Publications – Page 2 – Deep Silver Volition

“Using Studio Design Groups to Build a More Cohesive Culture and Strategy”

8 March 2012

Lecture by Jason Scott at GDC 2012. Building a cohesive culture across multiple projects, teams, and disciplines is a challenge for any studio. Without a common space for regular interaction and exchange, developers can easily feel isolated and disconnected from other teams. In 2009, the Volition design team implemented…

“The Art Direction of Saints Row: The Third”

8 March 2012

Lecture by Frank Marquart at GDC 2012. It all started with an internal joke and a word that inexplicably caught on…Exaggereal. Exaggereal became the internal name and catchword of the new art style for Saints Row: The Third. In this presentation, Frank Marquart, the art director of both Saints…

“Unusual UVs: Illuminating Night Windows in Saints Row: The Third”

7 March 2012

Lecture by Will Smith at GDC 2012. This session presents a holistic case study involving HLSL shader development. Included is not only the problem and its resolution, but perhaps more importantly, an insight into the Technical Artist’s problem-solving mindset throughout its resolution. Download: Presentation (.zip – 69 MB)…

“Saints Row: The Third’s Real Time Capture Tools”

7 March 2012

Lecture by Alexander Mejia at GDC 2012. In the past, we had several outsource partners that worked with us to help create marketing videos for Saints Row 2. Every cut we got back had bad footage because It was simply too hard for outsourcers to capture good visceral gameplay.

“Lighting and Simplifying Saints Row: The Third”

7 March 2012

Lecture by Scott Kircher at GDC 2012. Describes some of the key rendering technologies behind Saints Row: The Third. Main topics will be an update on Volition’s inferred lighting technology and our new automated LOD generation system. Neither of these systems existed in Saints Row 2. In particular, this…

“80,000 Lines: Three Lessons Learned

7 March 2012

Lecture by Ariel Gross at GDC 2012. There were over 80,000 lines of dialogue in Saints Row: The Third. Managing that many lines can be a daunting task for any audio team. Ariel Gross, senior audio designer at Volition, imparts three valuable lessons learned throughout his adventures with voice…

GDC 2011 – Embrace the Database

4 March 2011

Lecture by Adam Pletcher at GDC 2011 San Francisco, as part of the Technical Artist Bootcamp Databases have been around forever, but aren’t widely understood or used by game developers. This session illustrates why every Technical Artist needs the power of databases in their standard bag of tricks. Clear applications…

“Living in a Stressful World: Real-time Stress Calculation”

28 February 2011

Lecture by Eric Arnold at GDC 2011. With the rise of destruction and environmental interaction in games, the need to simulate stress is becoming more apparent. Without the ability to tower should topple you are limited to superficial damage to the surface, or full scale canned animation of the…

“Embracing the Chaos: Freedom as the Cornerstone for Open World Mission Design”

6 April 2010

Article by James Hague for Gamasutra. The design director of Volition/THQ’s expansive open world action title Red Faction: Guerrilla talks about the transition from being scared of player freedom to truly embracing it, including several case studies of specific missions in the game and they evolved to support meaningful…

“Designing for Co-Operative Play in an Open World”

9 March 2010

Lecture by David Bowring at GDC 2010. Engaging cooperative play in an open world is a growing challenge designers have to face. More games are allowing players to join up with friends to enjoy sandbox mayhem as well as play through activities and story missions. In this lecture, a member…

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Remembering Lost Devs

Tuesday, August 16, 2022

As we approach the release of Saints Row, we here at Volition would like to honor those we’ve lost during development. Remembering Mi...

Rendering Technology in Agents of Mayhem

Monday, March 26, 2018

This talk, presented at GDC 2018, covers some of the main rendering technologies used on Volition’s ‘Agents of Mayhem’. The prese...

Spline Based Procedural Modeling in “Agents of Mayhem”

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Presented at GDC 2018 Volition has created a new and powerful spline-based modeling system. This system has enabled their developers to build a cit...

Volition sponsors the GAAM 2014 Charity Auction

Monday, August 18, 2014

Volition is proud to have sponsored the 2014 GAAM Summer Invitational Charity Auction last month which raised over $3000 for First Coast No More Ho...

Color Management 101

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Lecture by Alex Mejia Alex Mejia, Senior Video Editor and Producer at Volition, gives an introductory overview about color management geared toward...

Physics of Fun

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Lecture by Dave Bianchi at GDC 2014. One designer, 90+ vehicles, and only 6 months to go: that was the scenario David Bianchi, Designer at Volition...