Game Developers Conference 2014

After years of consulting success, I am shifting goals for the next phase of my career.

I am now actively seeking a full-time position as a Unity3D Game Developer. 

I have deep experience in game development; more than 13 years of professional work. I absolutely live and breath gaming. I love it. I have much to offer my next team — everything from game concept creation and development, through to launch — and I am very excited! Here you can learn about my skills and experience ( RivelloMultimediaConsulting.com/forecast/ ) and contact me ( RivelloMultimediaConsulting.com/contact/ ) to setup a time to talk — before, during, or after GDC.

1. GDC Goals

• Geek Out! – As a lifetime video game fantastic, I am incredibly psyched to see some great sessions about my favorite games of 2013/2014.
• Promote New Opportunities — I am seeking a Unit3D Game Developer position. There are so many bright teams creating with passion and innovation.
• Connect to the community — While American, I have worked internationally for many years.
• Plug-in to the presenter-scene — I’d like to get a feel for who is talking, how, and about what subjects. My focus is mobile. And the mobile space, while growing, it is still marginalized at GDC. As an experience public speaker (360|Flex, Adobe Max, Adobe Camp Brazil, FlashForward, FITC, LA Games Summit, Montreal Game Summit, RIA Adventure Cruise, Rich Media Institute, … ) I would like to speak at GDC 2015 and Unite 2015 next year. There are some session I will attend — more to experience the speaker himself/herself than to see the content.

2. GDC Social Schedule

I’m excited to meet new contacts and reconnect with old friends during GDC. Outside of the conference sessions, I’m excite to block out time for more fun.

Are you hiring? Want to to talk about great video games? Or just explore amazing San Francisco?

Update: The event has ended. Thanks to all the great people I met.

Suggested Meeting Places GDC is huge and it can be hectic to meet on site. Here are a few nearby locations within walking distance of the event’s Mosocone Center. Note that 20,000 people attend GDC and everyone needs to eat. Long delays! Also, some of these businesses have multiple locations, so the address is included.

• Coffee/Drink (Walking Distance)
  • The W Hotel (181 3rd St.) lounge is a happening spot with trendy cocktails and a good wine list.
  • The Thirsty Bear (661 Howard St.) is a comfy, bustling brewery that serves authentic Spanish tapas.
  • Jillian’s (175 Fourth St.) is an upscale sports bar with large-screen TVs and billiard tables.
  • The SF MOMA Cafe (1082 Folsom St.) offers tasty biscotti and outdoor seating
  • Blue Bottle Coffee (66 Mint Plaza) is a cult favorite among locals who appreciate individually brewed cups of java;
  • Peet’s (4th and Harrison) is the place to grab a quality cup to go.
  • Your recommendation?
• Food (Walking Distance)
  • Chevy’s Fresh Mex (201 3rd St)
  • California Pizza Kitchen (54 3rd St)
  • Mo’s Grills (772 Folsom St) – Burgers
  • Cafe Museo (151 3rd)
  • More?
• Food (Maybe a Short Taxi Distance)
  • Ryoku (619 Taylor St) – Sushi
  • Luques Restaurant & Bar (433 Powell St)
  • Uncle Vito’s Pizzeria (700 Bush St)
  • Naan & Curry (478 O’Farrell St.) – Indian
  • 20 SF Sandwiches To Eat Before You Die (link)
  • 10 Best Dimsum in SF (link) – Chinese
  • Others?

3. GDC Maps

Figure 1. Moscone Street Map

Figure 2. Moscone South Hall Map

Figure 3. Moscone North Hall Map

4. GDC Session Schedule

This year’s conference is full of great sessions about AAA and mobile gaming goodness. Here are some topics of special interest.

• Monday
  • iOS Games in a Day – (All Day) 10:oo – 5:30
• Tuesday
  • Unity Technologies Developer Day – (All Day) 10:oo – 5:30
• Wednesday
  • Keynote: 10 Questions to Ask About the Future of Games (Presented by Digital River Inc.)
  • Flash Forward
  • The Chinese Formula to a Sustainable Blockbuster (Presented by iDreamsky)
  • Creating Unique Interactive Experiences with the PlayStation4 (Presented by Sony Computer Entertainment America)
  • Career Development in a Box: A Toolkit for Individual and Team Improvement
  • ID@Xbox: What’s New in Live for Xbox One (Presented by Microsoft)
  • Women in Games Roundtable: Attracting and Hiring Women in Games
  • Misogyny, Racism and Homophobia: Where Do Video Games Stand?
  • ID@Xbox: Kinect Next: Xbox One Natural User Interaction (Presented by Microsoft)
• Thursday
  • Why Players Don’t Spend In-Game and How to Change This (Presented by deltaDNA)
  • The Pixelles Method: How to Increase Game Dev Diversity
  • Your Unity Game in More Hands – How to Build for Windows and Windows Phone (Presented by Microsoft)
  • Games As A Service: How Free To Play Design Can Make Better Games (Presented by GamesAsAService.Net)
  • The Great Debate: Monetizing With In-App Purchases, Pay-for-Download or Advertising (Presented by Millennial Media)
  • The Vicious Battleground: The Challenge of Game Discovery & User Acquisition Optimization in a Competitive Marketplace (Presented by Fiksu)
  • How to Depression-Proof Your Studio Culture
• Friday
  • 9 Career Things I Wish I Could Tell My Past Self
  • Curating Video Game Culture: The New Wave of Video Game Events
  • Who Cares What You Have to Say? (I Do)

Free Talk

Premium Training

This event is deep, premium training. It is a natural follow-up to the Cross Platform Mobile: Free Talk.

With the help of the Hawaii Adobe Flash User Group, on Thursday April 26th at 5pm EST (2pm PST), I will give a live online screencast to explain more about Starling. Come join us!

Live, Free Online Training

Title: Introduction To Stage3D Flash Gaming With Starling
Date: April 26, 2012 05:00 PM – 06:00 PM (GMT-5 Eastern Time US & Canada). Duration: 50-60 minutes.
RSVP: The event is closed.
Location: Free, On-line through Adobe Connect. The event is closed.
Speaker: Samuel Asher Rivello is the principal of Rivello Multimedia Consulting (RMC). RMC’s Flash and Flex services include software architecture, consulting, development, and training. Sam has over a decade of experience creating games and applications, and is currently traveling the globe to collaborate with top companies. Sam is an Adobe Certified Designer and Developer for Flash, an Adobe Flex Champion, an international public speaker, and a university instructor. His writing and coding have appeared in leading publications such as Adobe’s “EDGE”™ online magazine, and Futurenet Publishing’s “Computer Arts Projects”™ print magazine.

Follow Sam on Twitter: @srivello

Agenda:The session will start with the benefits of Flash for gaming and some new features. We’ll look at Stage3D – Flash Player 11’s GPU accelerated rendering pipeline for 2D and 3D gaming. The bulk of the session will be looking at code for a very simple, yet complete 2D game built with the Stage3D Starling Framework. All source code will be provided to attendees.

Bonus: Time-permitting we’ll checkout two hot Starling extensions – a vector graphics plugin and a particle effects plugin.

Next Steps

• Now Available!: The full 65 minute recording of the online session (See ‘Member Resources’ below).
• Now Available!: The full source-code will be available (See ‘Member Resources’ below).
• Now Available!: The presentation slides will be available (See ‘Member Resources’ below).
• Now Available!: The relevant links will be available

Member Resources

[private_Free member]Enjoy this members-only content!

Watch Recording of Adobe Connect Session

• Here is the video!

Watch Slideshow

[slideshare id=12707922&doc=rmcintrostarlingframeworkv1-120426171841-phpapp01]

Links

• The official Starling Site
• The official Particle System Editor for the Starling particle system extension
• My Intro To Starling article
• My review of the fantastic Starling DynamicTextureAtlas Generator extension

Download Source Code

• Download ‘Hello World Starling’, ‘FlyerGame’, & ‘FlyerGame (OOP Version)’ from the repository on Github.com

[/private_Free member]

AGENDA: I was be one of the instructors on a vacation destination-based training in beautiful Maceió, Brasil. I’ll be teaching a session of “What’s New in Flex 4”. I had title it “Top 10 features”, but I think I’ll show much more than 10 things. I will cover why Flex is great, why Flex 4 is the greatest, what is new in Flex 4, Flash Builder 4, and more!

AUDIENCE: Advanced Flex 3 developers who want to learn the latest, Flash developers who are thinking to start Flexing, and Java developers who are curious about using the Flash Platform for application development.

TAKE-AWAY: Attendees are inspired and recharged!!! All source code and presentation materials will be given to attendees.

TOPICS: I have two amazing topics.

• “What’s New In Flex 4” aka “Why Should I Care About Flex?”
  • Adobe Flex 4* is updated with tons of must-have new features! MXML & AS3 (Flash 10) are faster and more potent, the component architecture & skinning model is game-changing, the Flash Builder 4 IDE is easier and more powerful than ever, and more! For newbies, there has never been a better time to jump into Flex, and for veterans this training will expose just what you need to augment your tool set. This will be an adapted from my “Top 10 Flex 4 Features” presentation.
• “Creating Biological Life with Flex 4”
  • I review a biological definition of life (7 qualifications such as ‘growth’, ‘metabolism’, & ‘reproduction’) and showcase a simulation of digital-amoebas that meet the criteria. The code will be available to attendees to contribute their own micro-life-forms to the project. The high-level concept is to compare bio-life to digital-life by analyzing the Object Oriented principles and AS3 concepts which power such creatures.

MORE

• More Info About Flash Camp Brasil
• Download Full Source Code and Documentation
• Translate This Page To Portuguese / Traduzir este site para Português

Get context on MMO’s and learn the basic concepts of development using Adobe Flex.

AUDIENCE: Fans of all Adobe technologies receive this newsletter. The article is geared to Flex fans and fans of videogames.

TAKE-AWAY: Readers will learn top-line info about creating an MMO and the state of the industry.

LINKS:

• My Adobe EDGE Article: “Creating an MMO game with Adobe Flex 3”
• Download Documentation & Source Code “Creating an MMO from Scratch with Adobe Flex in 59 minutes…”

TARGET FORMAT (Duration): RMI Online Nanocamp Session (4 Hours)

AGENDA: Microarchitectures are groups of design patterns prepared to work together in concert. PureMVC represents a leading alternative to the well-known Cairngorm framework. PureMVC is a light framework for creating applications based on the class Model-View-Controller meta designpattern. It has a very narrow goal, to provide design patterns AND development patterns to help you separate your programming into three distinct areas; data, user interface, and the application logic. It is approachable and powerful with minimal tedium and repetition in development.
While the examples shown will be specific to Flex 3 for deployment to the browser, this session is equally relevant for application developers of other technologies including Adobe Flash CS3 and Adobe Flex 3 for Adobe AIR desktop deployment.

AUDIENCE: Intermediate to advanced Adobe Flash CS3 and Adobe Flex 3 developers with equivalent ActionScript 3.0 knowledge.

LAPTOP REQUIREMENT FOR ATTENDEES: [Optional / Recommended / Required] for [Note taking / Code-as-we-go / Assigned Work]

TAKE-AWAY: Attendees will gain a deeper understanding of how frameworks will facilitate design and development, and learn how PureMVC is a leading framework of choice. All source code and documentation will be available to attendees.

SECTIONS:

• Section 1: The Benefits of PureMVC (10% of Session)
• Section 2: PMVC Applied (50% of Session)
  • Deconstructing an existing sample application
  • Building an Application from Scratch
• Section 3: Designing and Developing Applications with the PureMVC framework (35% of Session)
  • Preproduction
    • User Stories
    • Functional Specifications
      • Data Flow of UX
    • Technical Specifications
      • Requirements Documentation
      • Sequence Diagramming
      • Data Model Definition
      • Class Diagramming
      • Architecture
  • Production
    • Functional UI Design
    • Functional UI Development
    • UI Style Design
    • UI Style Development
  • Getting Started
    • Using Templates
    • Laying the Plan into Action
    • Application Maintenance and Adding new Application Features
• Section 4: General QA and PureMVC vs Cairngorm: One Man’s Opinion (5% of Session)

DATE

• Presented LIVE, Online on RichMediaInstitute.com on 10am (PST) Saturday, September 20th, 2008.

AGENDA: Create and deliver interactive content for the web and related media using Flash, an integral part of a designer’s web toolkit. Explore animation, powerful drawing tools, user interface features, and the basics of ActionScripting. Prerequisite: X 481.24B Dreamweaver I and Basic Interface Design Using CS3; familiarity with Illustrator and Photoshop. Enrollment limited. Held in a Mac lab.
UCLA Extension emphasizes real-world, hands-on education, with instructors who are working professionals. At the same time, Extension courses meet UCLA’s rigorous academic standards. Each quarter, Extension reaches out to generations of students, connecting them with the skills, experience, and contacts they need to transform their futures.

AUDIENCE: UCLAE adult students of diverse backgrounds looking for enhanced career, academic, and personal growth opportunities through lifelong learning.
TAKE-AWAY: All source code and documentation will be available to attendees.

CLASS IS PART OF CERTIFICATE PROGRAM(S):

• Certificate in Design Communication Arts
• Certificate in Advanced Web and Interactive
  

SECTIONS:

• TBD

TERM PROJECTS (Choose 1):
• TBD

TEXTBOOK:

• Flash Professional Visual QuickStart Guide, Peachpit Press
  

MORE:

• View Session Video (Not Available)
• Download Documentation & Source Code (Not Available)

AGENDA: This is no flash in the pan. The tools you’ll acquire in this class are here to stay. You’ll gain a thorough understanding of the fundamentals of Adobe Flash Professional and the ActionScript programming language that will allow you to create powerful web animation and interactivity. You’ll explore script syntax and logic, learn to control targeted objects and timelines, and prepare and encode video for deployment so that advanced features of web design, layout and publishing as well as dynamic content loading will be at your fingertips.

AUDIENCE: USC Full-time undergraduate students and graduate students

TAKE-AWAY: All source code and documentation will be available to attendees.

PART OF SPECIALIZATIONS:

• Specialization in Interactive Multimedia
• Specialization in Web Development

SECTIONS:

• Flash Movie Essentials
• The Flash Tools
• Flash Symbols
• Managing Content
• Colors & Bitmaps
• Tweens
• Visual Effects
• ActionScript
• Intelligent Actions
• Multimedia: Sound & Video
• Publishing
• Optimization
• The Flash Landscape and Career Opportunities

FINAL PROJECTS (Students Choose 1):

• Website
• Video Player
• Videogame

TEXTBOOK:

• Foundation Flash Professional, Friends of ED

MORE:

• View Session Video (Not Available)
• Download Documentation & Source Code (Not Available)

I spoke at the fantastic and fun FITC Conference on Flash gaming.

AGENDA: Turn advertising objectives into successful game concepts. This session will include deep discussion on the conceptual design of an advertising game optimized for Flash Player 8, and an overview of a completed game. The full source code and documentation will be given to attendees.

AUDIENCE: This session is for developers and game designers with mid-level knowledge of ActionScript 2.0 and an interest in making games for fun and profit.

TAKE-AWAY: An understanding of how to convert a client’s advertising objectives into game concepts and carry that through to design, development, and launch. All source code and documentation will be available to attendees.

SECTIONS:

• The Business of Advergames
• Advergame Development with Flash 8
• Blitting for Gaming

MORE:

• View Session Video (Not Available Yet)
• Download Documentation & Source Code