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The organizers of Game Developers Conference Europe 2010 have opened the event's doors at the Cologne Congress Center East in Cologne, Germany, and are recapping highlights and coverage of the first day's proceedings.

Produced by UBM TechWeb Game Network, organizers of the leading Game Developers Conference series, GDC Europe is the largest professionals-only game event in Europe, and has increased in scope compared to its inaugural debut event in 2009, with record attendance ahead of this week's Gamescom consumer and trade event in the same location.

Highlights of today's major speeches at the show include (with links to full write-ups on sister site Gamasutra.com where available):

- At his track keynote on Monday, Tencent Games VP Bo Wang discussed how the billion-dollar revenue Chinese tech/game company has risen to the top of the pack, citing massive growth rates and key routes to success in Asia. Wang noted than in the six months to the end of June 2010, the gigantic Chinese-headquartered firm, which deals with instant messaging, virtual currency, and video games as its major parts, had revenues of $1.3 billion U.S. dollars.

Wang noted that Chinese gamers have a much lower disposable income, so there are unique ways Tencent attracts these gamers. Tencent tries to have 1,000 hours available at launch in its typical MMORPGs, and also encourages gamers to have fun by playing against each other in games. As Tencent also has the top instant messaging service in China, plus a top free email service, a massive web portal at QQ.com, and even a search engine, cross-marketing from all of Tencent's properties seems to have catapulted the firm to the top of the pile in the Chinese market.

Game Developers Conference Online organizers have announced Richard Bartle as the recipient of the first ever Online Game Legend Award and Ultima Online as the first Hall of Fame game, as part of the Game Developers Choice Online Awards taking place October 7, 2010 at GDC Online in Austin -- recognizing landmark titles and deeply influential figures in the vibrant online gaming world.

These special awards were picked after open nominations from the online game community, by the distinguished GDC Online Advisory Board - including game industry veterans Playfish's Sebastien De Halleux, Schell Games' Sheri Graner Ray, and Nexon's Min Kim.

Organizers will be awarding the Online Game Legend award to Dr. Richard Bartle, co-creator of the original MUD (Multi-User Dungeon), the seminal virtual world credited with pioneering online games over 30 years ago.

Bartle, who worked with fellow MUD programmer Roy Trubshaw at the UK's Essex University starting in 1978, was responsible for greatly extending, fleshing out and popularizing the text-based multiplayer game, in which players logged onto a mainframe, socialized with one another, fought enemies and formed lasting friendships and relationships.

After commercializing MUD in the 1980s, Bartle continues to consult in the game industry and teach at Essex University as a Visiting Professor. His research on player personalities types in online games - 'achievers, explorers, socializers and killers', has led to the popular online 'Bartle Test', and the influence of both his actions and theories in the online game industry have been profound and long-lasting.

Organizers of this October's GDC Online (formerly GDC Austin) have announced details of the Game Narrative Summit, including a keynote from Bungie's Joseph Staten on '10 Years Of Halo Storytelling... And Beyond', plus major Harmonix and 2K Games lectures.

The Summit, known as the Game Writers Summit in previous years, aims to cover all facets of the game narrative development process, from writing scripts for major console titles to integrating stories into ARGs and Facebook games, and takes place on Tuesday and Wednesday, October 5th-6th in Austin, Texas.

Some of the newly announced highlights of this year's Game Narrative Summit, chosen by distinguished Summit advisory board including Ubisoft's Richard Dansky, Microsoft Game Studios' Tom Abernathy and Blindlight's Lev Chapelsky, include the following:

- Bungie writer and design director Joseph Staten will keynote the Summit with a talk titled, "Writing The Whirlwind: 10 Years On The Frontlines Of Halo Storytelling...And Beyond." Staten will discuss his lessons learned working on Bungie's flagship franchise, and how those lessons "are fundamentally changing the writing and story design for Bungie's next universe of games."

- In an intriguing lecture called "Get in the Van: Storytelling in the Rock Band Series," Harmonix design director Chris Foster and senior writer Helen McWilliams will discuss how the company's rhythm games - from The Beatles: Rock Band through Rock Band 3 -- tell stories in unconventional and unexpected ways.

Topics discussed will include "structural and implicit narrative,
storytelling within the context of a party game, using real history as
story and gameplay elements, tonal accuracy within writing, and using
the word rock as few times as humanly possible."

GDC Europe organizers are highlighting a number of key new talks at the GamesCom-colocated Cologne, Germany developer event this month, including business & production advice from LucasArts, Double Fine and Foundation 9, plus online/social game analysis from leading studios in the space.
In the past few days, a number of notable business, production, and social game panels have been confirmed for the 2010 Game Developers Conference Europe event, which will take place August 16th-18th, and is an easy additional stop for GamesCom visitors, being located in Cologne, Germany alongside the leading European trade and consumer show.
Looking more broadly at the business and production of games, a notable new panel called 'Multiple Paths of Success for the Independent Developer' features veterans like Foundation 9 VP Chris Charla, Double Fine's Zack Karlsson and Bigpoint's Nils-Holger Henning discussing new methodologies and routes to success in the increasingly competitive independently-run game studio market.
A similarly expansive production panel, called 'Extreme Producing: Order & Chaos in The Game Development Process', features figures like LucasArts' Marianne Monaghan, 2K's Lulu LaMer and ThatGameCompany's Robin Hunicke discussing "specific examples of some the extreme highs and lows they have experienced in controlling the often chaotic process of making games", with plenty of practical takeaway.
With a plethora of major social/online game lectures -- from leading companies in the space like Playdom, RockYou, Bigpoint, Digital Chocolate, Tencent and Playfish -- already part of the overall GDC Europe schedule, several other lecture and panel additions around non-social network online games have fleshed out the program. These include a panel on browser-based vs. client-downloaded online games with Gamigo, GamersFirst and IGG representation, plus a case study on localizing Asian online game Runes Of Magic for the West.

With just a day until the July 21st early reg deadline, GDC Europe organizers have announced major talks on Limbo, Guild Wars 2 and Kane & Lynch 2 at next month's Cologne, Germany-based game conference.
Coming shortly after the Guerrilla Games/Killzone 3 keynote, these new talks are confirmed for the 2010 Game Developers Conference Europe event, which will take place August 16th-18th, and is located in Cologne, Germany alongside GamesCom, the leading European trade and consumer show.
The newly announced GDC Europe lectures arriving just before the early registration deadline include the following notables:
- In 'Limbo: Balancing Fun and Frustration in Puzzle Design', Playdead's Jeppe Carlsen focuses on the acclaimed Xbox Live Arcade title Limbo, discussing "creating an immersive game experience that is challenging to players without being discouraging." Along the way, he'll explore "relevant design principles using concrete examples from the game, focusing on considerations in the areas of accessibility, difficulty, learning by dying, and fun."
- IO Interactive art director Rasmus Poulsen is speaking on 'Art Direction in the YouTube Era', discussing how he and his colleagues approached the distinctive look to the Square Enix-published console title Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days. The game takes an alternative, documentary film-inspired look to visuals, and the description notes that "as the gaming industry continues to follow the trend of hi-fidelity graphics to convey realism, an exploration to find what 'real' is sparked a fresh artistic vision" for the title.
- 'Designing Guild Wars 2 Dynamic Events' features the much-awaited ArenaNet MMO's lead designer Eric Flannum and lead content designer Colin Johanson outlining how the core content of games in the MMORPG genre has evolved over time. They "will discuss the inspiration for and the implementation challenges of their Dynamic Events system, with the goal of creating an exciting, living, breathing online world that encourages social interaction between players."

Game Developers Conference organizers have announced the opening of the call for submissions for the show, to be held in San Francisco on February 28th to March 4th 2011. The call for submissions to present lectures, roundtables and panel sessions for the 2011 Game GDC -- the historic 25th anniversary show -- is now open through Wednesday, August 25th.

The main GDC advisory board is looking for submissions in the following game-related areas/tracks: Audio, Business and Management, Game Design, Production, Programming and Visual Arts, to be showcased on the prestigious Wednesday to Friday main conference of Game Developers Conference 2011. (Submissions for the GDC Summits will open later in the year.)

A talk abstract is required alongside a more detailed description and speaker information, and the GDC Call For Papers page has multiple annotated examples of previous submissions, giving detailed, precise instructions on speaker criteria and the selection process.

Alongside this year's call for submissions, the GDC 2011 advisory board has been expanded, adding several leading industry figures in the social and independent gaming spaces.

In particular, new board members include Media Molecule studio director Siobhan Reddy (LittleBigPlanet 2), EA2D designer/programmer Soren Johnson (Civilization IV, Spore), independent developer Adam Saltsman (Canabalt, Flixel), and Playfish San Francisco GM Dan Fiden. Also added for their art and audio expertise respectively are Undead Labs' Steve Theodore and Microsoft's Scott Selfon.

Continuing the Game Developers Conference 2010 free video lecture series, organizers have debuted the 'Indie Gamemaker Rant' from the 2010 Independent Games Summit, also adding multiple new site navigation features.

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

The well-received 'Indie Gamemaker Rant' is now available for free video streaming, and was described by its creators at the time as: "A series of exquisite [five-minute] rants by notable indie game creators. Experience different points of view on indieness, art, beauty, and the future presented by an all star cast of international friends."

As a detailed Destructoid write-up on the hour-long set of microlectures described, presenters on a host of fascinating topics included Adam Saltsman (Canabalt, pictured), Jonatan Soderstrom (aka Cactus), Anna Anthropy (aka Auntie Pixelante), Jarrad Woods (Captain Forever), Offworld editor [and now IGF Chairman] Brandon Boyer, Randy Smith (Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor), Nathan Vella (Critter Crunch), Craig D. Adams (Superbrothers), Tommy Refenes (Super Meat Boy), Robin Hunicke (thatgamecompany), Ryan O'Donnell (Co-Op/Area 5 Media) and Babsi Lippe (Papermint).

Of additional significance to those interested in independent and alternative views on games is the already available free video of the 'Artgame Sessions' GDC 2010 lecture -- including several smaller talks on Far Cry 2, Braid, Mark Essen's games (Flywrench), and Terry Cavanagh and Stephen Lavelle's Judith.