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Earlier today, the Game Developer’s Conference announced details on next year’s event. The 2012 Game Developer’s Conference will be held on March 5th-9th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco California.

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THQ announced today at the Game Developer’s Conference that Saints Row: The Third is currently in development. THQ Executive Vice President Danny Bilson had this to say…

“Saints Row: The Third puts you on top of the world, right at the beginning of the game, with all the perks that go along with being the head of an elite criminal organization. There’s no delivering pizza, no shuttling family members about in a long series of taxi missions. Instead, you take all the power of the Third Street Saints and you take the world by storm.”

Below is also a preview from the the press release…

“Years after taking Stilwater for their own, the Third Street Saints have evolved from street gang to household brand name, with Saints sneakers, Saints energy drinks and Johnny Gat bobble head dolls all available at a store near you. The Saints are kings of Stilwater, but their celebrity status has not gone unnoticed. The Syndicate, a legendary criminal fraternity with pawns in play all over the globe, has turned its eye on the Saints and demands tribute. Refusing to kneel to the Syndicate, you take the fight to a new city, playing out the most outlandish gameplay scenarios ever seen. Strap it on.”

Not really much is known about the game right now. We do know that the game is being developed by Volition Inc. and is slated for a Holiday 2011 release date.

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David Jaffe, creator of the Twisted Metal and God of War series’ recently sat down with a panel at the Game Developer’s Conference and talked a little bit about console designs. He came out and bashed the way consoles are designed.

“Portable game time is going way up, but why? Those of us in the console space are actually making choices that push our customers away. The time it takes to power on your console and be in the game playing takes too damn long. The gap of time from pressing on to actually beginning to play is getting longer and it’s annoying customers. Cut scenes, installs, updates, load times, system boot up times – a lot of the stuff can be designed around. For me there are times I’ve wanted to play a new console game but I just don’t because I don’t want to deal with all the ramp up time. Maybe that makes me lazy but look at all the other stuff that’s competing right now for my leisure time.”

When asked what developers can do about it, he replied…

“What about if you have a disc in the system and there’s a save file on the hard-drive for that disc, the instant I power up it shows me a prompt and says, ‘Do I want to go to my latest save?’ If I say ‘yes’ it bypasses everything – hardware logo, dashboard, XMB, game logos – all of it, and I’m in the game much faster. Another thing is why can’t, if it’s technically possible, I have a sleep mode on my consoles like I do on my Mac and I do on my game devices? All I have to do is hit a switch and within seconds I’m back in the game.”

He even bashed not only console developers, but also the game developers.

“Hardware manufacturers, I feel, should only allow one to four updates to the software per game every year. And none of them should come in the first one or two months of the game shipping. When I first started in the business the games we shipped was our last chance off the bat. If game developers could make it work then, we can at least make sure games don’t have to be updated the same f**king week they hit shelves, thus causing more wait times for the consumer.”

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Today at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, Tecmo released a trailer of Ninja Gaiden 3. While the trailer didn’t show any gameplay footage, it did show Ryu stabbing somebody through a first-person view. At the end of this 37 second trailer, Ryu slowly starts to remove his mask, then it instantly cuts out to 3 bloody stripes that say Unmask E3 2011.

This means that there will be another trailer and possibly some actual game footage at this year’s E3 in Los Angeles.

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Earlier today, the 2011 Independent Games Festival narrowed down over 400 entries in their Indie game contest to a mere 6 categories.  Each category has 5 finalist, some games are even nominated for multiple awards. So what exactly do they have to do? Well aside from being granted free passes to this year’s Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, finalists must present “playable versions of their game to all GDC attendees at the IGF Pavilion on the GDC Expo Floor from Wednesday, March 2nd through Friday, March 4th.” That means, after winning the $20,000 grand prize, that team has to stay on the show floor and contain their epic share of greatness for two days. Below are the categories and the nominees.

Seumas McNally Grand Prize:

Amnesia: The Dark Descent (Frictional Games)
SpyParty (Chris Hecker)
Desktop Dungeons (QCF Design)
Minecraft (Mojang)
Nidhogg (Messhof)

Excellence In Visual Art:

Bastion (Supergiant Games)
The Dream Machine (Cockroach)
Cave Story (2010 Edition) (Nicalis)
Bit.Trip Runner (Gaijin Games)
Hohokum (Honeyslug & Richard Hogg)

Excellence In Audio:

Bastion (Supergiant Games)
Retro City Rampage (Vblank Entertainment)
Amnesia: The Dark Descent (Frictional Games)
Bit.Trip Beat (Gaijin Games)
Cobalt (Oxeye Game Studio)

Excellence In Design:

Desktop Dungeons (QCF Design)
Super Crate Box (Vlambeer)
Nidhogg (Messhof)
Faraway (Steph Thirion)
Minecraft (Mojang)

Best Mobile Game:

Shot Shot Shoot (Erik Svedang)
Colorbind (Nonverbal)
Helsing’s Fire (Ratloop)
Solipskier (Mikengreg)
Halcyon (Stfj)

Technical Excellence:

Minecraft (Mojang)
Confetti Carnival (SpikySnail Games)
Amnesia: The Dark Descent (Frictional Games)
Neverdaunt:8Bit (Robot Loves Kitty)
Miegakure (Marc Ten Bosch)

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