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Valve to hold Steam Dev Days conference in January (No Media).

S

Saty

Member
eb_banner_960_2.jpg


http://www.steamdevdays.com
http://steamdevdays.eventbrite.com/

Steam Dev Days is a two-day game developer’s conference where professionals can meet in a relaxed, off the record environment. Developers will share their design and industry expertise, participate in roundtable discussions and attend lectures by industry veterans on topics ranging from game economies to VR, Linux/OpenGL, user-generated content and more. Developers will also have direct access to Valve’s Steam Team, and will be given a chance to test-drive and provide feedback on Steam OS, prototype Steam Machines and Steam Controllers.
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agenda_grid_2.png
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L

L~A

Member
Quite unbelievable how VALVe and Steam have grown... They're even having their own conventions now. Are we gonna get a convention for media/players in a few years, too?
 
B

Bricky

Member
gamemadmax said:
H
L
3
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15-16 is one, add 2, 0, 1 and 4 to get 8. Now how many letters does Seattle have? Exactly; seven. 8-7=1. Now look at WA; two letters. 1+2=3. USA is also 3 letters; double confirmation. And guess what? Next year it will also have been three years since the release of Portal 2.

Portal 3 confirmed.
 
J

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
L~A said:
Quite unbelievable how VALVe and Steam have grown... They're even having their own conventions now. Are we gonna get a convention for media/players in a few years, too?
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I don't see this expanding outside of its current GDCesque nature.
 
A

ashecitism

Member
So I guess devs from EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard, Sony etc are welcome to attend? Description certainly doesn't make it sound like it's a PC/Steam exclusive thing.
 
A

ashecitism

Member
I realize there's two threads about the VR and hardware sessions, but here's the so far fully updated dev sessions page for those interested:

http://www.steamdevdays.com/?p=sessions

Steam Machines in 2014 – Opening up the Living Room
Greg Coomer, Anna Sweet

Valve and Steam Machine OEMs will jointly present on what to expect during 2014, including schedules and product release plans. We’ll discuss what we’ve learned so far from our public beta testing, including a rundown on how people are actually using Steam Machines. We’ll cover best practices in preparing your upcoming games for use in the living room. Also! Tweet questions and suggestions live to the on-stage team. After that Q&A the audience will vote on the best question and the winner will get a pretty sweet prize to take home.

The Steam Controller – Production, Programming, and What’s Next
Eric Hope, John McCaskey

The Steam Controller is going to be used by many Steam gamers to play your games. During this hour we’ll discuss the rollout plans for the controller, how to get the most out of the Steam controller for your customers, and we’ll demonstrate how to integrate the Controller API into your games. We’ll share what we’ve learned so far from the public beta testing. We’ll also have controllers on hand for everyone to try, and we’ll let you know when you can have a controller of your own. Also, tweet questions and suggestions live to the on-stage team and try and make them crack up. Note that these people don’t have a sense of humor, so if you manage to break them we’ll definitely make it worth your while.

Getting Started with Linux Game Development
Ryan Gordon - Icculus

This talk is designed for Windows Steam developers that are interested in preparing their games to run on Linux. It will cover available tools, the basic porting flowchart, and common problems and their solutions.

In-Game Economies in Team Fortress and Dota
Kyle Davis, Robin Walker

A look at the multi-year history and development of the in-game economies and micro-transaction systems in Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2, including some of the surprises we encountered and the lessons we've learned that are broadly applicable.

User Generated Content and the Steam Workshop
Alden Kroll, Tom Bui, Josh Weier

What VR Could, Should, and Almost Certainly Will Be within Two Years
Mike Abrash

We’ve figured out what affordable Virtual Reality (VR) hardware will be capable of within a couple of years, and assembled a prototype which demonstrates that such VR hardware is capable of stunning experiences. This type of hardware is almost certainly going to appear in short order, and the time to starting developing for it is now. This talk will discuss what the hardware is like, and the kinds of experiences it makes possible. A few attendees will be randomly selected to try out the prototype following the talk.

Virtual Reality and Steam
Joe Ludwig

Come and hear what Valve is working on in Steam to support and promote Virtual Reality (VR) games. This includes a discussion of the Steam Overlay in VR, Steam store changes for VR, and our VR plan for Steamworks.

Best Practices for Driving Game Sales on Steam
Chet Faliszek, Alden Kroll, Cliff Harris - Positech Games, Alexander Bruce - Antichamber

Interacting with Customers
Robin Walker

United We Win: Lessons Learned from Collaboration and Co-Working around the World
Ichiro Lambe - Dejobaan Games

What secrets do the Boston, Chicago, Copenhagen, LA, London, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco, Toronto, Utrecht, Vancouver (and other!) communities have to learn from each other? This talk surveys successful indie groups and collaborative spaces around the world, outlining the top 5 things that make them successful, the top 5 things they warn against, and what resources they can provide you.

Data to Drive Decision-Making
Mike Ambinder

This presentation covers Valve’s approach to the acquisition, collection, and interpretation of data across our products and services. We will go over the infrastructure required to implement a data-driven approach to decision-making as well as common problems, useful analyses, and lessons learned as we’ve built up our capabilities around data.

Getting Started Debugging on Linux
Bruce Dawson

Debugging on Linux can be initially intimidating for a developer accustomed to Visual Studio on Windows. This talk explains how to get comfortable debugging on Linux, including which debuggers Valve has found useful, how to get symbols and source code to show up, and how to confidently investigate typical bugs. In addition to C++ debugging some other Linux tools that are commonly needed by developers will be demonstrated.

Porting games to Virtual Reality
Palmer Luckey

The team at Oculus has spent time helping a variety developers bring their existing content to virtual reality across multiple platforms. This talk will cover many of the best practices, technical hurdles that VR developers should be aware of, and some of the counter-intuitive approaches we've seen work.

Steamworks Features – A Technical Overview
Chris Boyd

This talk is designed for partners that are new to Steamworks features and those who would like to discover what new features are available. It will cover an overview of the full feature list, from Lobbies & Matchmaking to Steam Trading Cards and Micro-Transaction integration.
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A

ashecitism

Member
They updated the sessions again, now includes the Intel, AMD, Nvidia sessions

Moving Your Games to OpenGL
Jason Mitchell, Rich Geldrich, Dan Ginsberg

Stop treating OpenGL as that other 3D graphics API that you use on non-Windows platforms. Just move to OpenGL across the board! OpenGL is everywhere: from WebGL to OpenGL ES on mobile platforms to full-fledged OpenGL on SteamOS, Linux, OS X and Windows. We’ll discuss the current OpenGL API landscape and the issues involved in really shipping on OpenGL. We’ll show you how to use new debugging and performance analysis tools and teach you about our shader validation toolchain.

100% Steam: how Dovetail Games Steam-only policy has built the foundation for a new type of videogame business
Paul Jackson

Steam technology allows us to change the ‘fire-and-forget’ business model that drives the release of new games. Gamers have a diverse set of interest which means that there is no 'one size fits all' product that will appeal to them. This session will focus on using Steam to create a homogenous platform that allows gamers to customize their experience through the selection of high quality DLC.

Wild West of VR - Discovering the Rules of Oculus Rift Development
Alex Schwartz

Through the development of Aaaaaculus!, one of the first commercially available Oculus Rift games, the team at Owlchemy Labs has come to the realization that 2013/2014 is truly the Wild West of VR development. Like the days of early consumer touchscreens, the best practices and rules of VR are still to be determined. We’ll cover the many key VR revelations we’ve had during development, such the importance of respecting the player's head direction, reduction of motion sickness, the complete reversal of UI and HUD paradigms, the introduction of developer fatigue, and realizations about subtle visual cues and the sensitivity of the inner ear.

Through trial, error, boatloads of testing, and caffeine, we arrived at a playable and immersive sky-diving experience for Oculus Rift. The methods employed will need to be explored heavily as we move forward into this new era of VR game design. We hope to begin the discussion on establishing standards, bit-by-bit, so that years from now we can look back on the early days and chortle at the seemingly “obvious” VR faux-pas made before the rules were clearly defined.

Optimizing Linux games for AMD Graphics using GPU PerfStudio2
Tony Hosier, Gordon Selley

GPU PerfStudio2 is AMD's optimization and debugging tool for AMD Radeon GPUs. This presentation will demonstrate the latest version of the tool focusing on support for Steam Linux Games.

Software Architect for the Intel(r) Open Source 3D Graphics Driver, and Intel representative to Khronos
Ian Romanick

The Intel(r) Open Source 3D Graphics Driver has been included in all major desktop Linux distributions for over 7 years, as well as all Intel Architecture based Chromebooks. We will discuss the history and architecture of the driver, and how we have utilized open source practices to harness the talents of the community to deliver a commercially successful driver. We will also explain how the attendees can participate in the community to improve the performance of their games on the Intel driver.

Beyond Porting: How Modern OpenGL can Radically Reduce Driver Overhead
Mark Smith, Cass Everitt

In this session, Cass Everitt and John McDonald from NVIDIA will talk about some newer extensions to OpenGL and how they can reduce (or even eliminate) driver overhead. We'll discuss where performance goes, how to effectively profile GL, as well as specific extensions such as bindless rendering and MultiDraw commands.
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D

Durante

Member
Moving Your Games to OpenGL
Jason Mitchell, Rich Geldrich, Dan Ginsberg

Stop treating OpenGL as that other 3D graphics API that you use on non-Windows platforms. Just move to OpenGL across the board! OpenGL is everywhere: from WebGL to OpenGL ES on mobile platforms to full-fledged OpenGL on SteamOS, Linux, OS X and Windows. We’ll discuss the current OpenGL API landscape and the issues involved in really shipping on OpenGL. We’ll show you how to use new debugging and performance analysis tools and teach you about our shader validation toolchain.
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This is good. OpenGL no longer being treated as a second class citizen by developers would be amazing. And stuff like glMultiDrawArraysIndirect in combination with bindless textures in 4.4 makes modern OpenGL a potentially extremely efficient API.
 
J

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Durante said:
This is good. OpenGL no longer being treated as a second class citizen by developers would be amazing. And stuff like glMultiDrawArraysIndirect in combination with bindless textures in 4.4 makes modern OpenGL a potentially extremely efficient API.
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I think it was Carmack who likened modern OGL to Mantle in that regard.
 
A

ashecitism

Member
I think he said OGL extension through Nvidia drivers is very low-level. Basically the last session will cover that it seems.

edit: ah, here it is

04fimu3sfa.jpg


Delusibeta said:
It seems to be genuinely developers talking about development stuff. People expecting announcements will be disappointed.
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I don't think anyone here expects any announcement.
 
K

Kocolino67

Member
ashecitism said:
I realize there's two threads about the VR and hardware sessions, but here's the so far fully updated dev sessions page for those interested:

http://www.steamdevdays.com/?p=sessions
Click to expand...

ashecitism said:
They updated the sessions again, now includes the Intel, AMD, Nvidia sessions
Click to expand...


Some really exciting talks. I would love to watch some of them on youtube afterwards. This will give you definitely an in-depth insight about the shape of things to come.
 
A

ashecitism

Member
yeah, regarding videos/archives:

Kotaku: Will [readers] have any way to see or hear what's going on at this event?

Powers: The larger, formal presentations will be recorded and made available after the event. However, the smaller and more intimate breakout sessions will not be captured or replayed. One of the reasons we are encouraging everyone who can to attend is that we expect some of the most useful exchanges will be those happening developer to developer, publisher to publisher in the less formal, more spontaneous portions of the event.
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http://kotaku.com/the-big-valve-conference-you-probably-cant-attend-1466689202
 
H

HariKari

Member
Should be a pretty exciting and wide array of hardware there to play with, seeing as how the Steam machine unveil is only a few days before on the 9th of January. Curious to see more widespread reaction to the controller and the ideas Valve has.
 
A

ashecitism

Member
another round of updates:

The Evolution of Gaming Hardware
Marc Diana - Alienware

Alienware will be discussing the past, present and future of gaming hardware.

Game Development with SDL 2.0
Ryan Gordon - Icculus

This talk will offer a high-level overview of Simple Directmedia Layer 2.0. It will cover the features of the library and how it can make your game easier to build, port, improve and maintain.

Portal 2 and TF2 Alternate Reality Games Q&A
Jeep Barnett, Kyle Davis, Adam Foster

Adam and Jeep have run several promotional ARGs that span various styles and scope. They’ll be sharing best practices, anecdotes, and anything else you’d like to know about planning and operating your own ARGs.

Is Early Access Right for You?
Chet Faliszek, Mark Morris – Introversion, Bob Berry - Uber Entertainment, Jamie Cheng - Klei Entertainment, Justin Bailey - Double Fine

Early Access is a tool to develop your game with the community by giving them access to your title before it is officially released. The panelists will share what they have learned from being on Early Access; how it affected their development, their sales, and when does Early Access make sense?

Marketing Your Game
Chet Faliszek, Alden Kroll, Henrique Olifiers - Bossa Studios, Alfonso Cubias - Digital Extremes, Cliff Harris - Positech Games, Alexander Bruce - Antichamber

Making your game is not enough. To be a successful developer you need to get the word out about your game. This panel is composed of a group of indie developers who have used a wide variety of methods to successfully market their games. Topics will cover some of the strategies they have used, when you should start marketing, and lessons learned.

Steam Business Update
DJ Powers, Nathaniel Blue

Join Nathaniel Blue and DJ Powers for a presentation on the business of Steam. Nathaniel and DJ will discuss the ways Steam has grown in recent years, particularly among Indie developers, along with an update on many of the new features on Steam. The goal of this presentation is to provide developers with information and best practices to allow you to take advantage of all the Steam platform has to offer.

Community and Communication in Games-As-Services
Robin Walker

Although there has been a robust discussion in our industry about how the transition to games-as-services affects the way we build products, we feel there hasn’t been enough focus on how that shift changes the ways we all should interact with customers. This talk will cover the methods, reasoning, and philosophy behind Valve’s communication and customer interaction. Areas of development we’ll be examining will be everything from feature design to community management to marketing. Recommended for anyone working on living / iterating products (which we think is pretty close to everyone in attendance at Steam Dev Days).

The Corporate Anthropology of Valve (and Why it Matters)
Greg Coomer

Here’s what we think you’re thinking: “I’ve heard about how Valve is different from other companies. I’ve skimmed your “employee handbook”. I agree that empowering employees is great, and it all sounds lovely. But how can all that possibly work? I mean, as a real company? Doesn’t everything pretty much fall apart when people have a fundamental disagreement? How do new products like SteamOS or Dota 2 get greenlit - somebody powerful makes them happen, right? What goes on behind the scenes? How does Valve decide to fire someone? What does Valve think we should learn from them about how companies should work? Anything? Are there ways that my company should be more like Valve in the future? Would that even be a good thing?” Come to this talk for all those answers. Oh and as a special bonus: a story about Gabe Newell’s most important professional failure!

Music in Valve Games and Media
Mike Morasky

Taking a look at the many ways Valve has used the medium of music in its games and media, what we’ve learned and some ways we hope to evolve going forward. Providing a historical overview, there will be a discussion on the development environment surrounding the ideas explored, the technologies developed to implement them, some of the lessons learned and where we may be going from here.
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I wonder, is there any other game studio with a similar flat company structure like Valve?
 
A

ashecitism

Member
Valve will be releasing a VR SDK here:
Help on this front may come from game maker Valve as it pursues its Steam Box project.

Valve designer Brian Coomer says the company is "days away" from releasing a VR software development kit that will give game makers a standard way to provide an interface for VR controllers.

The kit will be released at Valve's forthcoming Steam Dev Days conference due to take place on 14-15 January in Seattle.

Valve's interest in VR has been long known, says Mr Coomer, as has its relationship with Oculus Rift.

"There's also technology in development at Valve based around head-tracking and headset manufacture and design," he says.

"We are working with other companies right now but we have not made any specific announcements."
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25661997
 
A

ashecitism

Member
What's there to leak? I doubt there will be major announcements and some panels will be probably available for later viewing. Also, I imagine some devs might tweet a thing or two :p

btw, any gaffer attending?
 
D

Das-J

Law of the West
Man... I'd love to attend. So many interesting sessions!

It would be fantastic to listen to Robin discuss Games-As-Services.
 
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