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GDC Europe organizers have announced that Ultima
creator, space explorer, and social game developer Richard Garriott
will give a keynote at the conference examining the future of social
games and their impact on the industry.

Garriott will join Wooga founder Jens Begemann as the second keynote speaker to be announced for the 2011 Game Developers Conference Europe, which will take place August 15-17, and is located in Cologne, Germany alongside Gamescom, the leading European trade and consumer show.

Garriott's talk, dubbed, "The Three Eras of Gaming and Why This One
is a Game Changer," will provide "special insight into the current era
of social and casual games, and will discuss whether or not traditional
development can and should make that transition to this new mode of
interactive entertainment."

While perhaps best known for his legacy as the creator of the Ultima series and as one of the pioneers for the MMO genre with Ultima Online, Garriott recently delved into the realm of social and casual games and founded Portalarium, a social game company that this month secured $3.6 million in funding for its forthcoming projects.

Over the course of his career, Garriott has won numerous awards for his
contributions to the game development community, including a Lifetime
Achievement Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2006. He also
made national headlines in 2008 and realized his lifelong dream of
space travel, when he launched aboard the Russian Soyuz TMA-13
spacecraft to the International Space Station.

GDC Europe 2011 has debuted new main conference talks in its Game Design and Programming tracks, including Ernest Adams on the problems with MMOs, a postmortem of Dance Central, and the lighting system used in DICE's Battlefield 3.

Taking place Monday through Wednesday, August 15-17, 2011 at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost ahead of the major gamescom trade show, GDC Europe 2011 has now revealed more than 60 sessions in the event's Schedule Builder.

Some of the new highlights from the Main Conference sessions, which encompass tracks on Business & Marketing, Game Design, Production, Programming and Visual Arts, include the following:

- Harmonix's Matt Boch and Dean Tate will reflect on the development of the Kinect launch title Dance Central in "Break It Down! How Harmonix and Kinect Taught the World to Dance; The Design Process and Philosophy of Dance Central." In this talk, the two will discuss how the studio built the game from scratch in just one year, while still adapting to a completely new motion control interface.

- In the conference's Game Design Track, industry veteran Ernest Adams will examine the problems with online persistence in "Making MMOGs More Storylike." In this talk, he will explain why modern online games prevent players from meaningfully affecting the game world, and will offer solutions that could grant players more control over their online environment.

- As part of the conference's Programming track, DICE's Christina Coffin will give a lecture dubbed "SPU-based Deferred Shading in Battlefield 3 for PlayStation 3," in which she will outline the SPU based lighting system in the studio's own Frostbite 2 engine. Coffin will discuss the performance benefits that SPU based shading offers, and will explain how it influences the visuals of DICE's flagship shooter, Battlefield 3.

The Game Developers Conference Online (GDC Online, formerly GDC Austin) in Austin, Texas has opened nominations for the second annual Game Developers Choice Online Awards through June 30, 2011.

The Game Developers Choice Online Awards are produced by the UBM TechWeb Game Network and recognize the rich history, technical excellence, and continued innovation in the accomplished arena of online games. The awards ceremony takes place the evening of October 12, during the four-day conference in Austin, Texas.

The awards ceremony honors the achievements of the creators and operators of online video games -- from large-scale MMOs and free-to-play titles to growing social network games -- that launched between June 1st, 2010 and May 31st, 2011 in North America.

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

The inaugural Awards, held in Austin at GDC Online 2010, saw Riot's standout "multiplayer online battle arena" title League of Legends lead the winners with five awards, including Best New Online Game -- full video of the ceremony is available via GDC Vault.

Other recipients from last year included CCP, which received the Best Live Game award for EVE Online, MUD co-creator Richard Bartle as the Online Game Legend recipient, and Origin and Electronic Arts' seminal MMO title Ultima Online as the first Hall of Fame inductee.

The GDC Vault service has debuted free video talks from Game Developers Conference 2011, including Chris Crawford's much-acclaimed 'In Days Of Yore' talk, plus a 2-hour Halo: Reach tech talk and Maxis' Stone Librande on board games for his kids.

These talks add to recent free videos from Jane McGonigal, Monaco's Andy Schatz on winning the IGF, and Playdom's Scott Jon Siegel, as well as the much-watched classic game postmortem series as part of GDC 2011's 'free recordings' section.

The following lectures from GDC 2011's acclaimed Main Conference -- which were some of the highlights of this year's February 28th-March 4th show in San Francisco -- are being made free at this time:

The talk 'In Days of Yore' sees original CGDC founder and legendary game designer Chris Crawford (Balance Of Power) present a powerful talk on the earliest days of making games, "times of technological swashbuckling, shoestring budgets, amateur designers, amateurish products, and wild experimentation."

As Crawford (pictured) notes for this special 'GDC 25' talk: "Just getting things to move around on the screen was a huge technical challenge. Nobody knew what the hell they were doing, but everybody knew that we were creating a new medium and a new industry... You'll be amazed by the differences -- and stunned by the similarities."

GDC Europe 2011 organizers have debuted fresh talks for August's show, with online game-centric talks from Zynga's Mark Skaggs and The Settlers Online's Teut Weidemann, plus AAA lectures on the creation of Bulletstorm and the upcoming Silent Hill: Downpour.

Taking place Monday through Wednesday, August 15-17, 2011 at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost ahead of the major gamescom trade show, GDC Europe 2011 has now revealed more than 60 sessions in the event's just-launched Schedule Builder.

Some of the new highlights from the Main Conference sessions, which encompass tracks on Business & Marketing, Game Design, Production, Programming and Visual Arts, include:

- Zynga's Mark Skaggs is giving a lecture called 'Designing Successful Social Games' as part of the Game Design Track, discussing "the design frameworks he uses when creating social games, including the popular global sensations FarmVille and CityVille."

- In 'Silent Hill: Past, Present & Future', Czech studio Vatra Games' Matthew Seymour and Brian Gomez, working on this year's much-awaited Silent Hill: Downpour, "provide a survey of this seminal survival horror series, describing the challenges of disempowering players and creating a sense of dread when mainstream titles are empowering players like never before."

- Also in the Main Conference, German game development veteran Teut Weidemann (Turrican, X-Out) is talking on 'F2P Online Games: The Game Is Not Enough', focusing on The Settlers Online and 'out of client' learnings for the popular European online game around "web presence, support, payment systems, community management, and e-marketing."

- A high-profile talk debut at GDC Europe is 'The Triforce of Courage: Bulletstorm's Key Learnings on Global Distributed Development', with Epic's Tanya Jessen discussing the popular console title, which was developed in Poland but produced by Epic in the U.S. -- focusing on the "challenges and lessons learned from developing AAA in a global distributed way."

UBM TechWeb Game Network, organizers of the Game Developers Conference Online are revealing the latest game industry leaders from the worlds of social and connected gaming, serving on both the Main Conference and Summit-specific advisory boards for this October's Austin-based event.

These industry luminaries, each of whom have rated, commented on and discussed the more than 340 lecture submissions for GDC Online 2011, represent companies including Zynga, ngmoco, PopCap, Playdom, CCP, Blizzard and Riot Games.

GDC Online - the leading worldwide event for social and online game developers - focuses on social network titles, free-to-play web games, kid-friendly online titles, large-scale MMOs, and all types of connected and cloud-centric games.

New members of the GDC Online 2011 Main Conference advisory board, who met in person in Austin, TX to choose lectures last week, include:

- John Blakely, a former vice president at Sony Online Entertainment, and now acting general manager at the Austin operations of Zynga, the company behind major games such as Farmville, Frontierville and Cityville.

- J. Allen Brack, an industry veteran in the online gaming space, and current production director at Blizzard Entertainment, where he is responsible for the incredibly popular World of Warcraft MMO franchise.

- Brandon Beck, co-founder and CEO of Riot Games, creators of flagship online game League of Legends (pictured). The popular multiplayer title won five 2010 Game Developers Choice Online Awards, including Best Online Game Design, Best Online Visual Arts, Best Online Technology, and Best New Online Game, as well as the Audience Award.

GDC Europe organizers have announced new lectures for the August show, including Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit talks on topics including Android game development, Catan's tablet gaming push, and a Main Conference talk on blending existing IP with creative design.

Taking place Monday through Wednesday, August 15-17, 2011 at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost, GDC Europe 2011 -- alongside the major gamescom trade show -- will again provide the essential pan-European perspective of game development and business trends.

New to the conference this year is the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit, which will feature panels and lectures from some of the most influential figures in the mobile space - on topics including the emerging business trends and successful design strategies for platforms such as iOS, Android and more.

As part of the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit, Fishlabs Entertainment's Marc Hehmeyer will discuss how to best move an iOS title to Android devices in his talk, "From iOS to Android - Galaxy on Fire 2 Does the Green Robot."

Using the German studio's own hit space simulator Galaxy on Fire 2 as an example, the Fishlabs CTO will outline the challenges and intricacies involved with porting mobile games to the Android platform, with many practical examples.

The Summit will also feature Exozet Games' head of mobile development Matthias Hellmund -- the studio behind Catan and Carcassone's smartphone and tablet versions -- in a talk on how to bring popular board game titles to mobile platforms.

Hellmund's lecture, entitled "Board Game Mobilization - What's Now, What's Next," will go over the company's work and other successful examples of mobile board games -- outlining how they take advantage of the accessibility, technology, and form factor offered by a number of popular mobile devices.

Elsewhere, in the GDC Europe 2011 Main Conference's Game Design track, Ubisoft creative director Jason VandenBergh -- whose highest-rated GDC Europe 2010 talk on Red Steel 2 is available to view for free on GDC Vault -- will outline how to satisfy your creative itch when working within the constraints of an existing IP.