Interviews

Marc Petit, Senior Vice President of Autodesk’s Media & Entertainment division, talks about how studios are meeting the challenges of economic uncertainty and workforce globalization and how his company plans to meet future need for technology tools, including adoption of Open Source standards.

Bill Kroyer, animation director, teacher and one of the board of governors of the Motion Picture Academy, shares his thoughts on the original Tron, where it broke new ground and what impact it had on the computer animation field. He also talks about the new digital animation program at Chapman as well as some of the political issues animation faces within the Motion Picture Academy.

At GDC, Arti Gupta chatted with Blizzard Entertainment’s Frank Pearce about the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm, as well as integrating mobile phone applications to support the experience of their core games and developing for fans new and old alike.

DC Universe Online, which launched in January for the PC and PS3, presented some unique development challenges. MMOs are notoriously difficult to create, but Sony Online Entertainment and Everquest veteran Chris Cao rose to the challenge. The game director of DC Universe Online talked to us about the game’s launch and what’s next.

When it comes to video games, Valve Software was one of the early game studios to emphasize the importance of interactive narrative in shooters like Half-Life. Storytelling remains an integral part of all of Valve’s games. And Erik Wolpaw is one of the top writers at the Seattle game studio. Gabe Newell hired Wolpaw at Valve, where he’s worked on the story and dialogue for games like Portal 1, Left 4 Dead and now Portal 2. Wolpaw talks about the creation of Valve’s much-anticipated Portal 2, which ships in April, in this exclusive interview.