Join a panel of women from Valve sharing their experiences wearing all of the hats as they contribute to games, Steam, and VR, discussing topics ranging from mechanical keyboards, wildlife tracking, imposter syndrome, confidence, humility, design, and playtesting.
MINECRAFT
Behind the Blocks: The Women Making Minecraft w/ Helen Chiang
Meet the women making Minecraft: Head of Studio Helen Chiang, Chief Storyteller Lydia Winters, Minecraft Creator GM Deanna Hearn, and Executive Producer Anita Sujarit as they discuss being a leader inside one of the most popular gaming franchises in the world, Minecrafting for good, career tips for industry pros and newcomers, and what excites them as they look to the future of gaming.
In honor of PAX Prime 2011, happening this weekend, we at GeekGirlCon are taking a gaming-specific twist on this week’s History of Geek. So, with that in mind, we’d like to present: This Week in the History of Video Games.
August 28th 2004 – Penny Arcade hosted the first Penny-Arcade Expo (PAX) at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, WA. Exhibitors, including Microsoft, Rooster Teeth, and Ubisoft, showcased videos and playable demos of their upcoming projects/releases— like Bungie’s Halo 2 and Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. Other events included live-musical performances, panels featuring Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins (the creators of Penny-Arcade), and the Omegathon. The first expo boasted 1,337 pre-registered guests: a rather appropriate statistic to begin a very successful convention.
August 26th 2002 – Nintendo released the single-player 3-D platform game Super Mario Sunshine for GameCube in North America. It was the first traditional Mario platform game released since Super Mario 64, and like its predecessor, Sunshine was a commercial success. It sold over 5.5 million units, and was later re-released as one of Nintendo’s Player’s Choice titles in 2003.
August 23rd 2001 – Players joined Dante for the first time as Devil May Cry was released for the PlayStation 2 in Japan. Capcom originally intended Devil May Cry to be the last installment of the Resident Evil series opted out to use backgrounds from previous Resident Evil games as had been precedent. A more dynamic camera system was adopted. A team of developers traveled through Europe using gothic structures as a reference. Capcom still wanted to pursue the game, however it strayed too far from the survival horror genre. Instead of becoming an addition to Resident Evil, it became an independent game. Director Hideki Kamiya rewrote the world as one full of demons and redesigned and renamed the protagonist to create the Dante we know today. Hard to believe this occurred ten years ago, yeah? #FeelinOld
