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Organizers of GDC Online (formerly GDC Austin) have announced the first set of lectures for this October's pre-eminent conference related to online games, including a 'Live' track featuring Sony Online, Wizard101 and IMVU speakers.

The Austin, Texas-based GDC Online conference and expo is keenly focused on development of connected games including social network titles, free-to-play web games, kid-friendly online titles, large-scale MMOs, and more, with a leading advisory board guiding the evaluation and choice of lectures.

While there are already over 25 confirmed lectures across the entire event, organizers are focusing on the 'Live' track, which discusses the vital topic of successful strategies for online games post-launch.

The rise of swiftly iterated social games and microtransactions have led to a wide array of new techniques and technologies that can help increase fun, profitability and retention, and the 'Live' track will deal with many of these.

Some of the highlights of the GDC Online 'Live' track, as announced thus far, include:

- In 'From Shadowbane to Wizard101: Strategies for Expanding Player Communities and Sustaining Enthusiasm After Launch', J. Todd Coleman & Josef Hall of KingsIsle Entertainment will reference their 10 million registered-user online game and previous experience, identifying "sustaining community that transcend genre and generation, the importance of always having new content in queue, and strategies for communicating milestones and methods for remaining engaged in public conversation."

Organizers of the Game Developers Choice Online Awards at GDC Online in Austin this October are reminding that nominations for the awards -- honoring the best MMOs and social games -- are only open until June 30th.

The first-ever awards ceremony, being held at GDC Online (formerly GDC Austin), will honor the accomplishments of the sometimes overlooked creators and operators of persistent online video games -- from large-scale MMOs through free-to-play titles to social network games. The awards span excellence in live services, technology, game updates, online game design, and more.

In addition, two special awards will honor outstanding individuals and games in the space, with the Online Game Legend Award being given to a person who's changed the world of online games forever, and one particular all-time classic online game being inducted into the GDC Online Awards' Hall Of Fame.

After award finalists are announced, the worldwide community of online game players will also have the opportunity to designate their favorite online game in the Audience Award category.

Nominations are now open, and game professionals with free Gamasutra.com user accounts can put forward their favorite online games for the awards. The GDC Online Awards are a sister event to the Game Developers Choice Awards which take place at GDC San Francisco every year.

The award categories and this year's Special Award winners will be determined by the GDC Online Advisory Board. This group includes notables like BioWare Austin's Gordon Walton, Metaplace's Raph Koster, Playfish's Sebastien De Halleux, and Nexon's Min Kim.

Winners for the Game Developers Choice Online Awards will be selected by a specially selected subset of the International Choice Awards Network (ICAN). This is the same group of over 500 handpicked leading industry creators that pick the Game Developers Choice Awards winners at GDC in San Francisco every year.

The full list of categories for the first annual Game Developers Choice Online Awards (part of the UBM Techweb Game Network, as is this website) include:

Organizers of Game Developers Conference China 2010 have announced main Online Game Business and Outsourcing tracks, plus Social and Mobile Summits and the Indie Game Summit/Fest, simultaneously calling for submissions for the December Shanghai event.

The call for submissions to present lectures, panels, and tutorials at the event is open now through Wednesday, July 21, 2010, and UBM TechWeb's third Chinese conference aims to provide a forum for local and international developers to explore business opportunities, expand their reach to a unique market, and discover the ongoing trends emerging within the region.

The two GDC China main conference tracks will focus both on global game development and outsourcing, as well as on the business and development of online games.

In addition, the conference will feature three dedicated summits, each providing a laser focus on some of the industry's top trends: the Mobile Games Summit, the Independent Games Summit, and the new Social Games Summit.

This year, GDC China will introduce a new summit to its lineup, the
Social Games Summit. Sitting at the intersection of social networking
services and the online games market, the summit will bring together
leading thinkers and business people to provide attendees a snapshot of
the social network game industry and where it is going

As this October's GDC Online -- formerly called GDC Austin -- prepares for first content announcements, the Texas-based show has added Playfish and Electric Bat execs to BioWare, Nexon, SOE, and Zenimax notables on its Advisory Board.

The GDC Online Advisory Board, which is also helping oversee the newly revealed Game Developers Choice Online Awards, is intimately involved in selecting content for the October 5th-8th show at the Austin Convention Center.

Board members individually rate each GDC Online lecture submission. They also meet in person multiple times yearly to decide final lectures and keynotes from submissions and invitations -- making sure GDC Online remains the leading worldwide game industry event to concentrate specifically on social games, free-to-play titles, MMOs, and more.

At last week's GDC Online board meeting in Austin, existing board members were joined by new recruits in the form of Sebastien de Halleux, VP of EA Interactive and Playfish co-founder, and Cindy Armstrong, Webzen and SOE veteran and Electric Bat Interactive CEO.

Following Electronic Arts' $300 million acquisition of social game company Playfish in November 2009, De Halleux -- who helped head up the Pet Society creator -- now works on "monetization, business development, and relationships" with key partners across the division's three business units, Playfish, Pogo and EA Mobile.

Armstrong, who has been a high-profile executive in the online games space for many years -- previously as CEO of Webzen America and Vice President of Business Development at Sony Online Entertainment -- is currently president and CEO of Electric Bat Interactive, who are working on online 'layered reality gaming' including WebLords and Weblings.

Continuing their Game Developers Conference 2010 free video lecture series, organizers have debuted well-received lectures from Amy Jo Kim (on meta-game design) and Bob Bates (on 'living a creative life' in games.)

The two new lectures, both highly rated by GDC attendees, are part of a free update published at the GDC Vault website, and feature video technology that allows users to simultaneously view a presenter's slides alongside video and audio of their presentation.

The first talk to be made freely available in this set is 'Meta-Game Design: Reward Systems that Drive Engagement', originally presented at the Social & Online Games Summit by Shufflebrain co-founder and veteran social game/community designer Amy Jo Kim.

Kim, whose clients have included Electronic Arts, Sony, Disney, eBay, MTV, Square Enix and Harmonix, presents an in-depth look at 'metagame design', that is, "the practice of applying game-like reward and feedback systems to non-game applications for the purpose of driving loyalty and engagement".

In the 30 minute talk, the designer and consultant examines games like FarmVille and websites like Stack Overflow to see how clever incentivizing can make -- or break -- your product, whether it sits in the game space, web space, or somewhere in between.

GDC Europe organizers have revealed major new speakers for its August 2010 event in Cologne, including a Heavy Rain postmortem from David Cage, plus detailed talks from the creators of Crysis 2, APB and Split/Second.

The latest announcements follow details of a keynote from Bigpoint and initial lectures from notables from Playdom, Sony, and Playfish. These begin to flesh out the schedule for the major three-day European game development event, taking place for the second year on August 16th-18th in Cologne, Germany.

The notable new speakers for the conference, which is created by the UBM Techweb Game Network, include the following major new talks from leading video game creators:

- In 'Heavy Rain: How Far Are You Prepared to Go to Develop an Original Project?', David Cage "will be driving the audience through a detailed postmortem on the hurdles Quantic Dream had to overcome to produce a game such as Heavy Rain", looking at making the "babylonian production while trying to keep creative control."

- InstantAction's Lou Castle is debuting a notable Business Track lecture called 'Baggies, DVDs and Bitstreams: How to Reinvent Yourself in a Dynamic Market', and the Westwood co-founder (Command & Conquer) will showcase thought-provoking opinions, "offering several specific methods of retaining and refocusing your personal outlook and, therefore, your professional career in games."

- 'The Art and Visual Styling of Crysis 2' is the title of a lecture by Crytek senior art director Frank Kitson, discussing the process of defining and shaping the visual styling the much-awaited action title. It will "offer practical techniques of defining color space and getting to the core of building a compelling visual image, as well as how to define key visual requirements and build a unique visual language that is consistent across an entire game."