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[supershigi]

What GDC 2011 sessions are you looking forward to? 

Here are a few of mine:

-I was super excited when I saw that they were doing a retro game series, and that Maniac Mansion was one of them.  I love that game, and I was always curious to know what the developers were thinking when they came up with it... the tentacles, the poor hamster, etc.  I'd also like to check out the Pacman and Doom talks in the same series.
-Our friend Stone is giving a talk called "15 Games in 15 Years" which is about how he made a board game for his two sons every Christmas for 15 years. 
-Derek and Andy's Xbla Spelunky talk
-The "Failure Workshop"
-Remaking a Classic: The Game Design of Starcraft II
-Hmm... I had more, but apparently the schedule I spent an hour putting together at the gdc website didn't save >_<

Things I'm not looking forward to:

-The mountain of talks related to how much the Facebook market is growing, and how to use metrics to design games 

[ExciteMike]

Honestly I am so much more excited about the meet-ups that I haven't even looked at the talks

Oh but I did hear Chris Crawford is giving one. That I really want to see!

But yeah if it's like last year, you'll want to steer clear of anything with "monetize", "facebook", or "social" in the title.

*looks at GDC schedule*
Oh Jesus there is a whole Monetization category
*vomits*

[Evan Balster]

And it's sponsored.  :\

I steer clear of "mobile" too, myself.

In fact, I just slam myself into the indie summit and bathe in the love.


I am looking forward to the love-bathing. 

[umezono]

I, for one, can't wait for a thrilling seminar on facebook marketing. I'm even bringing my PDA and calculator. 

[supershigi]

I, for one, can't wait for a thrilling seminar on facebook marketing. I'm even bringing my PDA and calculator. 

Hahaha

[lynx_]

Yeah, the GDC website ate my schedule too

I'm a life-long Nintendo fan, so I'm psyched for the keynote.  A couple of the business and law sessions like the 1-Hour Video Game MBA and Starting a New Dev Studio sound cool to me.  Would also like to make it to the DKC Returns panel.

Are there any panels any of you have been to in the past that were really great (or speakers who are worth hearing, whatever they're talking about)? 

[ExciteMike]

I actually looked over the schedule now.  I'm thinking these ones in particular look great:

• Everything in the Indie Game Summit
• In Days of Yore - Chris Crawford
• Experimental Gameplay Sessions
• An Apology for Roger Ebert - Brian Moriarty
• I <3 WILL WRIGHT

[tylerthedesigner]

Pretty much every one of the Classic Postmortems for me. The Rapid-fire indies. Lessons from Indie Fund. The meaty postmortem. And of course, all of the rants. Those are always winners.

[supershigi]

Are there any panels any of you have been to in the past that were really great (or speakers who are worth hearing, whatever they're talking about)?

I'm sure everyone will tell you this, but Will Wright is a very entertaining speaker... if you get the chance I'd check his talks out, even if they aren't particularly relevant to what you do (just because they're a lot of fun).  Besides that, the great game design challenge is usually awesome (provided that it's still going on).  One year, Alexey Pajitnov (creator of Tetris) designed a game for it that involved riding on dolphins and shooting paintball guns under the ocean, to give you an idea of how crazy and random it is...