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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.

As momentum builds for GDC Online (formerly GDC Austin) in Texas this October, organizers have announced key new lectures from the world's leading online game firms, including Zynga, Disney, Playdom, Tencent, and more.

The Austin, Texas-based GDC Online conference and expo -- taking place October 5-8, 2010 -- is focused on online games of all kinds -- including social network titles, free-to-play web games, kid-friendly online titles, large-scale MMOs, and more.

With a leading advisory board guiding the evaluation and choice of lectures, and the newly announced GDC Online Awards honoring the leading games in the space, the conference is a must-attend for those working in online games.

Some of the highlights from newly announced sessions -- as the August 4th alumni registration deadline for GDC Austin 2008/2009 attendees and speakers approaches -- include:

- 'AAA To Social Games -- Making the Leap' sees Playdom VP John Donham, most recently at Metaplace and a 20-year veteran of online games, discussing why "developing games for social networks is a dramatic shift from making titles for PCs, consoles, or even the Internet." The session will "provide you with a solid basis for revising your strategy as you approach social game development."

- In 'Scalability for Social Games: YoVille, Mafia Wars and Farmville',
Zynga's Robert Zubek expands on his GDC 2010 Summit talk from the
leading Facebook game firm to "describe architectures and proven
techniques for building scalable server infrastructure, particularly for
social web games, operating on the web and social networks."

GDC Europe has revealed a keynote from Guerrilla Games' head Hermen Hulst, discussing the upcoming Killzone 3 and managing the Sony-owned studio to success, as the July 21st early registration deadline approaches for the pre-eminent European game business/design conference.
This keynote -- to be held on August 17th -- is the latest to be announced 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.
Hulst's talk at GDC Europe will examine how the Amsterdam-headquartered studio -- one of the leading European game developers, and employing 140 developers from 20 countries -- has matured, and which obstacles had to be overcome along the way.
He'll also focus on the company's technical focus on best utilizing console hardware, and what some of the ingredients behind the success of the Killzone series are, illuminating some of Guerrilla's emerging work on the PlayStation 3-exclusive title Killzone 3, due out in early 2011.
The announcements come with just five days to go before the July 21st early registration deadline for the show, which is created by the UBM TechWeb Game Network, as is this website, and is now in its second year as the pre-eminent European game development event.
"We are excited to welcome to the GDC Europe stage such a prominent European developer and industry figure such as Hulst," said Frank Sliwka, GDC Europe Event Director. "The Killzone series and work produced from Guerrilla Games is exemplar of the ingenuity of European developers."

2010 Game Developers Conference Europe organizers have announced a Rare-helmed lecture on Microsoft's Kinect, the BioWare co-founders on the Baldur's Gate franchise, plus an iPhone marketing lecture from Words With Friends' creator, with the early registration deadline looming.

These in-depth talks are the latest to be announced 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 regional trade and consumer show.

The announcements come with less than two weeks to go before the July 21st early registration deadline for the show, which is now in its second year as the pre-eminent European game development event. The notable new speakers for this must-attend show for game developers throughout Europe consist of the following:

- In a lecture entitled 'Kinecting With A New Audience', Rare's Nick Burton and Blitz's Andrew Oliver -- respectively first and third-party developers for the Xbox 360's newly announced Kinect motion control system -- will talk about their recent experiences building Kinect launch titles and how this affected development in their respective studios.

Subjects will include "how Kinect fitted into their game engines.... how design was affected... how they built on top of changing technology", as well as many other notable areas that might be of interest to game creators considering how motion-controlled gameplay might work within their own titles.

- A special lecture called 'Baldur's Gate - A 10 Year-Retrospective' see BioWare co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk team up with Obsidian CEO and former Black Isle head Feargus Urquhart to present a retrospective lecture on the seminal PC role-playing game Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn - one of the highest-rated RPGs of all time. The Dungeons & Dragons-based title launched in 2000, and paved the way for successful BioWare RPGs like Dragon Age and the Mass Effect franchise - and three of the principals will discuss the game's creation in depth.

GDC Europe organizers have announced a rare lecture from Another World creator Eric Chahi on his new title Project Dust, also debuting an ESA/G.A.M.E. panel and a Heavy Rain production talk.

These lectures are the latest to be announced 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 regional trade and consumer show.

The notable new speakers for this must-attend show for European game developers are led by Ubisoft's Eric Chahi, the creator of seminal adventure game Another World (also known as Out Of This World) in the early '90s.

Chahi has recently returned to the game industry, and is presenting a lecture with Ronan Bel of Ubisoft called 'Creating a High-Performance Simulation: A Dynamic Natural World to Play With'. In it, the duo will introduce Galileo, "a real-time simulator of flowing water, lava, erosion, sedimentation and vegetation", and its use as foundation for a fully dynamic world-based game, the just-announced Project Dust.

In addition, a panel called 'Building Grassroots Video Game Activist Networks' sees Richard Taylor of the Entertainment Software Association and Stephan Reichart of G.A.M.E. (the German Games Developers Association) team with Crytek's Avni Yerli and additional, yet to be announced panelists to discuss how the industry can guard against censorship by using its biggest advocates - its fans.

Finally, one of Europe's key, critically acclaimed games of 2009 is examined in detail by Quantic Dream's Charles Coutier in his lecture, 'A Challenging Production: Heavy Rain'. The talk will focus on the French developer's iterative processes and adaptive management approach in making the atypical title, with plenty of specifics on asset management and outsourcing practices discussed.

Organizers of GDC Online (formerly GDC Austin) have announced the first set of lectures for this October's pre-eminent conference related to online games, including a 'Live' track featuring Sony Online, Wizard101 and IMVU speakers.

The Austin, Texas-based GDC Online conference and expo is keenly focused on development of connected games including social network titles, free-to-play web games, kid-friendly online titles, large-scale MMOs, and more, with a leading advisory board guiding the evaluation and choice of lectures.

While there are already over 25 confirmed lectures across the entire event, organizers are focusing on the 'Live' track, which discusses the vital topic of successful strategies for online games post-launch.

The rise of swiftly iterated social games and microtransactions have led to a wide array of new techniques and technologies that can help increase fun, profitability and retention, and the 'Live' track will deal with many of these.

Some of the highlights of the GDC Online 'Live' track, as announced thus far, include:

- In 'From Shadowbane to Wizard101: Strategies for Expanding Player Communities and Sustaining Enthusiasm After Launch', J. Todd Coleman & Josef Hall of KingsIsle Entertainment will reference their 10 million registered-user online game and previous experience, identifying "sustaining community that transcend genre and generation, the importance of always having new content in queue, and strategies for communicating milestones and methods for remaining engaged in public conversation."