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Organizers of the 2015 Game Developers Conference have announced the eight winners of the Best in Play award program for exhibitors in the three-day GDC Play 2015 event, which allows emerging developers to show their games in a specially designed kiosk.

The winners, picked from more than 50 exhibitors participating in GDC Play, include the strikingly beautiful Owlboy from D-Pad Studios, the remarkable open-ended space simulator Into the Stars by Fugitive Games and The Good Mood Creators' lush animal-themed platformer Mekazoo.

For the Best in Play award program, all GDC Play exhibitors were judged on their in-development or complete games by a panel of veteran GDC organizers and Gamasutra editors. All Best in Play award winners will receive 2 All Access Passes to the 2016 Game Developers Conference.

Passes for the Game Developers Conference 2015 are going fast, and today we're excited to announce a very special session that you won't want to miss.

This year we're kicking off GDC with the fourth annual Flash Forward session, starting at 9:30am on Wednesday, March 4th in the West Hall of San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center.

The Flash Forward offers attendees an opportunity to hear what will be discussed in sessions taking place Wednesday-Friday directly from the people giving the talks, which should help listeners better decide which sessions are perfect for their needs. Plus, audience members can expect to be entertained by some of the biggest names and foremost experts in the games industry.

The 2015 Game Developers Conference is coming up fast, but we wanted to pause for a second to highlight one of the more popular sessions at the show: the #1ReasonToBe panel on the Advocacy track of talks.

Inspired by the #1ReasonWhy and #1ReasonToBe hashtagged discussions that erupted across social media in 2013, this panel is a rapid, fun microtalk-style celebration and exploration of what it means to be a woman in games.

For the second year running GDC organizers have made all Advocacy track talks open to all GDC attendees, regardless of what type of pass they purchase, so it's open to everyone with a GDC badge.

What's the best way to prepare the next generation of game developers for the challenges they'll face?

It's one of the more challenging topics tackled at the annual Game Developers Conference, and so we're highlighting a few notable talks on the topic today that you must see at GDC 2015 next month.

These talks are part of the GDC Education Summit, one of eight that will take place Monday, March 2nd and Tuesday, March 3rd at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA during the first two days of the conference.

Game Developers Conference officials are excited to announce that voting for the Game Developers Choice Audience Award is open now, and will remain open through February 13th, 2015 at 11:59 PM PT.

This Audience Award represent an opportunity for the public to weigh in and cast a vote for their favorite nominee. Anyone who would like to vote for the Audience Award and be a part of the prestigious Game Developers Choice Awards can visit the links below, select the name of the game they'd like to vote for from a list of nominees, and enter a valid email address. Voters will then confirm their vote via email.

As more and more developers seek to foster passionate communities around their games, inspired community management is critical. Today, Game Developers Conference officials are excited to highlight a few notable talks on the topic that you'll be able to attend at GDC 2015.

These sessions will be part of the GDC Community Management Summit, just one of eight that will take place Monday, March 2nd and Tuesday, March 3rd at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA during the first two days of the conference.

Developers Raph Koster, Richard Vogel and Gordon Walton have all worked on multiple online games (Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online, The Old Republic [pictured]) and during their talk, "Managing Game Communities Within the Culture Wars", they'll share concrete community management practices for dealing with audiences of varying passion and commitment levels that you can immediately apply to your own projects. 

Passes for the upcoming 2015 Game Developers Conference are going fast, and today we're announcing even more sessions for the Main Conference that you'll want to check out.

We'd like to highlight a few of our excellent Japanese-language talks, which will feature prominent Japanese game makers sharing advice and answering questions with attendees in both Japanese and English (via translation). 

Notably, don't miss Square Enix's Tomohiro Yajima and Yuichi Nishimatsu deconstructing the culture, rendition, and technology of Japanese game audio in their session on "The Evolving JRPG Audio Culture." Together, the pair will seek to explain how JRPG audio has developed culture-wise and technology-wise by examining the craft of creating music, sound effects, and dialogues. In each of the three categories, the long-serving Square Enix developers will examine how the craft has evolved through the years and where they hope to take it from here.