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[Continuing his 'Tales from the Vault' series, official GDC historian Jason Scott debuts landmark videos featuring computer pioneer Danny Hillis, the 2004 Game Design Challenge, AI legend Marvin Minsky, and Peter Molyneux, among many others.]

This has been a long time coming. The past few months of this GDC Vault digitization process have been incredibly slow, especially in regard to this column and giving you new things to check out.

It turns out that rescuing the video and audio from these old tapes has been quite intense, and prone to all sorts of unexpected thrill and chills as I both unearthed rarities and found frustrating dead ends, meaning days of lost work. No history has been lost, of course -- just time, lots of time.

Now, the whole chain of digitization, clean up, compression and prep for the web can be done on a single machine, using a variety of tools (most open-source), which I can push through pretty quickly. It still takes two to three times the length of a tape to prepare it for the web, but it's dependable, and that's what matters.

With a room full of tapes ready to go, I know how the next few months are going to be spent with this material. It's obvious there are gems aplenty in this pile, and filling the GDC archives is going to be a very rewarding project.

So let's drop some GDC history, right?

Not every keynote had to be all about the latest console or the best graphics, and GDC has peppered its lineups over the years with some intellectual heavy-hitters from the academic side, to give everyone another perspective on this things they make.

In 2000, the keynote was Dr. Daniel Hillis (called Danny Hillis in basically every documentation of the event I could find), who was a co-designer of parallel computing, co-founder of Thinking Machines, and a veteran of Walt Disney Imagineering.

His talk, presented here in full, is a one-hour rumination on the importance, nay, the critical aspect of play in scientific and intellectual discovery [GDC Vault free video]. Pulling from his years of interesting with amazing people, Hillis provides us with his thesis on how the games industry can play in the advancement of the human race.

The GDC Vault service is proud to announce that videos and slides from last month's GDC Europe are now available online, including free videos from Ubisoft's Jason VandenBerghe on established IP, wooga CEO Jens Begemann on the implications and future of social games, and indie dev Thomas Grip on the design decisions that fueled the success of Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

Along with these free videos, slides for all of GDC Europe's sessions are now available for free, providing a glimpse into the range of notable topics discussed at the recent show.

The full catalog of video for GDC Europe is also now available to all GDC Vault members, now including All-Access Pass holders for last month's show in Cologne, Germany.

The following lectures are the first highlights to be made available for free from GDC Europe 2011:

- The lively Design track session, "The Magic Gun: Surviving IP Development Through Embracing Your Constraints" features Jason VandenBerghe, the narrative director on Ubisoft's FarCry 3, discussing the ins-and-outs of working with established IP.

No matter how familiar a developer might be with a given license, VandenBerghe encourages developers to embrace these constraints and "revel in what makes your IP different." [GDC Vault free video.]

- Elsewhere in the conference, wooga founder and CEO Jens Begemann gave a keynote titled, "Playing is a Core Human Desire - How Social Games Change the Entertainment Industry," offering insight into the influence of social games on the industry at large.

During this session, social game leader Begemann (Diamond Dash, Magic Land) outlines how social games can coexist with core-focused titles, detailing how and why these games fill a new niche in the ever-evolving games market. [GDC Vault free video]

- The final session to be made available for free is a talk from Amnesia: The Dark Descent developer Thomas Grip, dubbed, "Evoking Emotions and Achieving Success by Breaking All the Rules." Here, Frictional Games' Grip examines the success of his hit indie horror title, noting how the omission of some common horror game tropes made the game far more interesting -- and far more terrifying. [GDC Vault free video]

With roughly 36 hours left until early registration
for October's GDC Online show in Austin, Texas, ends at Midnight EST on
September 1, event organizers have chosen to reveal a handful of new
Main Conference talks, and detail the numerous other speakers,
tutorials, and events present at the show.

Adding to the show's Production track, Gazillion Entertainment's VP of publishing, Dan Fiden, will host "5 Things Core Designers Should Learn from Social Games,"
a lecture that will detail the growing influence of social online
titles on the industry at large. In the Business & Marketing track,
Daniel Block of EVE Online developer CCP will discuss the perils of interrupting marketing for an online game in "What Happens When You Stop Marketing Your MMO?"

The final new session this week is a Design track lecture from industry veteran (Marvel Super Hero Squad) Nikolaus Davidson, who will explore the psychology of spending money in games in "Why We Buy: A Game Designer's Guide To Transactions."

These lectures join a host of other notable talks within the show's main conference, which includes tracks spanning Business & Marketing, Customer Experience, Design, Production, and Programming, as well as a sponsored track on Monetization.

These recently-announced sessions within the Main Conference include Design-focused talks from Riot Games, Loot Drop, and Playdom, CCP and Zynga on designing and managing online games, a look at EA2D/BioWare San Francisco's Dragon Age Legends and Rovio's mega-hit Angry Birds, and much more.

In addition to these Main Conference sessions, PopCap co-founder John Vechey will host a keynote
at the event titled, "Playing Well With Others - How PopCap Creates
Compelling Social Game Experiences," a talk that will provide an inside
look at how mobile and social games have influenced the design
philosophy of the extremely successful casual game studio.

To help inspire submissions for the GDC 2012 call for papers, the event's advisory board members for the Game Design track spoke out on the biggest challenges facing game designers, and outlined what they hope to see at the upcoming March 2012 San Francisco-based event.

Canabalt creator and independent designer Adam Saltsman (pictured) and Civilization IV and Dragon Age Legends designer Soren Johnson came together to discuss the often-overlooked areas of game design, notable innovations, rising trends, and more as part of their drive to encourage submission ideas for the GDC 2012 Main Conference.

As GDC advisory board members, these industry veterans - alongside colleagues such as LucasArts' Clint Hocking and Cerny Games' Mark Cerny - oversee the show's Game Design track and ensure that each of its sessions remain relevant and hold up the high bar of quality that GDC attendees have come to expect.

The call for papers for GDC 2012 will close on September 6, with a list of Game Design-specific topics available on the official website. In the following interview, the advisory board members discuss key issues they'd like to see addressed at next March's show.

What are some key games from the past year or so that have impressed you with their new approaches to design - and why?

Adam Saltsman: Amnesia: Dark Descent and Bit Pilot are very interesting games. These are fairly hardcore horror and arcade games respectively, but neither game allows you to attack. Instead, your goal is to hide, avoid, and survive. For me this is a really welcome and interesting break from aiming and shooting games, but without sacrificing any of the awesomeness one might expect from a survival horror game or an arena shooter.

Soren Johnson: I was very impressed by Magicka's concept -- letting players cast spells by simply combing simple elements such as fire, water, electricity, arcane energy, and so on. This system encourages a sense of discovery absent from so many games; I loved trying out certain combinations just to see what would happen. That the game often supported my assumptions and guesses made the world feel alive. Allowing play based on intuition from existing knowledge instead of memorization of invented lore is always a big advantage.

The other development that stands out to me is how the best small-scale, indie games, like Frozen Synapse, Bastion, Atom Zombie Smasher, HOARD, etcetera, are creatively outpacing games from the big publishers simply because they can take risks and maintain their own vision. Many game genres and formats are simply not feasible for the big guys to make anymore, and this has surprisingly been great for the industry, because there are now so many gaps for the indies to fill.

How do you think the rise of social games will influence design in other areas of the game biz?

Adam Saltsman: One positive outcome that I am looking forward to is the expansion of our audience. PopCap helped do this, and a few years later the Wii helped do it again. Social games are having that effect right now; I think it's really great to have people that haven't played video games in a decade or more playing games again. Not everyone that plays FarmVille is going to rush out and get a PS3 next week, but there is a basic literacy thing happening that is going to have a huge long-term effect.

The organizers of GDC Online are proud to reveal the finalists for the show's second annual Game Developers Choice Online Awards.

The awards ceremony, to be held on the evening of October 12 during
the Austin-based GDC Online, will honor the achievements of the creators
and operators of online video games that launched within the last 12
months in North America, covering large-scale MMOs, free-to-play titles,
growing social network games and more.

The awards recognize achievement in online games across 12
categories, including excellence in visual arts, online game design,
live games, technology, audio and community.

This year, Three Rings Design's co-op RPG Spiral Knights leads the finalists with a total of four nominations, and is followed by Trion Worlds' big-budget MMO Rift and social network titles FrontierVille (Zynga) and Ravenwood Fair (Lolapps), each of which earned three nominations.

These finalists were selected from a larger pool of publicly-submitted nominees
by the International Choice Award Network's (ICAN) online division, a
group comprised of 400 specially picked, leading game industry creators
from the foremost online game companies -- these individuals will also
be responsible for choosing the winners in each of the regular award
categories.

The following are the finalists for the 2011 Game Developers Choice Online Awards:

Best Online Visual Arts
DC Universe Online (Sony Online Entertainment)
Rift (Trion Worlds)
Spiral Knights (Three Rings Design/Sega)
Dragons Of Atlantis (Kabam)
Vindictus (devCAT/Nexon)

Best Social Network Game
CityVille (Zynga)
Gardens Of Time (Playdom)
Dragons Of Atlantis (Kabam)
FrontierVille (Zynga)
Ravenwood Fair (Lolapps)

Best Online Game Design
Ravenwood Fair (Lolapps)
Pocket Frogs (NimbleBit)
Zuma Blitz (Popcap)
Spiral Knights (Three Rings Design/Sega)
FrontierVille (Zynga)

The 2011 GDC Europe concluded on Wednesday, August 17 with a successful showing and a final attendee count of more than 2,100 game professionals representing 57 countries.

A marquee keynote lineup of notable industry veterans, from wooga founder and CEO Jens Begemann, to co-creator of the legendary Ultima series and founder of social media games developer Portalarium Richard Garriott, to Epic Games president Dr. Michael Capps, among others, joined an additional 170 European and international speakers, a total of 46 exhibitors and 35 sponsors and more than 300 media representatives covering game development on PC, social networking sites, consoles and mobile platforms.

Event organizers also announced that GDC Europe will return to Cologne, Germany on August 13-15, 2012.

In its third year, GDC Europe continued the tradition of bringing high-quality content to the European game development community. The introduction of the Social Games, Independent Games, Smartphone and Tablet Games, and Community Management Summits demonstrated the increasing importance of these developing areas that are pertinent to European game development. The Social Games Summit also proved to be a forum that showcased the spirit alive across both European and Western independent developers including speakers Kellee Santiago from thatgamecompany, Frictional Games' Thomas Grip, and Spaces of Play's Marek Plichta.

Highlights of day one at GDC Europe included wooga CEO Jens Begemann giving a keynote discussing today's social games and how they are not designed to turn all core gamers into FarmVille farmers. In his talk, Begemann surprised attendees with the live, real-time launch of Magic Land, a title that contains an exciting mix of social gaming elements with aspects from the dungeon-crawling genre. The first day of GDC Europe also featured a keynote talk by Enric Alvarez, game director and co-author of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and founder of its development studio Mercury Steam, who discussed how the small Spanish studio met the challenge in taking on a beloved franchise from a Japanese developer.

The GDC Vault service has released several new free videos from the Game Developers Conference 2011, this time featuring a collection of strategy game talks covering StarCraft II's e-sport aspirations, a behind-the-scenes look at League of Legends, and a panel examining the future of the strategy genre.

These talks join recently-debuted free videos including GDC 2011's social game developers rant, sessions from successful indie startups and industry veteran Don Daglow, in addition to GDC 2011's classic postmortem series and a slew of other sessions from throughout the history of the Game Developers Conference.

The following video lectures are the newest highlights to be made available for free from GDC 2011:

- When Blizzard set out to create StarCraft II, the studio had to reinvent the rules of one of the most popular competitive games of all time. In "The Game Design of StarCraft II: Designing an E-Sport," lead designer Dustin Browder outlines the obstacles Blizzard had to overcome to make the game suitable for spectating and high-level competitive play.

- Riot Games' Tom Cadwell and Steve Snow discuss the development process behind the studio's hit MOBA title in "League of Legends Postmortem -- Beta, Launch and Beyond." Here, Cadwell and Snow "discuss the three major areas that were particularly challenging: Recruiting a team without a reputation or a product, interacting with an existing audience with large expectations, and organizing teams to be successful amidst the distractions of a live game."

- In "Strategy Games: The Next Move,"
a panel of strategy game experts discuss rising trends, overlooked
innovations, and the overall trajectory of the strategy game genre.
Speakers including writer Tom Chick, Civilization veteran Soren Johnson, Civilization 5
lead designer Jon Shafer, Robot Entertainment's Ian Fischer, and
Blizzard's Dustin Browder discuss the implications of free-to-play,
online persistence, and more to offer insight on where strategy games
are headed.