The word “convergence” won’t mean quite the same thing to the next generation as it does to us. That’s because kids today will come of age in a time when phones were used to play video games, computers could double as a private movie house, and televisions were flipped on to browse the Web. Unlike us, they’ll be living in a world where “ubiquity” is the word -- surrounded by devices.

The most interesting development of the ubiquity age isn’t that we’re surrounded by screens and able to connect to the Internet in myriad ways, from smartphones to televisions to tablets. Most fascinating is that no one device serves as the ultimate Swiss Army Knife, acting as a substitute for all the rest

Rather, we collect these devices the way golfers keep clubs. On the go, we check movie times on mobile phones. On the couch, we research that movie on a laptop PC or tablet, or we play a game of “Words With Friends” while our significant other watches the big game. Rather than seek a one-size-fits-all solution for computing, consumer behavior indicates that there’s a time and a place for every kind of screen.

John Gaudiosi

By John Gaudiosi

One of the themes at this year’s Game Developers Conference was games for change. Electronic Arts took this concept to heart with the development of SimCity, a new PC-exclusive, 3D reboot of the franchise from Maxis that’s scheduled to ship in 2013.

The Game Changers event -- presented by EA at the W Hotel -- was hosted by Lucy Bradshaw, senior vice president of Maxis, and featured Davis Guggenheim, the Oscar-winning director of the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. While Guggenheim wasn’t involved in the development of the game, he did lend his environmental star power to GDC 2012 to help showcase the social consciousness behind the new SimCity.

“Video games like SimCity allow gamers, including my own kids, to see the consequences of their actions,” says Guggenheim. “Games can educate people, without making them feel like they’re taking their medicine. SimCity gets under your skin and sticks with you.”

Heracles vs. FC Twente goal celebration screenshot courtesy of http://www.footballmanager.com.

By John Tyrrell

 Second only to the terraces surrounding the hallowed turf of the nation’s football (soccer) grounds, the pub is the next most popular setting for British football fans. So it’s fitting that the offices of Sports Interactive Limited, the creators of the world’s foremost and multi-million-selling football management simulation series, should be right on top of an establishment with big-screen match coverage and a solid draught beer selection. The William Blake Pub in central London has borne witness to many impassioned discussions about football - and probably just as many again about the game’s virtual progeny, the revered Football Manager series.

In Football Manager 2011, players manage their favorite team from some 50 global leagues, buy and sell players and interact with the press and plan tactics - all with the ultimate goal of topping the league and filling the boardroom trophy cabinet at the end of the season. The game’s 3D match engine lets players watch every bout in real time, taking the game far beyond its previous 2D top-down presentation toward something ever closer to the real thing.

By John Moore

Mobile game developers are beating a path to Corona SDK, a development platform built upon such components as OpenGL, OpenAL and the Lua cross-platform programming language. Corona Labs Inc. (formerly Ansca Mobile) lists games including Blast Monkeys, The Lost City, Cannon Cat, Dabble and The Secret of Grisly Manor as recent app store hits created with Corona. I recently talked to Don-Duong Quach, a programmer and co-founder of Cannon Cat developer Loqheart, about his use of Corona SDK.

The Corona website notes that developers can build apps ten times faster using Lua. Has that been your experience?

Don Quach: We were able to rapidly prototype lots of ideas for Cannon Cat with

Corona. Lua is a great programming language that lets you get a lot done with minimal syntax. Compared to Objective-C, the learning curve is a lot lower. The Corona simulator makes it very fast to iterate on your code, and Corona’s API gets you up and running very quickly with just a couple lines of code to add graphics, physics, sound, etcetera.

Cloud computing concept photo from Shutterstock.

By Rich Seidner

The rapid rise of cloud computing has been driven by the benefits it delivers: huge cost savings with low initial investment, ease of adoption, operational efficiency, elasticity and scalability, on-demand resources, and the use of equipment that is largely abstracted from the user and enterprise. There are fundamentally challenging questions that companies will be forced to grapple with as they decide what cloud functionality suits them best. The central issues include security, cost, scalability and integration.

By John Gaudiosi

“Technology plays a huge role for the modern soldier, first and foremost in regards to communication,” says Stuart White, senior producer on Ghost Recon: Future Soldier , due to be released this year. “Ask any soldier what would happen if they found themselves in the field with no communication to base or their squadmates. Coordination of movement allows a small squad of soldiers to become a devastating unit on the modern battlefield. This coordination happens because of technology.

Of course, when it comes to video games, communication technology doesn’t play as large of a role as the fun factor of weapons and gadgets. To combine a true military feel with a great game, the Future Soldier development team in Paris had to blend real-world tactics with near-future technology, and then factor in fun and engaging gameplay to deliver the experience Ghost Recon fans expect.

By John Moore

Real-time strategy (RTS) games have had lasting appeal on PCs, and now the genre is moving to mobile devices. Needless to say, the shift from large displays to much smaller ones creates design challenges for RTS game makers. Kukouri Mobile Entertainment, however, has soldiered on with Tiny Troopers, available in the App Store and headed for other platforms. Kim Soares, chief executive officer of Finland-based Kukouri, recently discussed the company’s approach to miniaturized RTS.

John Gaudiosi

By John Gaudiosi

Chair Entertainment -- based in Salt Lake City, Utah -- has catapulted to the top of the mobile game development business thanks to the success of its Infinity Blade franchise. In a little more than a year’s time, they’ve spawned a full sequel, a new iPad prequel (Infinity Blade: Dungeons), a digital book from bestselling author Brandon Sanderson, a hit soundtrack and a stand-up arcade game (Infinity Blade FX). The mobile franchise has also generated more than $30 million for Chair and its parent company, Epic Games. Donald Mustard, creative director and co-founder of Chair Entertainment, talks about the multiscreen future of gaming and how mobile, PC and console experiences will interconnect in this exclusive interview.

By John Gaudiosi

When it comes to video games, Valve Software was one of the early game studios to emphasize the importance of interactive narrative in shooters like Half-Life. Storytelling remains an integral part of all of Valve’s games. And Erik Wolpaw is one of the top writers at the Seattle game studio.

Wolpaw began his career as a journalist writing for game sites like GameSpot.com and founding OldManMurray.com. That work led to a job at Double Fine Productions for Psychonauts, and in 2006 he was honored with a Game Developers Choice Award for best writing.

Gabe Newell hired Wolpaw at Valve, where he’s worked on the story and dialogue for games like Portal 1, Left 4 Dead and now Portal 2. Wolpaw talks about the creation of Valve’s much-anticipated Portal 2, which ships in April, in this exclusive interview.

The perennial goal of creative professionals working on animation and special effects for motion pictures and television -- as well as computer-aided design (CAD) professionals -- is to deliver top-notch work on time and under budget.

While production times might be expected to decrease in direct proportion to available processing power, the ambitions of creative professionals are outpacing Moore’s law, which says that transistor density will double approximately every two years. Evermore complex rendering algorithms deliver increasing levels of visual subtlety and devour advances in processing power as quickly as they become available.