Game Developer - January 2011

CONTENTS.0111 VOLUME 18 NUMBER 1

POSTMORTEM DEPARTMENTS

22 HARMONIX' DANCE CENTRAL

Developing a launch title for a new piece of hardware is never easy, but simultaneously working with a new user input paradigm makes the task exponentially more difficult. Harmonix rose to the occasion, creating new UI and a new way to play. By Kasson Crooker, Marc Flury, Matt Boch, Dean Tate, and Ryan Challinor

2 GAME PLAN By Brandon Sheffield Developers Versus the Press

[EDITORIAL]

4 HEADS UP DISPLAY [ N E W S ] ULTIMATE NEWCOMER, IGF China winners, and Propeller Awards.

42 TOOL BOX By Kenneth Lammers Allegorithmic's Substance Designer

[REVIE W]

38 PROPE'S IV Y THE KI WI?

In this bonus postmortem, the IV Y THE KI WI? team outlines how its newest game went from a minigame spawned by a new hire initiation, to a full-fledged product for Wii and DS. By Kohei Takase and Yusaku Yamanaka

46 PIXEL PUSHER By Steve Theodore Scoped and Groped

[ART]

FEATURES

48 THE INNER PRODUCT By Dave Mark Getting More Out of Numbers

[PROGRAMMING]

7 GDC PREVIE W GUIDE

Our GDC preview guide should help you get a handle on some of the early talks and summits coming out of the 25th anniversary of the biggest gathering of game developers anywhere. (GDC is run by the UBM Techweb Game Group, as is this magazine.)

52 DESIGN OF THE TIMES By Damion Schubert The Many Forms of Game Narrative

[DESIGN]

54 E YE ON GDC

Meggan Scavio and Brian Reynolds interviewed.

[GDC]

15 FRONT LINE AWARDS

The 13th annual Front Line Awards are here, presenting the best in game tools as voted by you, the readers of Game Developer and the game development community at large. Categories include art, audio, middleware, engine, programming, and networking tools.

By Jeffrey Fleming, Chris Griffith, Tom Carroll, Alexander Brandon, Mark Cooke, Joe Allen, Adam Hatch, Nathan Fouts, and Amitt Mahajan

55 THE BUSINESS By John Graham A Singular Journey

[BUSINESS]

56 AURAL FIXATION By Jesse Harlin Let's Do The Time Warp Again

[SOUND]

57 GOOD JOB!

Ian Adams Q&A, who went where, and new studios.

[CAREER]

31 YOUR MOVE

As hardware evolves, so too must each established genre adapt itself to new platforms. Here, an original COMMAND AND CONQUER designer discusses bringing the strategy genre to touch devices.