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The call for submissions to present lectures, roundtables and panel sessions for the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2014 is now open through Thursday, August 29.
Organized by the UBM Tech Game Network, GDC 2014 is the game industry's most comprehensive and longest running professionals-only event, where game developers converge for a week of learning, networking and inspiration. GDC 2014, the event's 27th edition, will take place March 17th-21st, 2014 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California.
The GDC 2014 advisory board is looking for Main Conference submissions for the Audio, Business, Marketing & Management, Design, Production, Programming and Visual Arts tracks. Session proposals can be submitted via the official GDC website. GDC 2014 Summit submissions will open in early September 2014.
The GDC Main Conference advisory board, which includes game industry notables such as Square Enix's Julien Merceron, PlayStation 4 lead architect Mark Cerny, Media Molecule's Siobhan Reddy and Canabalt creator Adam Saltsman, is also very excited to welcome two new members to assist in content planning for the conference.

On the last day of early registration, GDC Europe organizers highlight can't-miss talks including Ubisoft's Child of Light and Quantic Dream's The Dark Sorcerer next-gen demo, along with expo events such as Valve recruiting and an Oculus VR demo.
GDC Europe will take place Monday through Wednesday, August 19th-21st at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany -- just ahead of (and co-located with) the massive 275,000 person Gamescom event, with all GDC Europe passes also guaranteeing entrance to Gamescom.
Below are just some of over 80 talks scheduled for GDC Europe 2013:
- Ubisoft Montreal creative director Patrick Plourde (lead design on two Assassin's Creed titles and creative director on Far Cry 3) will reveal his upcoming project Child of Light and the internal greenlight process behind it in 'Small Projects in AAA in Studios.'
- Frogmind's Johannes Vuorinen will share marketing tricks behind the two-man team's Apple Design Award winning game, which sold over 100,000 copies in its first week, in 'Badland Postmortem: How to Launch a Premium Priced Indie Game in the App Store.'

As Thursday's early registration deadline looms, new GDC Europe talks include Hitman: Absolution's AI/animation; Scattered Entertainment's Senta Jakobsen (The Drowning) on distributed work environments; and Nintendo on using Unity, HTML, and JavaScript on the Wii U.
The event itself will take place Monday through Wednesday, August 19th-21st at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany -- just ahead of (and co-located with) the massive 275,000 person Gamescom event, with all GDC Europe passes also guaranteeing entrance to Gamescom.
In the first of Nintendo of Europe's (NOE) two vendor-presented sessions, 'Nintendo Wii U Application Development with HTML and JavaScript,' NOE's own Svyetoslav Pidgornyy and Martin Buchholz "will introduce a new way of rapidly developing Wii U applications that takes full advantage of unique Wii U features while reducing development times significantly."
The second vendor session, 'Unity, Wii U and You,' will feature NOE senior software engineer James Steele and Unity core team developer Wayne Johnson, presenting "everything from technical advantages of using Unity to develop your Wii U titles, to the process of getting your title published on the Wii U."

Ahead of this Thursday's early registration deadline, GDC Europe 2013 organizers have announced more talks for its August event, featuring a talk on the lessons behind designing IGF finalist Gunpoint, Ubisoft on improving the UX of development tools, and Automation's producer on gamifying beta-testing.
The event will take place Monday through Wednesday, August 19th-21st at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany -- just ahead of (and co-located with) the massive 275,000 person Gamescom event, with all GDC Europe passes also guaranteeing entrance to Gamescom.
Ubisoft UX director David Lightbown, who has worked on the Assassin's Creed and Far Cry franchises, will show how to improve efficiency in 'The User Experience of Game Development Tools.' Lightbown believes the industry needs to make UX of tools a priority so that their pipeline is "focused on accomplishing the goals of the content creators," and attendees will learn techniques to apply to their own existing tools to make this happen.
Elsewhere, long-time PC Gamer writer-turned-developer Tom Francis will share 'How Reviewing Games for Nine Years Helped in Designing Gunpoint' as part of the Indie Games Summit. While focusing on the results for his IGF-nominated stealth puzzler (pictured), he will also impart how to pick apart and what to learn from both enjoyable and detestable games.

GDC Europe 2013 organizers have announced new talks for the August event, including Quantic Dream's David Cage (Beyond: Two Souls) on their virtual actor capturing techniques for next-gen, Ubisoft on User Experience development methods, and Nevosoft on tapping into the burgeoning German mobile market.
These sessions will be part of the Production and Visual Arts tracks and the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit, accessible to VIP and All Access Pass holders for GDC Europe 2013. The event will take place Monday through Wednesday, August 19th-21st at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany -- just ahead of (and co-located with) the massive 275,000 person Gamescom event.
Multiple award-winning Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dream CEO David Cage will cover the visual arts techniques from his latest two projects in 'The Dark Sorcerer and Beyond: Shooting, Directing and Filming Virtual Actors.' These techniques will cover everything needed for using virtual actors (Beyond's William Dafoe pictured) in next-gen titles, and will be demonstrated with exclusive footage from The Dark Sorcerer.
Julia Lebedeva, business development director of English and Russian casual games publisher Nevosoft, will uncover the value in the emerging 'Russian Mobile Game Market: Not Easy but Worth It.' Her talk will cover the market's volume and peculiarities, tips for breaking into it, and how to avoid common pitfalls.

GDC Europe 2013 organizers have announced new talks covering the visually stunning lighting of Crysis III, AMD's next-gen powering GPU architecture, and Housemarque's tips for staying independent and flexible for almost 20 years.
These sessions will be part of the Visual Arts, Business, and Programming tracks, accessible to VIP and All Access Pass holders for GDC Europe 2013. The event will take place Monday through Wednesday, August 19th-21st at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany -- just ahead of (and co-located with) the massive 275,000 person Gamescom event.
In 'Shining the Light on Crysis 3,' Crytek senior lighting artist Donzallaz Pierre-Yves will demonstrate to attendees how Crytek achieved its highly acclaimed visuals for the FPS, explaining the lighting pipeline from 2D concept artworks and prototypes to final, fully-lit-in-real-time 3D scenes.
For a detailed discussion of programming game visuals of the future, AMD developer relations manager Layla Mah's Powering the Next Generation of Graphics: The AMD GCN [Graphics Core Next] Architecture' is a can't-miss session. Mah plans to go into very low-level detail about the GCN architecture's compute and functional units' capabilities; considering AMD's technology will power the PS4 and Xbox One, this talk is definitely a must-see for graphics engineers wanting to know how to take advantage of next-generation consoles.
Finally, CEO Ilari Kuittinen of notable Finnish developer Housemarque (Outland, Super Stardust) will share how the company has maintained independence and survived for nearly 20 years in 'Adaptation and Antifragility: Life of an Independent Studio.' The lecture will focus on building 'antifragility' into the company's DNA, so that it "withstands any high-impact crisis."

GDC Europe 2013 organizers have announced the latest additions for August's show in Cologne, Germany, with Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey speaking on the challenges and opportunities virtual reality can pose for game devs, Riot Games devs on attracting and encouraging offline player evangelists, and Top Eleven studio Nordeus's tips on tutorials and player retention.
These talks are part of the business, programming, and design tracks in GDC Europe 2013, which will take place Monday through Wednesday, August 19th-21st at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany -- just ahead of (and co-located with) the massive 275,000 person Gamescom event.
In the Oculus VR session 'Virtual Reality Gaming and Game Development', founder Palmer Luckey and VP of product Nate Mitchell will speak about the challenges virtual reality presents for game devs, why VR will change the way games are played, and what VR means for the industry.
In addition, the company's product - the Oculus Rift VR headset - is currently planned to be playable in a booth on the GDC Europe show floor on Monday and Tuesday, August 19th and 20th, giving attendees the chance to check out the latest demonstrations on the unique hardware.