Members of the Gearbox Software team will be speaking at GDC 2013! Come see us at these lectures:
Postmortem: GPU Accelerated Effects in Borderlands 2 (Presented by NVIDIA)
Dane Johnston | Technical Artist, NVIDIA
James Sanders | Director of Visual FX, Gearbox Software
Thursday, March 28 at 11:30AM PT
Room 2002, West Hall
Borderlands 2 released to critical acclaim on September 18th, 2012 and showcased a wide variety of NVIDIA CUDA®-accelerated GPU effects. This session will dive into the exact effects that were featured and their benefits to the visual fidelity of the gamer experience. Side-by-side examples of how GPU-accelerated effects are changing the gaming landscape will be demonstrated in a gaming session. Further examinations into the production process and effects creation will also be explored.
Designing Humor in Borderlands 2
Anthony Burch | Lead Writer for Borderlands 2, Gearbox Software
Thursday, March 28 at 5:30PM PT
Room 134, North Hall
The lead writer of Borderlands 2 explains how the team attempted to convey humor, not just through dialog and art, but through game mechanics. The lecture will discuss how a quest with no gameplay can actually be funnier than a quest with it, how every mechanic holds the potential for humor, and how even jokes need debugging. There will also be more use of the word fart than you are probably comfortable with.
Igniting the Spark: Building Online Services for Borderlands 2
Jimmy Sieben | Lead Programmer, Gearbox Software
Thursday, March 28 at 5:30PM PT
Room 2004, West Hall
Gearbox built an online services platform named "Spark" for Borderlands 2. This was an entirely new effort for Gearbox, and we learned that building a service is quite different from building a game. Along the way, we shipped two beta releases in the original Borderlands to help us succeed. This talk will discuss the genesis of Spark, key milestones and challenges in its creation, and the postmortem from launch. This talk will help others understand why we created Spark, and what it takes to launch an online service.
