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Organizers of the 2010 Game Developers Conference, the world's largest industry-only event dedicated to the advancement of interactive entertainment, has announced an all-time record of 18,250 game industry professionals attending San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center for the March 9th-13th event.
Surpassing last year's total of 17,000 attendees, the event brought together experienced game developers, publishers, deal makers, industry aspirants and working press for more than 400 lectures, panels, summits, tutorials and roundtable discussions.
Offering a full five days of content, the event also hosted an extensive Exposition floor, featuring the biggest firms in the games space alongside the Career Pavilion and associated Game Career Seminar.
Also presented were the 12th Annual Independent Games Festival, the 10th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards, Game Connection America, and more opportunities for networking, discussing business, sharing knowledge, and meeting with equally-devoted fellow developers.
Following the success of the show, organizers of the Game Developers Conference have announced that GDC 2011 will return to the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco from Monday, February 28 to Friday, March 4, 2011, with a call for lecture submissions to open this Summer.

Naughty Dog's critically-acclaimed Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was the big winner at the 10th annual Game Developers Choice Awards, presented at a ceremony this evening at UBM TechWeb Game Network's 2010 Game Developers Conference (GDC), receiving a total of five awards, including Best Writing and the coveted Game of the Year award.
Another major honoree, 5th Cell received the award for Best Handheld Game and the Innovation Award, for its creativity-fueled portable game, Scribblenauts. Zynga, creators of the wildly addictive and popular Facebook game, Farmville, received the honor for Best New Social/Online Game, marking the first winner for this inaugural category.
Other winners include Rocksteady Studios' dark and gritty adventure, Batman: Arkham Asylum, which won for Best Game Design. The Best Debut Game went to Runic Games' Torchlight. The Best Downloadable Game award went to thatgamecompany's Flower, marking the second such award for the developer, following their win in 2008 with fl0w.

Game Developers Choice and IGF Awards organizers have confirmed that next week's awards shows will be streamed live on GameSpot.com, with TV network G4 also present to capture highlights for a GDC special.
The major CBS-owned GameSpot.com website has set up a special Game Developers Conference 2010 landing page for its coverage, and will be exclusively live-streaming the awards, which take place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 6:30 pm PT.
The ceremonies kick off with the 12th Annual Independent Games Festival Awards, this year presented by indie developers Kyle Gabler (World Of Goo) and Erin Robinson (Puzzle Bots), and honoring an outstanding set of finalists from the world of independent games.
With over $40,000 in awards given out, including the prestigious Seumas McNally Grand Prize, the Audience Award, and the 'art game'-centric Nuovo Award, as well as exclusive videos on indie games filmed by comedy troupe Mega64, the event should be a highlight of the awards calendar.
Following the conclusion of the IGF Awards, the live stream will showcase the Game Developers Choice Awards, now in its tenth year, and the leading mainstream game awards voted on by video game creators.

As Game Developers Conference 2010's online pre-registration nears its end, GDC organizers are highlighting talks on Borderlands, Mass Effect 2, and Unreal Engine 3's iPhone port, among others.
The conference, taking place from March 9th-13th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, is closing its discounted pre-show registration at 1pm PT on Thursday, March 4th.
With nine notable Summits - spanning iPhone, social/online gaming, indie, GamesBeat@GDC and beyond -- and multiple tutorials on Tuesday 9th and Wednesday 10th, followed by three days of Main Conference content from Thursday 11th through Saturday 13th, there are now more than 450 sessions in total.
The final set of highlighted sessions, including recently announced lectures and relatively unpublicized talks, include the following notables:
- In 'Where Did My Inventory Go? Refining Gameplay in Mass Effect 2', BioWare's lead gameplay designer Christina Norman "will discuss how a small vision shift lead to radical design changes in Mass Effect 2’s combat gameplay and RPG systems. Lessons learned will be presented, including the challenge of communicating gameplay changes to the existing player community."
- The audio track now includes a Rock Band Network postmortem, with Harmonix's Matthew Nordhaus and Caleb Epps discussing the creation of the still-in-Beta system which allows any musician to record and then sell their music in the Rock Band franchise, thanks to a complex user-created content pipeline.

Following the announcement of the Windows Phone 7 Series, including Xbox Live functionality, Microsoft is revealing first technical details at a GDC 2010 tutorial, joining event coverage of smartphone gaming from iPhone through Android to Blackberry, Palm and beyond.
The Windows Phone 7 Series itself is a new set of smartphones running a drastically reconfigured Windows OS and including Xbox Live-compatible avatars, achievements, and games as part of the new system.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showcased the Windows Phone 7 Series set of phones at the Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona, and announced that the new phones will debut by holiday 2010.
As noted on Microsoft's official Windows Phone blog, the company has been getting "a lot of questions about the developer story, platform, etc. We are not prepared to talk about it yet but all will be revealed at two coming events... [including] Game Developers Conference in San Francisco."
The sessions appears as part of Microsoft's Game Developer Day tutorials on March 9th and 10th, with much of Wednesday, March 10th dedicated to the new operating system and technical/design specifics.

Organizers of the Social & Online Games Summit at GDC 2010 have rounded out their line-up for the March 9th-10th event, with Facebook and Playfish keynotes and three tracks of sophisticated content on what's next in this exciting space.
The major new Summit, taking place on the first two days of Game Developers Conference 2010 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco in just three weeks, has been designed to educate and inspire on the rise of socially connected gaming.
Summit advisors include notables like Metaplace's Raph Koster, Habbo's Sulka Haro, and Playdom's Steve Meretzky, and the Summit homepage has now revealed the two event keynotes and a complete line-up for the event.
The first confirmed keynote is 'The Relentless March Toward "Free"... And What it Means to the Video Game Industry', by Playfish VP and GM Kristian Segerstrale, the co-founder of the EA-acquired social game firm will "critically examine what the future holds for the creation, distribution and consumption models in video games -- and suggest what your company needs to do to prepare for the era of free."
The other keynote comes from Facebook platform manager Gareth Davis, who will speak on 'How Friends Change Everything', in which the social network "at the forefront of massive disruptions in who plays games, how games are discovered, distributed, designed and operated" discusses their view on where the social game space is headed.
With almost 40 other major sessions in the social and online game space, including speakers from Zynga, Playfish, Playdom, Habbo, Mind Candy, Schell Games, IMVU, PopCap, and many other major companies, the Summit is packed full of relevant, concrete information.

As the March 9th-13th event approaches, GDC 2010 organizers have revealed new lectures on Deus Ex 3's "cyberpunk renaissance" look, Silent Hill producer Akira Yamaoka's ethos, and Batman: Arkham Asylum's art direction.
The new announcements come with less than a month to go until the event, which takes place from March 9th to 13th at San Francisco's Moscone Center, and includes two days of Summits and tutorials alongside three days of Main Conference content.
A pair of particularly intriguing new lectures lead the new line-up announcements. Firstly, Eidos Montreal art director Jonathan Jacques-Belletete presents a lecture on "The Successes and Failures of Creating a Near-Future Cyberpunk Setting with a Renaissance Twist in Deus Ex 3", providing some of the first concrete information about the much-awaited title.
Jacques-Belletete "...will discuss the creative underpinnings behind the unique blend of art style that combines the past, present and future in the next evolution of the Deus Ex franchise", with particular reference to the title's "Cyber Renaissance" look, which "is infused across the fashion, characters, environments and story."
Secondly, veteran Silent Hill composer and recent series producer Akira Yamaoka, who has just joined No More Heroes creator Grasshopper Manufacture, will present a lecture entitled "As Long as the Audio is Fun, the Game Will Be Too".
This retrospective, taken from Yamaoka's "first 20 years in video game production", will present an interesting angle: "People tend not to think about game design and audio design in parallel. I will present my views on audio design in games from a producer's perspective, having had experience in both roles. With few technological limits remaining, we can focus on achieving realism and interaction. What challenges remain in audio design?"
In addition, as part of a series of GDC 2010 Track keynotes just confirmed, including already-revealed lectures from Metroid creator Yoshio Sakamoto and on StarCraft II's programming approach, a number of major new lectures have been revealed, including the following: