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GDC 2017 is just weeks away! As you're looking over the session schedule and figuring out what to see, organizers want to quickly remind you that a bumper crop of GDC 2017 speakers have put together 60-second (ish) "Flash Forward" pitch videos for their talks!

These are perfect summations of what makes GDC sessions so great: they're funny, punchy, and remarkably informative. Plus, they're easy to watch! You can just head over to the official GDC YouTube channel, which is now filled to the brim with snappy videos submitted by a broad array of GDC 2017 speakers.

What's nice about these is that they're very fun and personalized pitches for why you (yes you!) should carve out some time in your busy schedule to check out that each talk while you're attending GDC.

The 2017 Game Developers Conference is just weeks away, so today organizers want to quickly let you know about some of the great UI/UX design talks taking place during the conference!

Each of these talks is part of the all-new GDC UX Summit, one of eight that will take place Monday, February 27th and Tuesday, February 28th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA -- the first two days of the conference.

These Summit talks are great because they're hyper-focused on one specific area of game design. For example, in his GDC 2017 UX Summit talk "From Rational to Emotional: Designs that Increase Player Retention", longtime Epic Games staffer Jim Brown aims to dissect the basic emotions that drive everyone, and provide specific examples of design techniques that encourage the formation of enduring emotional ties that could enhance both retention and enjoyment for players.

The 2017 Game Developers Conference is right around the corner, and organizers are pumped about the fact that the Indie MEGABOOTH Showcase is back at GDC for the fourth year in a row!

In fact, today they'd like to share the full list of games that will be playable in the MEGABOOTH by all GDC passholders throughout the conference, which is taking place the week of February 27th through March 3rd.

The Indie MEGABOOTH Showcase continues to be a fantastic collection of independent developers banding together to show off the latest and greatest indie games at conventions across the world. The MEGABOOTH exists to support indie developers, and to help pool their resources to enable them to showcase their work prominently, despite not having access to publisher support.

The organizers work with broad array of independent game studios to select a variety of games across multiple platforms -- including mobile, PC, console and more -- for exhibition at prominent game industry events, and this year they're coming to GDC 2017 with 12 games that will be playable as part of the Indie MEGABOOTH Showcase.

We're weeks away from the 2017 Game Developers Conference, and today the folks organizing the show want to be sure to let you know about a fantastic talk from a game trailer wizard about making great mixed-reality videos of your game!

As part of VRDC @ GDC 2017's Game VR/AR track of talks, Kert Gartner (the aforementioned game trailer wizard) and Northway Games' Colin Northway will be delivering a great talk on "Creating Mixed Reality Trailers and Livestreams."

This is something they know something about, having collaborated on the great mixed-reality trailer for Northway's Fantastic Contraption VR. Translating the feeling of being in a fully interactive virtual environment into a compelling 2D video people watch on their phone is a complicated problem; mixed-reality shows a player inside your game and is the best way to convey what it's like to be inside VR.

If you work on online games, you know that sometimes there's only one way to fix a game client that's too far gone: nuke it from orbit.

At the 2017 Game Developers Conference later this month, Riot Games' art director Laura DeYoung will show you how she and her team did just that for the League of Legends client -- without breaking everything in the process -- in her talk on "'League of Legends' Client Update: Art Directing a Consistent and Scalable Interactive Brand Identity."

See, in 2008 the League of Legends team cranked out a client so they could ship the game to players. They didn't have time to think about the client's creative direction or infrastructure, and DeYoung claims that it was a sub-optimal experience for players and developers alike.

In her talk, DeYoung will discuss how the team rebuilt the client to be functional and resonant with players while providing a flexible space for developers to build content -- effectively "rebuilding the plane while flying it", if you will.

If you're planning to attend the Game Developers Conference later this month, organizers want to make sure you don't miss out on all the cutting-edge eSports-focused talks taking place at the show!

These sessions will be part of the GDC eSports Day on Tuesday, February 28th, a day-long series of panels and presentations focused on cultivating a competitive game's eSports ecosystem to attract and support professional players, teams, journalists, and grassroots player organizations.

For example, come check out the opening session on "Building eSports: Twitch, 'Rocket League', and 'H1Z1: King of the Kill'" to see two very important 30-minute talks: first, Twitch VP of eSports Nick Allen walks through Twitch's unique role in identifying the potential of Rocket League, helping build its grassroots eSports scene from the ground up, and nurturing it into a sustainable competitive ecosystem.

Independent game development is more common than ever, which is why organizers of the 2017 Game Developers Conference want to make sure you don't miss out on all the great indie-focused talks taking place at the show!

In fact, there's an entire GDC Independent Games Summit dedicated to the topic, one of eight that will take place Monday, February 27th and Tuesday, February 28th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA -- the first two days of the conference.

Each Summit is designed to offer GDC attendees a practical, comphrehensive overview of a specific discipline or business, and the Indie Games Summit aims to do just that for the independent games business -- even as the business itself continues to change.