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The founding doctors of BioWare have been confirmed to deliver a keynote speech at the first Game Developers Conference Canada in Vancouver this may.
Dr. Gregory P. Zeschuk, BMSc, MD, MBA, Vice President, Entertainment and Miscellaneous, BioWare and Vice President, Electronic Arts, and Dr. Raymond A. Muzyka, BMSc, MD, CCFP, MBA, General Manager and CEO, BioWare and General Manager and Vice President, Electronic Arts, have titled their address "Emotionally Engaging Narrative: Gaming's New Frontier."
The talk will take place on the second day of GDC Canada, which runs May 12-13, 2009.
Edmonton, Canada-headquartered BioWare is known for its story-centered games; currently, it is known to be developing the single-player RPGs Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2, and the MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic.

The 2009 Game Developers Conference Canada, taking place from May 12th-13th in Vancouver, BC, has added a number of sessions featuring high-profile speakers from Electronic Arts, plus notable game writers Susan O'Connor and Marianne Krawczyk.
EA technical art director Richard Burgess-Dawson will present "Shooting in San Vanelona: the Visuals of EA's Skate," a talk for artists and visual engineers the paradigms, methods, challenges and tricks behind the visuals of EA's acclaimed skating title. Burgess-Dawson will explain how lighting, surfacing, geometry, post FX, shadows, streaming and particles contribute to the cohesion of the nine square-kilometer world.

The 2009 Game Developers Conference, held last week at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, saw attendance of more than 17,000.
That figure was released by conference organizer Think Services, which pointed to the results as indicative of the overall industry's fundamental strength.
"The success of this past week in San Francisco proves the resilience of the games industry," said event director Meggan Scavio. "It is a testament to the spirit of our more than 20 year old conference and community, and evidence of video games' continued evolution into a mainstream form of entertainment, that the various constituents of the industry were able come together at GDC as they did [last] year."

Erik Svedang's Blueberry Garden, a charming exploration game set in an ever-changing ecosystem, received top honors - the $30,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Best Independent Game - at the 2009 Independent Games Festival Awards.
The winners were announced this evening at the eleventh Annual IGF Awards ceremony, hosted by the Game Developers Conference at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.
The IGF awards are often referred to as the Sundance Festival of the video game industry, and offer both global exposure and over $50,000 in cash prizes to each year's winners.
Previous breakout IGF award-winners include titles such as Braid, Audiosurf, Castle Crashers, and World Of Goo, and this year's awards saw 226 Main Competition entries from all over the world - and over 450 entries in total.

Organizers of this month's Game Developers Conference have revealed notable, late-breaking new talks from Capcom' Yoshinori Ono on Street Fighter IV, MIT's David Merrill on new forms of interaction, and a panel of journalists-turned-developers on crossing over to another side of the industry.
Street Fighter IV producer Yoshinori Ono will present a talk called "IV Style: Returning to the Roots of a Fighting Game Classic," discussing how the Capcom team approached the design and development process of the anticipating fighting game -- and promising "a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse into the inner workings of Japanese development."

Following recent confusion, Game Developers Conference organizer Think Services has clarified that its conference in Shanghai this October is the only official GDC event scheduled for China -- despite an unrelated upcoming event going by "ChinaGDC."
Think Services (which publishes Gamasutra) has scheduled its GDC China for October 11 through 13 in Shanghai.
The unlicensed naming overlap has roots in a 2007 deal that saw Think Services work with IDG China for the first GDC China event, GDC executive director Meggan Scavio said in a statement:

Organizers of the 2009 Independent Games Festival (IGF) have launched the IGF Audience Award voting website, allowing game fans everywhere to download, play, and choose a favorite all of the eligible Main Competition finalist indie games which submitted a publicly playable demo.
Online voting is open now and continues through Friday, March 20th, with the award given out at the IGF Awards taking place alongside the Game Developers Choice Awards at the 2009 Game Developers Conference on March 25th.
The games with eligible demos or full versions on PC, XBLA, XNA Community Games or PSN are: Retro/Grade, Dyson, Brainpipe, The Maw, IncrediBots, Osmos, Musaic Box, Cortex Command, CarneyVale Showtime, Coil, The Graveyard, PixelJunk Eden, Mightier, You Have To Burn The Rope, and Between.