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The organizers of the Independent Games Festival, the leading showcase for independent video games worldwide, have announced a new agreement with Valve for IGF 2013.

All IGF Main Competition finalists for this year's event will receive the opportunity to accept a distribution agreement for Steam, a leading platform for distribution in today's burgeoning independent gaming market.

The organizers behind March's Game Developers Conference 2013 have highlighted the next batch of Main Conference lectures, which feature industry leaders from Epic, Frictional Games, and Microsoft. They collectively offer cutting-edge discussions in the areas of visual arts, design, production, and audio.

Gears of War creator Epic Games will analyze how it overcame the challenges of outsourcing art for its leading IPs. Amnesia: The Dark Descent developer Frictional Games will examine a new way of designing games, based around creating a sense of presence that stimulates players' imaginations.

Finally, Microsoft's Advanced Technology Group will dissect several audio innovations - while laying out ways to make audio more a part of the game itself rather than being merely ancillary to it.

The full details on these new lectures are as follows:

- In Building Epic Worlds through the Strengths of Artsourcing, Epic Games producer Chris Mielke will share the secrets to outsourcing the art talent behind the Gears of War, Infinity Blade, and Fortnite universes. Mielke will highlight some of the obstacles Epic overcame in production, while explaining how outsourcer integration can go smoothly across console, PC, and mobile platforms.

- Frictional Games' creative director Thomas Grip will explore The Self, Presence and Story-Telling in his game design lecture. As an alternative to traditional game mechanics, Grip will argue that a game should create a sense of presence and allow players' imagination do the work, much how the company's own Penumbra and Amnesia: The Dark Descent (pictured) evoked strong and often terrifying emotions.

With planning for March's GDC 2013 in San Francisco now underway, the show's organizers have debuted more than 20 sessions via the initial Schedule Builder, with hundreds more due over the next few weeks.

As always, prospective GDC speakers are working closely with the advisory board, who are individually mentoring talks through multiple submissions stages and into the official program.

As part of this process, GDC 2013's very first announced talks are now available online via its official Schedule Builder - with highlights to be further explored soon including a 'poster session' on Metacritic scoring, plus talks from Double Fine, Frictional Games and Microsoft.

Alongside the Schedule Builder, GDC organizers have also added this week a pair of roundtable talks focusing on managing art teams and incorporating designers into your production processes.

Unlike GDC's standard lectures and panels, these roundtable sessions allow attendees to sit down with the host to engage in face-to-face discussions, share their personal experiences, and learn from their fellow developers.

First, Keith Self-Ballard, an art director at Blizzard Entertainment on the company's unannounced next-gen MMO, will host the "Art Director and Lead Artist Roundtable," which will provide an open forum for artists and art directors to exchange ideas regarding how studios should manage, lead, and direct their art teams.

This session will address the most pressing issues facing today's game artists, and attendees will walk away with a better understanding of how to overcome these challenges.

In the second new roundtable, storied developer and University of Advancing Technology professor David Wessman (TIE Fighter, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, Saints Row) will help attendees look at how designers should interact with developers from other disciplines.

His roundtable, dubbed "Whose Design Is It Anyway? Game Designers and Development Teams," will help designers and other developers understand each other's roles, improve cross-studio communication, and create a more collaborative atmosphere across their entire studio.

While touch controls are a fantastic way to attract a wider and more diverse audience, developers need to be careful to get things right, as poor touch controls will often make a game fall flat on its face.

Indie developer Zach Gage (SpellTower, Bit Pilot) has spent the last few years honing his skills making touch-based iOS games, and this Sunday at GDC China, he'll host an in-depth session to help other developers learn from his experience.

During his session, Gage will examine both classic and emerging control schemes, noting whether they succeed and discussing the lessons developers can draw from them. He'll also take a moment to look at a number of different touch-based games to pick apart their triumphs and failures.

Although the session is focused primarily on touch-screen games, attendees will be able to use Gage's lessons learned when moving to any type of new game hardware.

His session, titled "Controls You Can Feel: Putting Tactility Back Into Touch Controls," will take place as part of GDC China's Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit, and will be open to GDC China's All Access and Summits & Tutorials pass holders. Online registration is now open on the GDC China website, and the show itself will take place November 17-19 at the Shanghai Convention Center in Shanghai, China.

In addition to the above presentation, GDC China organizers have also added the following talks to the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit:

- In "From Japan to the World -- the Status and Future of Mobile Social Card Games," D2C Inc.'s Xiaolei Zhang will take a close look at the growing popularity of mobile card games. These titles are already a phenomenon in Japan, and Zhang believes the craze will soon expand into the rest of the world. He'll pick apart D2C's own card games like The Sekigahara Kingdoms and Pirate Fantasy to help other developers understand why these games are so popular.

- Elsewhere, Game Insight's Darya Trushkina will explain how Chinese developers can succeed in North America during a session titled "How Chinese Mobile Can Win the West. Drawing from Game Insight's international publishing experience, Trushkina will compare the Eastern and Western game markets, while offering tips to help Chinese developers expand their reach into brand new territories.

While mobile game developers often earn much of their revenue from North America, regions like China, Japan, and Korea are still extremely valuable.

The Korean market in particular has plenty of opportunities for mobile developers, and at next week's GDC China in Shanghai, attendees will learn the ins and out of breaking into this lucrative market.

During the show, Neowiz China's Eliot Shin will take an in-depth look at the Korean mobile market, detailing how it differs from other regions and why it's so appealing to developers around the world.

Korean mobile games often have an extremely high average revenue per user, but Shin believes it can take a fair bit of trail and error to really capitalize on that potential. While his talk primarily focuses on helping Chinese developers, Shin will offer plenty of insight to help both Western and Asian studios launch successful mobile games in the Korean market.

His talk, "Korean Mobile Market and Penetration Strategy for Chinese Developers," is part of GDC China's Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit, and will be open to All Access and Summits & Tutorials pass holders. Online registration is now open on the GDC China website, and the show itself will take place November 17-19 at the Shanghai Convention Center in Shanghai, China.

In addition to the above presentation, GDC China organizers have also added the following talks to the show's Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit:

- In "The Battle Royale of Mobile Social: Friends or Players?," Applifier CEO Jussi Laakkonen will pick apart the increasingly competitive mobile social market. He'll examine heavyweights like Gree, DeNA, Tencent, and more, noting how developers can make mobile games that have better global appeal.

- Elsewhere, Appy Entertainment brand director Paul O'Connor will discuss how his studio converted two premium apps to a free-to-play model, and saw a large boost in revenue in the process. His talk, "Premium to Freemium: Pivoting Monetization Method for Best-Selling Apps," will offer specific advice for other developers looking to make a similar shift.

The build-up to next March's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco has officially begun. The show's organizers are now working hard to craft the event's robust session lineup, and today they announced the first three talks that have made the cut.

The first talk to join the GDC 2013 roster is "Rendering Assassin's Creed III," a Programming track lecture that will offer a detailed look at the game's weather system, lighting solution, and much more. Speaker and Ubisoft lead graphics programmer Jean-Francois St-Amour will also share some of Ubisoft's tricks for improving current-generation titles when porting them to DX11 PC hardware.

The other two debut talks come from GDC 2013's Business, Marketing, and Management track. In "The Beauty and Challenge of Mixing Physical and Digital Games," a robust panel of industry veterans will take a moment to examine the blurring line between physical and digital titles.

During this session, speakers including Eric Hautemont (Days of Wonder), Soren Johnson (Zynga), Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield (Three Donkeys), Joel Goodman (Playdek), and moderator Tom Chick (Quarter to Three) will detail how developers can benefit from straddling the line between video games and board games.

The third GDC session, also in the Business track, is a roundtable examining the intricacies of microtransaction-based business models. You can attend "Free to Play, Pay for Stuff: Virtual Goods Win" and join Three Rings CEO Daniel James (Spiral Knights) and Iron Realms chairman Matt Mihaly as they discuss the dangers, opportunities, and ongoing trends in the free-to-play and virtual markets. This will be the ninth successive year of this popular roundtable.

More talks will debut in the near future, and all of the above sessions will take place as part of GDC 2013's Main Conference, which is open to All Access and Main Conference pass holders (a special Audio-specific pass is also available). Discounted Early Bird registration is now open on the show's official website, and GDC 2013 itself will take place March 25-29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.