Siggraph

Tomorrow there will be a panel worth getting up early for. At 8:30, room 408 AB at Siggraph, you’ll find that Jeff Lander, Steve Sullivan, Martin Walker, Lyle Hall, and Steve Theodore will already be awake and bringing their combined wisdom to the subject of rapidly evolving pipelines for games production. For those who don’t know these guys, here’s the bio lineup.

-Jeff Lander: Technical Director at Electronic Arts. Runs his own R&D company of his own (Darwin 3D); journalist for Game Developer Magazine.
-Steve Sullivan: Director of R&D at Lucasfilm and two-time Sci-Tech Oscar winner. Charged with unifying ILM film technologies and LucasArts game technologies.
-Martin Walker: CTO of Canada’s A2M. Big game developer
-Lyle Hall: VP and Executive Producer of THQ; oversees THQ subsidiary Heavy Iron Studios. Exec producer on The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Wall.E.
-Steve Theodore: Technical Art Director at Bungie Studios where he designs the content tools for the Halo engine.

If you’re running late, it goes to 10:15.

And here’s the panel description and discussion points c/o the organizer.

Summary:
How do game developers manage ever-evolving pipelines, data flow and management to keep up with teams of 100-150+ artists and programmers creating thousands of new assets on a daily basis for new game consoles that impose greater demands and strains on timelines, pipelines, and development teams every two to three years?

Description:
During development of Playstation games teams averaged 15 artists, designers and programmers with three to four technical engineers. For PS2, average project requirements went up to plus or minus 55 artists, designers, and programmers with a technology team of 20 engineers. Now with next generation platforms, developers are seeing asset and team size growth on what would be considered an order of magnitude, but not necessarily with correlating extensions of budgets or timelines.

The greatest challenge now for game developers is to create economies of scale and pipeline efficiencies to accomodate project teams that are currently averaging well over 100 artists, designers, and programmers with an additional core of 30 technical directors, programmers and engineers. How do these companies address the complexity of programming as well as managing quality and quantity of art assets expected to achive near-life visuals?

Discussion Points:
-How do new game consoles impact the development pipeline from a creative and technical standpoint?
-Comparing size shifts in terms of assets and development teams from 1997 to today.
-Tips from leading developers in creating time-saving and project-saving pipeline efficiencies.
-How has the demand for realism in games affected the creative development chain?
-How is this evolving demand by audiences and game consoles relfected in the skill sets core to successful game development today vs. five or ten years ago?