Latest News

A day before the GDC Online early deadline, the major October 5th-8th Austin-based event has added track keynotes from Blizzard's Greg Canessa (on Battle.net), Playdom's Raph Koster (on social mechanics), and Bigpoint's Heiko Hubertz (on the rise of Europe in online gaming).

The Austin, Texas based GDC Online conference -- formerly known as GDC Austin -- is sharply focused on the development of online games, including free-to-play titles, social network games, and traditional MMOs, with a veteran online game industry advisory board evaluating and selecting the lectures.

There are now more than 120 panels, lectures and tutorials currently scheduled for the October 5th-8th event -- and following the announcement of a keynote from Civilization II designer and now Zynga chief game designer Brian Reynolds (FrontierVille), three track keynotes are debuting.

The brand-new track keynotes across the GDC Online Main Conference, which takes place from Wednesday October 6th to Friday October 8th, and for which majorly discounted passes are only available until Wednesday, are:

- In a production track keynote called 'Battle.net: A Postmortem', Blizzard's Battle.net project director Greg Canessa and technical director Matt Versluys will present an extremely rare lecture from the World Of Warcraft and Starcraft II creators, "sharing lessons learned from building and launching the new iteration of an online game service that connects and powers all Blizzard titles."

- Playdom's VP of creative design Raph Koster -- a stalwart of online game design from Ultima Online through Star Wars Galaxies to his current work in social games -- presents a design track keynote, 'Classic Social Mechanics: The Engines Behind Everything Multiplayer'.

GDC Online organizers have confirmed industry veteran and Zynga chief game designer Brian Reynolds to discuss smash hit title FrontierVille and the future of social game design in a keynote at October's show in Austin.

In his keynote address, 'Bears and Snakes! The Wild Frontier of Social Game Design,' Reynolds will explain how his Facebook title FrontierVille "treads new territory" by combining the classic techniques of traditional game design with the social gaming expertise that Zynga has gained from their FarmVille and Mafia Wars titles.

Reynolds, whose career has spanned more than 20 years with companies such as Firaxis and Big Huge Games, and who has co-created titles including Civilization II, Alpha Centauri and Rise of Nations, will also confront the challenges of taking familiar social game models and making them more entertaining for gamers and non-gamers.

With the massive gains and rapid progress of the social game space, Reynolds will offer his take on why games like FrontierVille -- which currently has 30 million monthly unique users on Facebook alone, according to Appdata.com -- are only the first step towards other exciting opportunities for the video game medium.

UBM TechWeb Game Network, organizers of the Game Developers Conference Online (formerly GDC Austin), have announced the nominees for this October's first annual Game Developers Choice Online Awards, revealing that Riot Games' League of Legends is leading the pack, having been nominated for a total of five awards.

Other titles being honored with multiple nominations include We Rule (ngmoco), Champions Online (Cryptic), Dungeon Fighter Online (Nexon) and Nightclub City (Booyah) with three award nominations apiece.

The all-star list of nominees also includes nominations in new game and in-operation game categories for top companies like Blizzard (for World of Warcraft), Playfish (for FIFA Superstars) and Zynga (for Farmville and Treasure Isle).

The Game Developers Choice Online Awards will be held on the evening of October 7, 2010 as part of the 2010 Game Developers Conference Online (GDC Online), which is taking place at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas October 5-8.

The Game Developers Choice Online Awards - a sister event to the Game Developers Choice Awards which take place at GDC in San Francisco every year - is the first award ceremony honoring the accomplishments of the creators and operators of online games.

This includes categories around community support and continued innovation in the field with awards in audio, design, visual arts, among other categories. These categories are nominated and voted on by the game development community, with the distinguished GDC Online Advisory Board helping to pick the special awards.

The nominees of the Game Developer Choice Online Awards run the gamut of online titles, from expansive and hugely popular MMOs such as Blizzard's World of Warcraft, through addictive social network-based titles like Farmville by Zynga. The most honored nominee is Riot Games' critically acclaimed League of Legends, a multiplayer online battle-arena game that combines role-playing, strategy, and action elements to create a captivating online experience.

The complete list of nominees for the 2010 Game Developers Choice Online Awards are as follows:

The Game Developers Conference Europe 2010 has concluded a second successful year, confirming record overall attendance across paid attendees, media, speakers and exhibitors to the August 16th-18th show.

At the same time, organizers have revealed a return to Cologne, Germany for a third GDC Europe show -- again opposite GamesCom -- on August 15-17, 2011.

Produced by UBM TechWeb Game Network, organizers of the leading worldwide Game Developers Conference series, GDC Europe is the largest professionals-only game event in Europe, presenting the latest trends and technology in all aspects of the online gaming space for developers, consumers, publishers and trade professionals.

Highlights of day two and three major talks at the show, reported by sister website Gamasutra.com, include the following notable talks:

Day Two

-In the day's first keynote, Heiko Hubertz, CEO and founder of Bigpoint, advised attendees that to conduct business in America as a European company, the time to do it is "right now." Throughout the talk, Hubertz elaborated on the differences between the U.S. and European markets and educated the audience about how to be successful in America as a European, based on Bigpoint's experience there. Hubert advised "There are only two existing markets in America, the console market and the Facebook market."

-In his keynote, Killzone developer Guerrilla Games' managing director Hermen Hulst discussed his studio's genesis, and its successes and failures in evolving into a Sony-owned AAA console powerhouse. Hulst began with the mantra: "to survive and to grow... you need to consistently improve yourself. He took attendees through examples of how Guerrilla's experiences have informed their history and the key decisions made from the time Sony signed the title that would become Killzone through to today. Plus, he revealed the studio is expanding to work on a "game with a scope and a level of ambition that once again makes us nervous" -- specifically a "brand new IP."

Organizers of this October's GDC Online (formerly GDC Austin) have announced several major sessions for the conference, featuring speakers from Sony Online Entertainment, Carbine, and Relic.
The Austin, Texas based GDC Online conference is focused on the development of online games, including free-to-play titles, social network games, and traditional MMOs, with a veteran online game industry advisory board evaluating and selecting the lectures.
There are already more than 70 panels, lectures and tutorials currently scheduled for the October 5th-8th event -- and organizers have newly announced a number of important talks in the 'Design' track, which discusses trends, strategies, and techniques to help developers create more successful online games.
As its official description explains, the design track -- unique to online game conferences worldwide -- focuses on "improving player retention, satisfaction, and lifetime value, applying principles of MMOs to new genres and platforms, and designing games for a wide range of audiences."
Some of the newly announced highlights from notable sessions in the GDC Online design track and elsewhere include:
- 'I'm a Special Snowflake: The Art of Participatory Story Telling in MMOs' sees Tim Cain, the design director of MMO developer Carbine Studios, drawing from his experience in the industry "to discuss the art of taking storytelling from single-player RPGs to the world of massively multiplayer online games."
Using his work writing for games like Fallout -- the seminal Interplay title that Cain also produced and lead programmed -- and Arcanum, Cain will showcase an "exclusive first look at Carbine Studios' work" regarding storytelling in the NCSoft-formed studio's unannounced MMO.

The Game Developers Conference Europe, the leading conference for computer and video game developers in Europe after its successful debut last year, is on track to exceed its registration and exhibitor numbers from 2009.
The conference is now expected to receive up to 2,000 attendees, speakers and media representatives from 45 different countries, already surpassing the attendance numbers from the 2009 debut. The event is expected to garner a strong presence from European and North American industry professionals.
In particular, GDC Europe, which takes place August 16-18, 2010 at the Cologne Congress East Center in Cologne, Germany, will this year focus on media convergence and online gaming, and also features a concentration on the booming Chinese and Russian markets.
Several leaders of the international development scene and the games industry will be participating in GDC Europe addressing major topics facing the industry. In total, the event will feature more than 90 workshops, and presentations by more than 130 speakers from all over the world.
Late additions include 'Games on the Chrome Web Store', featuring Google's Mark DeLoura and Michael Mahemoff; a talk called 'Next-Gen Consoles: Cloud-Based Gaming', with Tom DuBois of streaming service OnLive, and EEDAR's Greg Short presenting 'State of The Games Market.'
They join a list of notable speakers including Warren Spector (Disney), Eric Chahi (Ubisoft), Heiko Hubertz (Bigpoint), Bo Wang (Tencent), Hermen Hulst (Guerrilla Games), Ray Muzyka & Greg Zeschuk (BioWare), Louis Castle (InstantAction), Martin Walfisz (Planeto), David Cage (Quantic Dream), Steven Gaffney (Splash Damage), Chris Charla (Foundation 9), Jorg Tittel (Break Thru Films), Avni Yerli (Crytek), Harald Riegler (Sproing), Matias Myllyrinne (Remedy Entertainment), Don Daglow (Don Daglow Interactive Entertainment), Steve Meretzky & Dave Rohrl (Playdom), Aki Jarvinen (Digital Chocolate), and Seb Canniff (Sony Computer Entertainment Europe).

Organizers of the leading Game Developers Conference series have announced that renowned game designer Warren Spector, creative director for Disney Interactive Studios' Junction Point, will open the 2010 Game Developers Conference Europe on Monday, August 16.

Spector's keynote address, titled, "What Video Games Can Learn from Other Media ... What We Can't ... And What We Shouldn't" will kick off GDC Europe, which returns to Cologne Germany August 16-18, 2010 for three days of learning, networking and inspiration.

During his keynote, Spector will share with the audience his thoughts on video games as they compare to other media such as movies, television, theater, radio and comic books and explore the ways in which video games use techniques borrowed from those mediums.

The Deus Ex co-creator will question the assumption that video games should be more like other media, and will discuss how valid these comparisons are while suggesting some new comparisons that may be more relevant for moving our industry forward.