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GDC 2013 organizers are highlighting design lectures on recent hits from Japan, including Dragon's Dogma, La-Mulana, Tokyo Jungle, Rune Factory 4, Puzzle & Dragons and Zero: Escape: Virtue's Last Reward.
These design lectures on acclaimed Japanese games, simultaneously translated by the notable game industry translators 8-4, will take place during GDC's main conference on Wednesday-Friday, March 27-29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.
In the 'Behind the Scenes of Dragon's Dogma,' lecture, director Hideaki Itsuno will discuss Capcom's open-world action RPG through "untold development stories, humor and inspiring ideas" and touch on "marketing and post-release product support strategy."
Next, Takumi Naramura will discuss how his team at Nigoro used feedback from its audience before and after La-Mulana's release in 'Commun-indies: Making the Most of Your Indie Community.' Their support spans from before the game's initial 2005 release to beyond its 2011 WiiWare, 2012 PC remake release, and its 2013 successful Steam Greenlight campaign.
In 'RPG Development: Inspiration and Perspiration,' Marvelous AQL's Yoshifumi Hashimoto will draw on his experience helping to produce RPGs such as Rune Factory, Harvest Moon, and Muramasa: The Demon Blade to discuss "best practices for developing and innovating in the genre."

GDC 2013 organizers are highlighting more day-long sessions for the March conference, with industry-driving animation and cross-platform production bootcamps and an iOS crash course that will cover API and popular engine implementations.
The tutorials and bootcamps all take place during the first two days of GDC's March conference on Monday-Tuesday, March 25-26 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.
The first bootcamp is simply called 'iOS games in a day'. It will include lessons on Cocos2D, openGL and Unity3D, lectures on popular and essential iOS APIs for games, and "a deep-dive on game architecture selection and best practices."
Speakers at this iOS crash course include Mike Daley (Co-Founder, 71Squared Ltd), Gareth Jenkins (Founder & Lead Developer, 36peas), Matt Rix (Founder, Magicule), Mike Schramm (Editor, TUAW/Joystiq), Keith Shepherd (Co-Founder, ImangiStudios), Rod Strougo (iOS Developer & Instructor, Big Nerd Ranch & Prop Group), Ray Wenderlich (Founder, Razeware LLC), and David Whatley (CEO, Critical Thought Games, LLC).
In the day-long 'Animation Bootcamp', animators from across the industry will first focus on the believability, body mechanics, and facial animation needed in today's games. From these lectures will come practical discussions, including Hitman: Absolution animation director Simon Unger on how to get the most from motion capture, Ubisoft's Jonathan Cooper on animating the "3rd Assassin," and Battlefield 3 and Killzone 2 animator Ryan Duffin on how to give purpose to first-person animation.

GDC 2013 organizers are highlighting major new vendor sessions, including Sony on PlayStation 4 development and design, Mozilla on 'fast and awesome' HTML5 games, NVIDIA on its Project SHIELD handheld device, and Oculus VR on diving into virtual reality with Oculus Rift.
These sessions all take place during GDC's Main Conference to be held Wednesday-Friday, March 27-29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.
A month after announcing the PlayStation 4, Sony Computer Entertainment America will present at GDC 2013 an 'Overview of PS4 for Developers.' Attendees can expect to hear about "the technology from a development standpoint as well as from the design side" for this next-generation console releasing later this year.
Oculus VR will present 'Running the VR Gauntlet -- VR Ready, Are You?' with chief software architect Michael Antonov and co-founder Nate Mitchell. They will share what they have learned from building their new VR game platform, what developers need to know about supporting it, and how to overcome VR technical challenges.
In 'NVIDIA Project SHIELD and Tegra 4: Redefining AFK,' senior software engineers Andrew Edelsten and Paul Hodgson will share tips and tricks for targeting the Project SHIELD handheld device, a run down of the latest NVIDIA development tools, and Tegra 4's relevant new GPU features.
Finally, in 'Fast and Awesome HTML5 Games' presented by Mozilla, senior researcher Alon Zakai and engineering director Vladimir Vukicevic will talk about techniques for quick JavaScript execution and easy porting of existing titles. The two will also show what HTML5 currently offers for graphics, multithreading, networking, and audio in games.

In order to paint a picture of the games business as it looks right before GDC 2013, the Game Developers Conference has polled more than 2,500 North American game developers who attended the conference in 2012 or plan to attend GDC 2013 in March about their development practices, revealing several notable trends with regards to platforms, money, team sizes and more.
The GDC intends to field a similar survey each winter, in advance of the conference in San Francisco.
Organized by the UBM Tech Game Network, GDC 2013 will take place March 25-29 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California.
The Rise Of The Indie
A key finding of the GDC 2013 State Of The Industry survey is that independent game development and smaller teams are on the rise like never before. In fact, 53% of the respondents identified themselves as 'indie developers,' and of those, 51% have been indie developers for less than two years.
In addition, 46% of the survey's respondents work within companies of ten people or less. Further proving the move to indie, only 24% of those surveyed worked with a publisher on their last game, while an even smaller 20% are doing so on their current projects.

GDC 2013 organizers have added more design talks to its March conference, including Telltale on using empathy, character, and choice to involve the player; Linden Labs on its new storytelling app, Versu; and CD Projekt RED on techniques to go from great ideas to game features.
The Design Track is just one of seven Main Conference tracks to be held Wednesday-Friday, March 27-29 during the Game Developers Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.
Telltale Games' Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman will discuss how to go against the apocalyptic zombie video game grain in 'Saving Doug: Empathy, Character, and Choice in The Walking Dead.' The two will share how they elicited in players emotions and experiences not often found in the mass market while creating a commercially and critically successful episodic game.
Elsewhere, creative director of Linden Labs (Second Life) Emily Short will dissect the studio's recently released storytelling app in 'Turning Comedy of Manners into Gameplay: Versu Postmortem.' Short, who has created over 2 dozen text games herself, will discuss the iOS App, focusing on "creating a game focused on social interaction as its primary mechanic, the UI issues in building interactive text for experienced readers," and more.
Finally, lead gameplay designer of CD Projekt RED (The Witcher franchise) Maciej Szczesnik will offer several creativity boosting methods to get 'From Great Ideas to Game Features.' Also included will be "feature assessment tools, backlog optimization and prioritization tools, and a structured approach to transforming ideas into optimal production plans that maximize the effect."

GDC organizers have announced the next in its series of new onsite events at GDC 2013, in the form of 'Rumpus Royale MMXIII'.
This week-long 'indie game world championships' is created in a partnership with raucous UK multiplayer indie party organizers Wild Rumpus.
The event will span the entire week of GDC, March 25th-29th, will be located on the Street Level in the West Hall of the Moscone Center, and will provide an all-day "training arcade" and daily tournaments to all GDC attendees.
The Wild Rumpus exists to bring together the best of indie multiplayer games for live events. Members behind the organization include Honeyslug co-founder and Hohokum developer Ricky Haggett, artist and designer Richard Hogg, whose work includes Poto & Cabenga and Frobisher Says, Die Gute Fabrik's George Buckenham and Penguin Books digital producer Marie Foulston.
Wild Rumpus' GDC event invites attendees to "come take on the gaming titans" in this event, with guest commentators and surprises to be announced in the near future.

GDC 2013 organizers have revealed new Advocacy Track talks for its March conference, including sessions on discussing women in games, improving the public image of games, and writing more diverse game characters.
The Advocacy Track is just one of seven Main Conference tracks to be held Wednesday-Friday, March 27-29 during the Game Developers Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA.
GDC has programmed its own sessions and also partnered with the IGDA for this track to present topics such as diversity, censorship, and quality of life, with the goal of offering "a forum for discussion and ultimately a place to effect change for the development community."
In a newly announced panel inspired by the #1ReasonWhy and #1ReasonToBe Twitter hashtag discussions, researchers, critics, and designers will present what it means to be a woman in the games industry and what actions everyone can take to foster more inclusiveness.
The panel will include Gamasutra editor at large Leigh Alexander, game critic and San Francisco State University Masters student Mattie Brice, Funomena co-founder Robin Hunicke, Microsoft Studios game designer Kim McAuliffe, game designer and IGDA's Women in Games chair Brenda Romero, and Storm8 game designer Elizabeth Sampat.