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The Independent Games Festival (IGF), the prestigious GDC-held video game industry event highlighting and awarding the talents of independent game developers, has announced the finalists for the 2011 Nuovo Award, which honors "abstract, short-form, and unconventional game development."

Some of this year's finalists include unconventional party game Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally OK Now (B.U.T.T.O.N.), first-person dinner simulation title Dinner Date, Messhof's chunky 2-player fencing title Nidhogg, and zen-like tree simulation title Bohm.

The Nuovo Award, the top video game art prize, is announcing an increase to $5,000 for this year's award winner, thanks to the quality of this year's entries. The winner of the award will be revealed at the Independent Games Festival Awards on March 2, 2011 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, during Game Developers Conference 2011. In addition, all Nuovo finalists will be playable in a special section of the IGF Pavilion on the GDC show floor from March 2nd to 4th.

Now in its third year, the Nuovo Award allows more esoteric art games from among the almost 400 IGF entries to compete on their own terms alongside longer-form indie titles, and has been newly expanded this year to include eight finalists.

The full list of this year's Nuovo Award finalists, with links to screenshots and videos of the titles on their official IGF.com entry pages, is as follows:

- Bohm, created by Monobanda - ("Gives you control over the life of a tree. It's a game based on slow gameplay and the act of creation.")

- A House in California, created by Cardboard Computer - ("A surreal, narrative game about four characters who bring a house to life... with environments and activities drawn from a combination of memory, research, poetry, and fantasy.")

- Nidhogg, created by Messhof - ("A 2 player fencing game with football & platforming elements".)

- Dinner Date, created by Stout Games - ("You play as the subconsciousness of Julian Luxemburg, waiting for his date to arrive. You listen in on his thoughts while tapping the table, looking at the clock and eventually reluctantly starting to eat...")

- Loop Raccord, created by Nicolai Troshinsky - ("Manipulate a series of video clips in order to create... continuous movement.")

- The Cat and the Coup, created by Peter Brinson and Kurosh ValaNejad - ("A documentary game in which you play the cat of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran.")

- Brutally Unfair Tactics Totally OK Now (B.U.T.T.O.N.), created by Copenhagen Game Collective - ("A one-button party game for 2-8 players. ... rather than let the computer carry out all the rules, the players are themselves responsible for enforcing (or not enforcing) the rules.")

- Hazard: The Journey Of Life, created by Demruth - ("A philosophical first person single player environmental puzzle game. The game presents no goals directly to the player, but they create goals for themselves based on what they know of the world.")

Now that 2010's Game Developers Conference China has concluded, organizers are revealing that the three-day event saw a record 3,300 attendees from China, Asia, and worldwide -- and will make its return to Shanghai in 2011.

GDC China 2010 hosted nearly 40 international speakers and over 50 exhibitors and sponsors for the December 5th-7th event, and also was the stage for the second annual Independent Games Festival China.

GDC 2011 organizers have revealed an initial set of Artificial Intelligence Summit talks for the February/March 2011 event, including talks from Rockstar, Double Fine, Electronic Arts and Blizzard notables.

The always-popular summit, taking place on February 28th and March 1st during Game Developers Conference 2011 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, will feature panels and lectures from more than two dozen of the top game AI programmers in the industry.

Organized as a collective effort by the AI Game Programmers Guild, this event promises to "give you an inside look at key architectures and issues within successful commercial games, as well as let you eavesdrop on conversations, debates, and rants on how game AI can move forward."

Advisors for the much-anticipated Summit include Intrinsic Algorithm's Dave Mark, author of the book "Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI", and Nintendo of America's Steve Rabin.

With a final set of lectures to be announced soon, a number of major talks have been revealed on the Summit homepage and the AI Summit section of GDC's Schedule Builder. Highlights include the following:

- 'AI Unplugged: How Experienced Devs Think Through AI' sees sequential microlectures from notables including Blizzard's Brian Schwab, Double Fine's Chris Jurney, Rockstar Leeds' Brett Laming and more, building on the premise that "designing good AI depends upon analyzing the specific behavior or problem that needs to be addressed and decomposing it in such a way that it can be dealt with in the first place."

Organizers have announced that the 11th annual Game Developers Choice Awards, the most prestigious honors in the world of video game development, are now open for nominations through Jan. 4, 2011.

In its eleventh year of honoring the best games and developers, the Game Developers Choice Awards -- the leading awards voted on by developers, and created for developers -- has adopted a new voting methodology.

Nominations - as always - are selected by any game professional worldwide, simply by submitting ballots via the Game Developers Choice Awards website. (Submitters are required to log in with a Gamasutra.com username and password so professional developer status can subsequently be verified.)

Category finalists and Special Award winners are selected by the 20 person-strong Game Developers Choice Awards Advisory Committee, including notable industry veterans from Harmonix, Valve, PopCap, Ubisoft, BioWare, and more.

In addition, winners are now being selected by the Game Developers Choice Awards-specific International Choice Awards Network (ICAN), which is a new invitation-only group comprised of 500 leading game creators from all parts of the video game industry.

Choice Awards organizers believe that, in tandem with their goal of having the most focused, impartial awards in the game industry, this additional voting transparency will further boost the awards' reputation.

The 2010 award categories are open for nominations to any member of the video game community until January 4th, combining both Regular and Special Award nominations, are:

Organizers of the second annual Independent Games Festival China have announced winners for the Asian and Australasian indie games showcase in Shanghai, with South Korean developer Turtle Cream's 2D tile-flipping platformer Sugar Cube getting the Best Game prize, and a host of other notable winners.

Following the announcement of the finalists last month, the teams attended a special awards show at the Shanghai International Convention Center during GDC China last night, where the winners of each category were revealed.

Supported by Platinum Sponsor Crystal CG and Gold Sponsor NetEase, the winners of the 2010 Independent Games Festival China announced at the award ceremony include unique modular 'tower defense'-style title The White Laboratory, which won Best Student Game, and The Voxel Agents' addictive iPhone/iPad puzzle hit Train Conductor 2: USA, which took Best Mobile Game.

The winners of the 2010 IGF China awards are:

Best Game: Sugar Cube (Turtle Cream, South Korea) [RMB 20,000, $3,000]
Best Mobile Game: Train Conductor 2 (The Voxel Agents, Australia) [RMB 10,000, $1,500]
Excellence In Audio: Skillz: The DJ Game (Playpen Studios, Hong Kong) [RMB 5,000, $750]
Excellence In Visual Arts: ButaVX: Justice Fighter (Nekomura Games, Singapore) [RMB 5,000, $750]

Best Student Game: The White Laboratory (Huazhong University of Science & Technology, China) [RMB 10,000, $1,500]
Excellent Student Award: Dead Steel (Media Design School, Auckland, New Zealand) [RMB 3,000, $450]
Excellent Student Award: Ponlai (National Yunlin University of Science and Technology, Taiwan) [RMB 3,000, $450]

Game Developers Conference China organizers have now debuted a completed schedule for the December 5th-7th Shanghai event at the Shanghai International Convention Center, with late additions including Ngmoco's Caryl Shaw and Zynga Beijing's Andy Tiang.

Now in its third edition, Game Developers Conference China -- a sister event to the major GDC shows taking place in San Francisco, CA; Austin, TX; and Cologne, Germany -- offers valuable and timely insight into the art and business of making games for an audience of both local and international developers

Leading Chinese and Western developers have once again been recruited, with late additions to the schedule including Ngmoco's Caryl Shaw, a veteran of notable studio Maxis (SimCity, The Sims, Spore). She will discuss 'The Future of Game Production', and another new confirmation sees Zynga Beijing head Andy Tiang presenting a lecture called 'Building Sustainable Social Game Experiences'.

Also now locked down are Sunday's tutorials, with Autodesk presenting two half-day seminars on 3DS Max, Maya, and Mudbox, and a rare Asian appearance from Visceral Games' Matthias Worch (Dead Space 2), presenting 'Level Design in a Day: Best Practices from the Best in the Business'.

A Serious Games Summit is also now confirmed, with speakers including Realtime Associates' David Warhol and NewGame Solutions' Shigeru Bart Chigusa discussing games used for learning, corporate, education, and other uses.

Another highlight of this Summit is a featured lecture from Crystal Digital Technology, analyzing the company's game featured in the recent Shanghai World Expo.

All talks at GDC China will be simultaneously translated into both English and Chinese for attendees, and the two confirmed keynotes for GDC China 2010 are from Square Enix's Hiromichi Tanaka -- on building Final Fantasy XI and XIV, as the latter is poised to become the first-ever official Final Fantasy title to debut in China.

The other keynote features Blizzard, Flagship and Cryptic alumnus Bill Roper on "how the game industry in the Western world has learned from Asia's successes in both development and business models", promising plenty of insight into the history and future of online games.

With the entire schedule locked down, organizers are drawing highlights from the tracks as follows:

Organizers of the 2011 Game Developers Conference have debuted initial lectures from the Art and Audio Tracks for the Main Conference, spanning Gears Of War 3, Pixar, Limbo, Final Fantasy and beyond.

As the overall session list for the event further expands, organizers are specially highlighting the initial Main Conference session announcements around these two areas.

The Art and Audio Tracks take place from Wednesday March 2nd to Friday March 4th, 2011 during the pre-eminent, San Francisco-based event, alongside other discipline-specific Tracks dedicated to programming, design, business and management, and production.

All of the above Track sessions are open to those with a Main Conference or All-Access Pass, with a special Audio Pass also available, and some of the top sessions debuting in the Art and Audio Tracks are as follows:

Art Track

One of the notable Art Track reveals at this early stage is 'Fast and Efficient Facial Rigging in Gears Of War 3' by Epic Games' Jeremy Ernst, showcasing the methodology used for the much-awaited action title.

The lecture is designed to "show developers of any level how to create and think in a way that leads to faster and more efficient ways of building not only face rigs, but any kind of rig or tool."