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Next year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco has begun to take shape, and if you're interested in becoming a speaker at the upcoming show, there's still time, as the call for submissions will remain open though Tuesday, August 28.

GDC Online 2012, organized by the UBM TechWeb Game Network, is just a few short months away, and will host a robust schedule of more than 100 lectures, panels, keynotes, and roundtable discussions led by notables in the connected, mobile, and social game development sectors.

The annual event returns to Austin on October 9 through October 11, and Early Bird registration for GDC Online is still open through Friday, August 24.

Mobile and social games will have an increased prominence this year, reflecting developments across the games landscape. Vijay Thakkar, Zynga technical director, will lecture on the importance of searching for and developing new IP while Kabam general manager Justin Lambros and art lead Josh Viers give a joint session to offer attendees a behind-the-scenes review of the design development decisions they made while creating the studio's hardcore social-strategy game, Trojan War.

Gary Gattis, CEO of Austin-based mobile and social MMO developer Spacetime Studios, will also be on hands to detail his applied "engagement and respect" philosophy at Spacetime, which has retained more than 90 percent of its employees for several years.

GDC Online will also continue to adhere to its core focus on online games. Damien Schubert, principal lead systems designer at BioWare Austin, and one of the minds behind Star Wars: The Old Republic, and John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment, will both offer lessons from their experiences developing and launching big-budget, large-scale MMO titles.

As a special treat, attendees will have the opportunity to learn about the challenges of developing, launching and maintaining a landmark MMORPG title during the Ultima Online classic game postmortem. Rich Vogel, Raph Koster and Starr M. Long, three chief members of the original Ultima Online team, will be on-hand to discuss the challenges they faced during the creation of the seminal game.

Introduced at the 2011 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, classic game postmortems provide a forum for the game creators behind legacy titles to deconstruct what they learned during the process of development.

Other key 2012 GDC Online speakers and sessions include:

- Electronic Arts' EVP of digital, Kristian Segerstrale, discussing the best approach to creating fully immersive game ecosystems that create an emotional connection with consumers.

- Zynga CTOs Jason Pearlman (mobile) and Allan Leinwand (infrastructure engineering) offering tips to game developers and engineers on how to cope with the infrastructure demands of modern online games.

The Independent Games Festival China - which will take place alongside this November's GDC China in Shanghai - has opened its call for submissions and is accepting indie game entries from the pan-Pacific area from now through September 10.

Following its success from previous years, GDC China will once again host all three main elements of IGF China, including the IGF Summit, the IGF Pavilion, and the prestigious IGF Awards.

Now in its fourth year, the IGF Summit at GDC China will feature sessions from some of the world's top developers, while the IGF Pavilion will showcase some of the region's best independent and student games.

And of course the IGF Awards - which are split into both Main and Student competitions - will honor the many talented developers in the pan-Pacific area.

The 2012 IGF China Main Competition will give out awards and cash prizes in five categories, including:

- Best Game (RMB20,000 ~ $3,150 USD)
- Best Mobile Game (RMB10,000 ~ $1,570 USD)
- Excellence in Audio (RMB5,000 ~ $780 USD)
- Excellence in Technology (RMB5,000 ~ $780 USD)
- Excellence in Visual Arts (RMB5,000 ~ $780 USD)

The Student Competition, meanwhile, will offer two awards, for Best Student Game (RMB10, 000 ~ $1,570 USD, 1 Winner) and Excellent Student Winner (RMB3, 000 ~$470 USD, 2 Winners).

Finalists -- who will receive two All Access passes to attend GDC China and the IGF awards ceremony on November 18, 2012 -- will be chosen by a panel of expert jurors including Kevin Li (CEO, TipCat Interactive); Monte Singman (Founder/CEO, Radiance Digital Entertainment); Xubo Yang (Director of Digital Art Lab and Assistant Professor; Shanghai Jiaotong University's School of Software), Haipeng Yu (Producer, Tencent Shanghai), and jury chairman Simon Carless, IGF Chairman Emeritus and EVP of the GDC shows, Gamasutra, and Game Developer magazine.

The lineup for this October's GDC Online continues to grow this week, as show organizers have added a trio of new design-focused sessions featuring a postmortem of Zynga's CastleVille, EVE Online developer CCP on sandbox game design, and a look at how to enhance your franchise with complementary companion games.

These new talks all fall within GDC Online's Design track as part of the show's Main Conference, which offers come of the world's leading content on persistent and online games. The event will be held Tuesday, October 9 to Thursday, October 11 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas.

The full details on these newly-announced sessions are as follows:

- In "CastleVille Postmortem: What Went Right and Wrong," Zynga designers William Lemons and Bruce Shelley will peel back the curtain on one of the social game giant's newest and most popular Facebook titles.

Zynga Dallas, the studio behind CastleVille (and formerly known as Bonfire Studios) was founded by a number of veterans from the popular Age of Empires franchise, and in this session Lemons and Shelley will explain how the team leveraged its experience working on RTS games while meeting the demands of modern social game design.

- Elsewhere, Matthew Woodward of EVE Online developer CCP Games will share his thoughts on the design theory behind sandbox online games.

His session, dubbed "The Other White Meat: Design Architecture for Sandbox Games," will pick the genre apart piece by piece, analyzing the importance of social networks, emergent gameplay, and self-sustaining systems. Woodward will also discuss a number of practical design lessons developers can apply to their own sandbox titles.

- Finally, Ben Miller and Matt Griswald, two of the lead developers behind the Resistance 3 companion web-based strategy game Global Resistance, will discuss what it takes to make a robust and successful complementary title that benefits a larger, AAA release.

Their session, "Take Your Companion Game to the Next Level," will examine the design of Global Resistance, demonstrating how the game's design, format, and online community helped draw attention to its AAA big brother on PlayStation 3.

It's been many months in the making, but GDC Europe 2012 is starting this coming Monday in Cologne, Germany, and will feature a slew of exciting, must-see sessions for the European game development community.

Over the past several months, GDC organizers have announced major keynotes, panels, and presentations from the best and brightest in the game industry, and with so many talks lined up, this year's GDC Europe promises to be the most robust and varied yet.

And even though we're just days away from the event, GDC organizers are highlighting two recent additions to the show's lineup:

- The first talk comes from independent developers Martin Jonasson (Jesus vs. Dinosaurs) and Petri Purho (Crayon Physics), who will demonstrate some tricks that can help make your games more interesting to play. During the Independent Games Summit session closing out the show on Wednesday, the pair will spruce up a game live on stage, showing attendees exactly how these tips can benefit or enhance game design.

- In addition, Harald Riegler, CEO of the Australian studio Sproing (Silent Hunter Online, Panzer Tactics DS) will discuss the importance of company culture in his Business Track talk, offering tips on handling leadership, managing team dynamics, and creating a studio that works effectively as a single unit.

Of course, these new sessions are just two of the more recent additions to GDC Europe's extensive lineup. Here are some of the other notable talks to be held at next week's show:

Business, Marketing and Management Track

- Track Keynote: World of Free-to-Play - AAA by Wargaming.net (Victor Kislyi, Wargaming.net)
- Leveling Up Your AAA Game - BioWare's Post Release Content Insights (Fernando Melo, Bioware)
- Financing Options for Smaller Games (Nicholas Lovell, GAMESbrief; Patrick O'Luanaiagh, nDreams; Ciaran O'Leary, Earlybird; Jonathan Newth, Tenshi Ventures)

Production Track

- Passion for Entertainment: 10 years of Battlefield/20 Years of DICE (Karl Magnus Troedsson, DICE)
- Mafia II Postmortem (Jarek Kolar, 2K Czech)
- The Long Journey (Robin Hunicke, formerly of thatgamecompany)

Game Design Track

- Track Keynote: Assassin's Creed: Maintaining Momentum on a Blockbuster Franchise (Alex Hutchinson, Ubisoft Montreal)
- Ambiguity and Abstraction in Game Writing: Lessons from Dear Esther (Dan Pinchbeck, thechineseroom)
- Classic Postmortem: GoldenEye 007 (Martin Hollis, Zoomani)

With GDC Europe nearly upon us, show organizers have revealed the entire lineup for the event's Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit, including new Galaxy On Fire, Flurry, and Game Insight (Paradise Island) talks.

The Summit will take place Tuesday, August 14 at the Congress-Centrum Ost Koelnmesse in Cologne, Germany alongside Gamescom, and will feature some of the best and brightest in the mobile space discussing the future of the business on both smartphones and tablets.

The newest sessions to be announced for the event include a look at Fishlabs' Galaxy on Fire 2 (pictured), a breakdown of mobile game data from analytics firm Flurry, and a presentation from Russian studio Game Insight on making successful multiplatform games.

The full details on these new sessions are as follows:

- In "Galaxy on Fire 2 - from AAA Premium on iOS to Freemium on Android," Fishlabs CEO and co-founder Michael Schade will discuss how the studio's popular mobile title went from premium to freemium for its Android debut. The game sustained a $9.99 price tag for more than 18 months on iOS, but as Schade will explain, that model just wouldn't work for its Android release. During this session, he'll explain how and why the Android version needed such a massive overhaul.

- Elsewhere, Flurry managing director Richard Firminger will share the firm's latest data on the mobile market, shedding light on some important trends developers will want to keep track of. His session, "Mobile Application Analytics & Consumer Insight: The Biggest Content Revolution of Our Lifetime," will give attendees a better understanding of mobile game development, and drive home the long-term value of detailed data analysis.

- In addition, Game Insight's vice president of business development, Darya Trushkina, will explain why developers should always be looking to get their games on as many platforms as possible. In "Cross-Platform Mobile Game Development: What, Why, and How Much?," Trushkina will reference Game Insight titles like Mystery Manor and Paradise Island to demonstrate the best (and worst) ways to ensure your game will work across multiple platforms.

Of course, these new talks join a number of other sessions featured in the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit. Other talks at the show include a detailed examination of mobile game audio, a session from Beat Sneak Bandit's Simogo on breaking away from industry trends, a postmortem on Wooga's popular Diamond Dash for iOS, and a sponsored session on why mobile devs should keep an eye on the Blackberry platform.

Starting your own game studio is a great way to pursue your independence and enjoy complete creative freedom, but as it turns out, building a new business requires a lot of hard work. There are plenty of factors to manage and keep in mind.

With that in mind, the inaugural Game Dev Start-Up Summit at this year's GDC Online in Austin promises to offer plenty of help for developers looking to strike out on their own.

This one-day Summit, put together by GDC Online organizers and veteran game industry lawyer Jim Charne, will include a host of sessions that provide a step-by-step look at the issues, challenges, and realities of getting a new game company off the ground.

The Summit will take place alongside the rest of GDC Online, which will be held Tuesday, October 9 to Thursday, October 11 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas, and will be open to all Summits & Tutorials and All-Access Pass holders.

And now, GDC Online organizers have revealed the first three talk themes in the upcoming Game Dev Start-Up Summit. The full details on these newly announced sessions are as follows:

- To kick things off, the Summit speakers will host "Pre-launch - Preparing to Take the Plunge," a robust discussion of the concrete steps developers need to take to move from their previous employment to their brand-new startup.

- Next, multiple speakers will discuss how to put all the pieces of your company together in "Formation: Legal and Accounting Issues." The speakers will give attendees the insight they need to find and lease an office, to select a good bookkeeper and lawyer, to establish a useful employee handbook, and much more.

- In the Summit's third session, the speakers will host "Finance: Sources and Timing," covering perhaps the most important resource to a fledgling business: Money. The session will cover everything from bootstrapping, venture capital, bank loans, and many other resources that a new company will have to keep in mind.

Confirmed speakers for the Game Dev Start-Up Summit thus far include notable game developers, businesspeople and legal counsel including Don Daglow (Daglow Entertainment), James Niesewand (Illyriad Games), Rob Shillingsburg (Jetbolt Games), Dan Offner (Loeb & Loeb), David Rosenbaum (Law Offices of David S Rosenbaum), David Baszucki (Roblox), Bill Graner (Crater House), and Gary Gattis (Spacetime Studios).