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[In the sixth of a series picking out the most notable Game Developers Conference 2009 lectures, sister site Gamasutra examines the Business & Management Track, featuring talks about starting up an independent studio, learning from Flagship's demise, Age Of Booty creator Certain Affinity's rise, negotiating rights for future games, and much more.]
Game Developers Conference 2009 (organized by Gamasutra parent company Think Services) is set to take place in San Francisco's Moscone Center from March 23 to 27, 2009.
With nearly 390 sessions now confirmed for GDC 2009, we'll be taking a track by track look at the conference's line-up over the next few weeks.
Sixth on the list is GDC's Business & Management Track, which will "looks at the game development process from the standpoint of running the business and offers proven strategies for the developer who needs to understand complex business issues."
Notable highlights thus far announced for this track are as follows:

Organizers have revealed that Hideo Kojima, Corporate Officer, Executive Producer and Director of Kojima Productions, will deliver a keynote address at next months 2009 Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco.
Known for giving rise to the stealth action game genre with his creation of the acclaimed Metal Gear series more than two decades ago, Kojima’s keynote will focus on conquering various development obstacles with creative game design, using the driving game design philosophies behind the Metal Gear series as reference.
The address, “Solid Game Design: Making the ‘Impossible’ Possible,” marks Kojima’s debut appearance at the GDC. The Game Developers Conference takes place March 23-27 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.
Kojima joins a host of notable speakers at this year's GDC, including Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, Lionhead's Peter Molyneux, LittleBigPlanet creators Mark Healey and Alex Evans, Epic's Rod Fergusson, and a host of others.

The organizers of the 2009 Independent Games Summit have revealed the completed line-up for the March 23-24 GDC 2009 event, with Electronic Arts exec and art-game creator Rod Humble, Audiosurf's Dylan Fitterer and Flower's Kellee Santiago among the newly confirmed speakers.
The third annual Independent Games Summit, which takes place on the Monday and Tuesday of this year's GDC at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, features lectures, postmortems and roundtables from some of the most notable independent game creators, including many former and current Independent Games Festival finalists and winners.
The 2009 IGS seeks to highlight the brightest and the best of indie development, with discussions ranging from game design philosophy, distribution, business, marketing, and much more. A synopsis of the full summit line-up is as follows:

[In her latest Bosslady Blog update, Game Developers Conference event director Meggan Scavio discusses the newly announced Nintendo keynote, as well as the GDC Vault and new Dead Space, LittleBigPlanet and Flagship Studios lectures.]
Hopefully by now, the news of GDC 2009's first announced keynote has made the rounds as far as... you. But if you happen to live on the planet formerly known as Pluto, let me bring you up to date.
Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo Co., Ltd, will deliver the opening keynote at this year’s GDC, titled “Discovering New Development Opportunities.” Mr. Iwata has spoken at GDC twice already and always manages to surprise and inspire. Can’t wait to see what he’s got to say this year!
For anyone who happens not to be a morning person, please take note: Iwata’s opening keynote on Wednesday, March 25th will begin at 9:00 am. GDC keynotes have historically started at 10:30 am, but we thought it would be nice to open the main conference with everybody gathered in one room. Expect bonding - hand holding not required.
Another neat new thing we’re doing this year is the GDC Vault. This new site will host video/slide/audio sync-ed recordings of all GDC Summits, Lectures and Panels, and will be available for online streaming one week after GDC this year. Not only is this quite a task (we’re recording 250 sessions), but it's free to GDC 2009 All Access pass holders. You need never miss another GDC session again - like I said, neat.
Browsing the website, I found a lot of intriguing new sessions that have popped up since my last update. Sister website Gamasutra has kindly been posting their top picks by track, but here are some new announcements even they haven't picked up on:

Think Services Game Group and Reboot Communications have revealed new details on this May's GDC Canada, including an advisory board including EA, Next Level Games, Radical, and BioWare execs, as well as a track line-up based around the production schedule of video games.
According to NPD Canada, the Canadian game industry grew by 23 percent in 2008, reaching C$2.09 billion in revenues. GDC Canada plans to serve this fast-growing region by providing a forum for Canadian developers to share best practices for fostering ingenuity and quality within their globally distributed games.
GDC Canada’s content lineup emphasizes the production cycle of game development, with lecture and panel tracks focused on the following stages of game creation: Concept/Preproduction, Production, Finalling and Post Launch/Analysis:

Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo Co., Ltd. will deliver a keynote address at the 2009 Game Developers Conference, kicking off the main conference’s schedule of lectures, panel discussions and roundtables.
The address, “Discovering New Development Opportunities,” marks Iwata’s first return to the GDC keynote stage since 2006. The Game Developers Conference takes place March 23-27 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.
Being a developer himself, Iwata’s keynote lectures at the Game Developers Conference are known for inspiring other developers to think about creating games in new and different ways:

The Independent Games Festival Mobile (IGF Mobile), an event that celebrates innovation in games for handheld devices, including mobile phones, DS, PSP, iPhone and iPod touch, has named the finalists for the second annual competition.
The number of entries more than doubled – to over 100 – compared to last year’s inaugural competition, bolstered by a strong showing from the emergent iPhone and iPod touch platform – so much so that a special ‘Best iPhone Game’ category has been designated for the titles which best use the unique possibilities of the device.
Winners of the 2009 IGF Mobile competition, who will get a share of $30,000 in prize money, will be announced at a special ceremony during the Game Developers Conference (GDC) Mobile conference on March 24, and additionally honored during the main Independent Games Festival Awards on March 25, 2009.
Some of the leading finalists for this year’s competition include stylish iPhone cube movement puzzler Edge (3 nominations), the technologically cunning Wardive on Nintendo DS, which uses local WiFi hotspots to generate enemies (3 nominations), and elegant iPhone ‘tower defense’-style title Fieldrunners (3 nominations).
Games also nominated multiple times include Secret Exit's touch-controlled iPhone rope wrapping game Zen Bound and iconic tilt-controlled iPhone puzzler Dizzy Bee, with a number of Flash Lite and Java cellphone games, including the innovative Cubic Republic, also finalists. Read on for the full list: