Applicants should be aware that, should they win, they will need to be able to travel to the United States and to the Bahamas.

Q: How many students will be selected?
A: We anticipate 10-15 students will participate in this program.

Q: If I am selected, what will it cost to attend the conference?
A: Students selected for scholarships will have reasonable airfare (coach on lowest cost airline), hotel the night before (and after, if necessary), and reasonable incidental travel costs (airport shuttle or parking, dinner the night before the conference, etc. The conference reserves the right to not reimburse expenses that are viewed as excessive.

Call for Papers

As fear is the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind (Lovecraft), human beings have always taken a malicious pleasure in frightening themselves. If literature and cinema were and still represent good means for the expression of horror, nowadays, the experience of fear is as intense in video games.

While academia has been studying horrific literature and films for a few decades, such an interest for the videoludic side of horror has not, until now, showed up. Yet, since the cinematic staging of fear in Alone in the Dark in 1992, the "Survival Horror" has become a prolific genre offering a wide selection of significant games such as the Resident Evil, Silent Hill and Fatal Frame series. Because it is at the crossroads of diverse cultural heritages and the latest technological developments, and because it exhibits the ins and outs of the matrix that governs all but a few games (spatial navigation and survival), horror video games require a deeper study.

This international conference wishes to study horror video games (not necessarily labeled survival horror) from an eclectic range of critical and theoretical perspectives. It aims to fill a gap in game studies between general theory and analysis of particular genres and games.

Possible Topics

Here are some examples of relevant themes we wish to explore in this conference:

Historical approach

Origins and history of horror video games
Impact of the technological evolution on horror video games
Theoretical approach

Simulation of horror, fear, terror

Narratives and themes of horror video games
Interpretation of individual works and series
Transmedial approach

Transmedial study of horror video games (game/film/literature)

Remediation in films, literature and video games
Socio-cultural approach

Transnational analysis of horror video games (United States/Japan)

Social and cultural meanings of horror video games
Horror video games and censorship
Analytical approach

Aesthetics of horror video games (lighting, sound, editing, 1st/3rd person perspective)

Study of specific games or series (Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil, Fatal Frame, etc.)

The organizing committee remains open to proposals that respect the general spirit of this call for papers.

Please submit your proposals before January 15, 2009 via email to the following address: thinking.after.dark@ca.inter.net.

Your proposal must include:

1. The title of your paper and an abstract (no more that 500 words).
2. Your academic status, your institutional affiliation, your department and your contact information (mailing address, telephone number, fax number and e-mail address).
3. A short biography underlining your work related to the themes of the conference (no more than 250 words).

A selection of papers will be published in a special issue of Loading…, the journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association (CGSA).

———-

Looking forward to meeting you in Montréal next April,

The organizing committee.

If you're going to be in San Diego and free next Wednesday afternoon, UCSD is hosting a public portion of their "SoftWhere 2008" at the UCSD campus Lots of people are involved (including names like Ian Bogost), and the public portion will be a rapid-fire format of quick presentations. A reception will be held afterwards. The full release is after the jump — I'll be taking the afternoon off to check it out:

Wednesday, May 21st, from 12:30-5:30pm, the Software Studies Initiative at
UC San Diego invites you to attend a public event:

SoftWhere 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 12:30-5:30pm
UCSD Faculty Club, Atkinson Pavilion
Reception to follow
RSVP to softwarestudies@gmail.com
directions: http://facclub.ucsd.edu/mod_AboutUs/Directions.aspx

Software studies is a research field that examines software and
cyberinfrastructure using approaches from humanities, cultural criticism,
and social sciences. The public session will feature a rapid series of
short presentations by key national and international figures in this
emerging field. The format is 5-10 minute speed-talks, modeled on the
popular "Pecha Kucha" format, in which each presenter is allowed a slideshow
of 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds. Attendees can expect a collage of
diverse perspectives on what it means to live in software society and how to
study it.
http://workshop.softwarestudies.com/

Off-Campus Participants:

Ian Bogost (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Geoff Bowker (Santa Clara University)
Benjamin Bratton (UCLA / SCI-Arc)
Matthew Fuller (Goldsmiths College, University of London)
N. Katherine Hayles (UCLA)
Matthew Kirschenbaum (University of Maryland)
Peter Lunenfeld (Art Center College of Design)
Mark Marino (USC)
Michael (Mateas (UCSC)
Nick Montfort (MIT)
Rita Raley (UCSB)
Casey Reas (UCLA)
Warren Sack (UCSC)
Phoebe Sengers (Cornell)
Doug Sery (MIT Press)
Chandler McWilliams (UCLA)

Campus Participants:

Lev Manovich (UCSD)
Noah Wardrip-Fruin (UCSD)
Jeremy Douglass (UCSD)
Amy Alexander (UCSD)
Barry Brown (UCSD)
Jordan Crandall (UCSD)
Kelly Gates (UCSD)
Brian Goldfarb (UCSD)
Jim Hollan (UCSD)
Stefan Tanaka (UCSD)
Geoff Voelker (UCSD)

ABOUT SOFTWARE STUDIES
http://softwarestudies.com

Google searches and Amazon recommendations, airline flight paths and traffic
lights, email and your phone: our culture runs on software. How does
software shape the world?

Software is a layer that permeates all areas of contemporary societies.
Therefore, if we want to understand contemporary techniques of control,
communication, representation, simulation, analysis, decision-making,
memory, vision, writing, and interaction, our analysis can\'t be complete
until we consider this software layer. Social scientists, philosophers,
cultural critics, and media and new media theorists now seem to cover all
aspects of the IT revolution, creating a number of new disciplines such as
cyber culture, Internet studies, new media theory, and digital culture. Yet
the underlying engine that drives most of these subjects - software - has
received little or no direct attention. Software is still invisible to most
academics, artists, and cultural professionals interested in IT and its
cultural and social effects. But if we continue to limit critical
discussions to the notions of "cyber," "digital," "new media," or
"Internet," we are in danger of always dealing only with effects rather than
causes; the output that appears on a computer screen rather than the
programs and social cultures that produce these outputs.

Following on the first Software Studies Workshop organized by Matthew Fuller
(Rotterdam, 2006), the workshop SoftWhere 2008 @ UCSD is an invitation-only,
foundational event bringing together key U.S. figures in this emerging area.
The workshop will discuss what it means to study software cultures, and the
direction and goals of Software Studies as an emerging movement. Our goal is
for the workshop to result in publishing a founding statement on the field,
as well as initiate a set of interdisciplinary project collaborations. The
workshop will take place in Atkinson Hall, home of Calit2, a preeminent
research center for future computing and telecommunication, where the
Software Studies Initiative @ UCSD is located and currently collaborating
with researchers on several exciting projects. The workshop has also been
timed to precede (and coordinate with) the the HASTAC II conference which
will begin in nearby UC Irvine on the evening of Thursday May 22.

The majority of the workshop will be closed sessions, however, the Pecha
Kucha on Wednesday afternoon is open to the public. Seating is limited and
RSVP is required by May 19 to softwarestudies@gmail.com.

The workshop is sponsored by Calit2, CRCA, HASTAC, UCDARNet, and the UCSD
Visual Arts Department.

WHERE: Annenberg Auditorium, Stanford University
WHEN: Saturday the 16th and Sunday the 17th of February 2008
WEBSITE: http://metaverseu.stanford.edu

Stanford Humanities Lab (SHL) is thrilled to announce the Metaverse U conference at Stanford University. This two day conference will be held on February 16th and 17th 2008 and feature speakers from a range of disciplines spanning industry and academia. Our lab has worked in virtual worlds for some years now and have seen interest in the space grow exponentially in recent years. We believe that the time has come for an event to tell the interesting stories from the evolving metaverse. The current generation of spaces is part of a larger historical picture and many lessons have been learned over the years. Our ultimate goal with Metaverse U is to create a broad conversation about the pressing question of what the metaverse should be.

Metaverse U's list of speakers includes Raph Koster (Metaplace), Brewster Kahle (The Internet Archive), Jeremy Bailenson (Stanford University), TL Taylor (The IT University of Copenhagen), Cory Ondrejka, Tony Parisi (Media Machines & Web3D), Jon Brouchoud (Wikitecture), Wm. LeRoy Heinrichs (Stanford Medical Center), Rebecca Moore (Google Earth), Parvati Dev (Innovation in Learning), Byron Reeves (Stanford University & Seriosity), Kari Kraus (University of Maryland), Christain Renaud (Cisco), Mike Liebhold (Institute for the future), Daniel Huebner (Doppelganger), Vladlen Koltun (Stanford Virtual Worlds Group), Howard Rheingold, Henry Lowood (Stanford University)

For more information please visit: http://metaverseu.stanford.edu

Registration is open at: http://metaverse.stanford.edu/registration/register-now

The China Game Developers Conference (GDC), now in its second year, will take place September 24-26, 2008 at the Jiuhua Spa and Resort in Beijing. CMP Technology, presenters of the largest global event dedicated to videogame creation, the Game Developers Conference, have once again partnered with leading technology, media and events company, IDG, and now with Beijing Howell International Exhibition Co Ltd, producers of the immensely popular China Joy, to present China GDC 2008. The event builds on the success of the 2007 event, which exceeded expectations with more than 2,000 attendees. China GDC will once again feature content programmed by an advisory board of Chinese developers who share a commitment to promote and support their country's game industry.

China GDC aims to advance the state of China's game industry by creating a focused event with the top-quality content and sense of community for which the original GDC has become known. China GDC will be produced "by China, for China," offering unique opportunities for learning, networking, and inspiration in the Chinese market, and for those looking for a vertical reach into that market.

"While GDC connects the worldwide game development community, the goal of China GDC is to provide the burgeoning Chinese market a unique, specialized experience," said Meggan Scavio, Senior Conference Manager of CMP's Game Developers Conference. "We look forward to expanding on the success of the 2007 event by complementing the formula and spirit of GDC with the extended reach of our partners in China."

"The Handheld Learning Conference and Exhibition brings together so many thought-leaders it is natural that Nintendo gets involved with this important educational conference," said David Yarnton, Nintendo UK's general manager. "As the biggest supplier of handheld entertainment, Nintendo is already driving learning across all age groups with its products, in particular the Touch Generations series, including Dr Kawashima's Brain Training: How Old is Your Brain? and Big Brain Academy." Graham Brown-Martin, managing director of Handheld Learning added, "The majority of gaming devices - and particularly those by Nintendo - all feature local and wide area networking capabilities, which are exploited by its software titles to enable positive social interaction and networks. Whilst the world has been focusing on the $100 laptop Nintendo had already developed one in the form of the Nintendo DS."

More information on the conference and exhibition can be found at the Handheld Learning 2007 website. [via Next Generation]