ITI Techmedia has announced the subject of its sponsored speaker session to be hosted by Paul Sheppard of ITI Techmedia and Andrew McLennan of Metaforic at this year’s Game Developers’ Conference taking place in San Francisco next month.

It will reveal a working notation for game design that will allow gameplay to be evaluated before the game goes into production. The application of such a methodology could save the games industry millions of dollars in development costs. The Scottish-based organisation has already announced an investment of over US$10m to establish a world-class development platform to facilitate the efficient production and distribution of online PC, console and handheld games.

In conjunction with its commercial partner, Metaforic Ltd, ITI Techmedia will illustrate how gameplay can be tested in a pre-production environment using a real-life example from Microsoft’s Halo. Introducing the concept of ‘difficulty graphs’ into game design, the session will show how difficulty levels can be identified and modified to ensure that games stay in the ‘fun zone’ – the critical state between frustration and boredom.

Commenting on this new approach, David Creed, CEO of ITI Techmedia, said: “When we initiated this R&D programme we believed it was a great opportunity to create cutting-edge tools for the benefit of the global game development community. What we are showing at GDC demonstrates how research and development can address some of the key pain points in the game development process and as a result, can significantly reduce development cost and lead time.”

Andrew McLennan, CEO of Metaforic, the organisation which intends to commercialise this technology, said: “The black art of game design is being able to make games that are fun and playable. This research is beginning to shed light on practical ways to understand if a design is likely to be good in a way that working game designers can use, tune and play with.”

The session will be hosted by Paul Sheppard of ITI Techmedia, formerly Product Development Manager (New Media) with Eidos and co-founder of Eidos’ New Media Division and Andrew McLennan of Metaforic. Andrew is a 14-year veteran game designer who now devotes his time to designing casual games, including the recent Vista Showcase title, Spinword.