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The 2018 Game Developers Conference is just a few months away, and today organizers want to quickly highlight a practical talk at the March event that's all about the art (and business) of making great games with big licenses.

It's a Mobile track talk on "Succeeding with Licensed IP for Mobile F2P Games" from N3twork's Eric Seufert, and it promises to be great because it will arm you with specific points to emphasize in negotiating an IP license with a license holder, as well as a general strategic viewpoint on how licensed IP can amplify a game's commercial potential.

Seufert aims to give you a framework for assessing an IP license for a mobile free-to-play game in terms of its user acquisition value, using three examples of IP-licensed games that he's personally worked on.

Organizers have revealed the nominees for the 18th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards, the leading peer-based video game event celebrating the industry’s top games and developers.

Winners in all fourteen categories will be honored at the Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA) ceremony, taking place on Wednesday, March 21, 2018 at 6:30pm at the San Francisco Moscone Center during the 2018 Game Developers Conference (GDC) and held in conjunction with the Independent Games Festival Awards (IGF).

GDCA will be presided by returning host and industry veteran, Robin Hunicke, a professor of game design at UC Santa Cruz and the co-founder of the independent San Francisco game studio, Funomena. The ceremonies are available to attend for all GDC 2018 pass-holders.

Leading the pack are Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Horizon Zero Dawn from Guerrilla Games with a total of six nominations each, including Game of the Year. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the massively reimagined open-world RPG, also received nominations for Best Audio, Design, Innovation, Technology, and Visual Art.  The compelling sci-fi adventure, Horizon Zero Dawn, was additionally nominated for Best Audio, Design, Narrative, Technology and Visual Art.

The 2018 Game Developers Conference, the world’s largest and longest-running event serving professionals dedicated to the art and science of making games, will welcome Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen and NYU Game Center Director Frank Lantz to speak as part of the conference’s reintroduced Vision Track, a series of mini-keynotes designed to provoke and inspire GDC attendees.

Paananen’s talk, titled The Cell Structure: How Supercell Turned the Traditional Org-Chart Upside Down, will focus on building a company culture that lets developers run teams independently by placing people at the heart of the company.

This rare talk from the leader behind games such as Clash of Clans, Hay Day, Boom Beach and Clash Royale – which collectively have more than 100 million daily players – explains how transferring vision to individual teams has paid dividends for the company.

Lantz’s talk, This is Your Brain on Games, allows the creator of cheeky ‘clicker game’ hit Universal Paperclips and long-time game designer, scholar and provocateur to discuss what it would look like for games to improve humanity’s overall ability to understand, explain and predict the world.

The Independent Games Festival (IGF), which honors the most influential, innovative and acclaimed projects in independent game development, revealed the award finalists for its 20th annual awards ceremony.

Just a quick reminder that the Game Developers Conference and Unity have launched the Unity Student Scholarship, which aims to give 50 students with outstanding Unity projects All Access passes to GDC 2018.

Don't forget that the deadline to submit your project is this Sunday, December 31, 2017! There is no application cost and students can enter here. 

Of course, the Unity Student Scholarship was created to provide learning and networking opportunities for up and coming developers. Those selected for the scholarship will receive an all-access pass for GDC 2018, which also includes access to a pre-show kickoff, hosted by GDC on-site before the week begins.

Game Developers Conference organizers are proud to continue their partnership with leading childcare provider KiddieCorp and offer GDC 2018 attendees access to an on-site children's program.

So if you're planning to bring kids with you when you attend GDC 2018 in San Francisco next March, please note that the advance deadline to register for the program is February 20th, 2018 -- less than two months away!

You want to register early, because registration is handled on a first-come, first-served basis. It's also possible to register on-site, but there is no guarantee KiddieCorp will be able to accommodate on-site registrations and doing so is not recommended.

The 2018 Game Developers Conference is just a few months away, and it's shaping up to be a smorgasbord of game industry insight -- including a very cool talk from the folks at Epic Games about all the great foliage in Unreal Engine 4.

So make like a tree and leave time in your GDC 2018 schedule to see Epic's Ryan Brucks deliver a talk (part of the Visual Arts track!) on "Realistic Foliage Imposter and Forest Rendering in UE4."

Come learn how efficient and accurate imposters can be used to render vast forest scenes in UE4. Brucks will explain how a hybrid combination of techniques can be employed to get high quality with high performance.

Advanced features such as pixel depth offset will be shown to match shadowing and geometry intersections. In addition, this lecture will be looking at a higher quality control version that uses a more expensive ray marching approach. You won't want to skip it!