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This year's Game Developers Conference is less than a week away, and show organizers have issued a reminder that online registration for the event will close Wednesday, February 29 at 11:59 EST.

That leaves a bit more than a day for interested parties to register online for a show pass. Those that choose to register before the deadline will be able to save up to 10 percent on their purchase.

For those that don't register online, GDC 2012 will also offer onsite registration from Sunday, March 4 through Friday, March 9 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The conference itself takes place between the 5th and the 9th.

Alongside the registration reminder, show organizers have also chosen to point out some of the notable events and sessions at the upcoming show.

This year, GDC will host its first-ever "Flash Forward" session, in which all Main Conference speakers will provide a quick, 60-second pitch of their respective sessions. This rapid-fire format will help GDC attendees decide which content they are most interested in checking out.

In another first, the show will offer the brand-new GDC Play hall, in which developers from all over the world will showcase their products and companies to gain publicity, meet potential partners, and strike new business deals. Exhibitors at the showcase range from Facebook gardening game developers to studios working on big-name IPs like Game of Thrones.

In addition, the show will once again bring back the popular Classic Game Postmortem series, this time featuring talks covering influential titles such as Fallout, Gauntlet, Alone in the Dark, and Harvest Moon.

And as usual, GDC will host dozens of sessions across its Main Conference and specialized Summits, covering an wide range of topics related to game development, the industry itself, and much more. Check out the show's official Schedule Builder for more information on the individual presentations.

[Digital historian Jason Scott returns to his "Tales from the GDC Vault" series to introduce freshly digitized lectures from GDC's past, including a keynote from The Matrix's John Gaeta.]

Hi, it's Jason Scott, GDC archivist. My job has been to digitize older materials from the GDC archives and get them into the GDC Vault site, so that years and years of GDC talks can join their more modern brethren and educate and entertain for years to come. I also disappeared for a while.

What, did you think I was gone forever? Actually, I've been very busy, even though it hasn't translated to any blog posts for a while. Without further ado, let's talk about what I've been up to.

First, take a look at the picture above. that's what 173 Betacam SP tapes look like after you digitize them -- just a hard drive in a dock. Besides the 200+ hours of tape this translates to, it also has dozens of hours of audio recordings as well.

They range from a couple choice pieces in 1996 up through to 2004. After 2004, GDC switches to MiniDV tapes, and I've got that box waiting for me in the future, but it's the oldest material that we're going for right now.

During this time, GDC organizers upgraded the back-end of the GDC Vault, moved some servers, and I held off too much aggressive uploading. But we're in back in full now, and I've got some dedicated machinery creating the .FLV files of these long-lost talks and getting them to you.

I've also been transcribing the session descriptions from a library of programs provided to me, so you can get a solid preview of what you're going to see and hear. Or, in a few cases, not so solid at all.

The winner for me in the "description bonanza" category has to be special effects wizard John Gaeta, who did the effects for the Matrix series and is credited with the "bullet-time" effect that is still showing up in films more than a decade later. This description of his 2004 keynote leaves... well, perhaps it leaves everything to the imagination.

The session's lengthy description covers topics from all over the map, spanning issues such as using "computer graphics for curing the criminally insane," "the rise of telekinetic programming," "the persistence of Japan," and much, much more. It's an eclectic, sometimes confusing list to be sure, and experiencing the session itself is the only real way to make sense of it all.

GDC 2012 is drawing ever closer, and show organizers have chosen to highlight even more of the notable and eccentric game developers at the first-ever GDC Play showcase.

As outlined previously, GDC Play is a new program that gives emerging game developers a chance to show off their games to a host of specially invited industry decision makers, in addition to the 19,000-strong GDC attendee base.

The showcase itself will take place Tuesday March 7th through Thursday March 9th in the Esplanade Ballroom in the South Hall of Moscone Center in San Francisco, and all GDC attendees are welcome to check out the products and companies on display at specially designed IGF Pavilion-style kiosks and meeting rooms.

In addition, GDC 2012 All-Access Pass holders and exhibitors can also sign up in the recently announced GDC Business Matchmaking software and book meetings with GDC Play companies right now, or can turn up on site to check out the kiosks.

The GDC Play hall will also be home to the recently announced 'History Of 3D Games' exhibit from the Bay Area-based Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment, also free to all GDC attendees.

Here are the latest organizer-highlighted companies at the band new GDC Play showcase:

- The social gaming startup 10-20 Media will host a booth at GDC Play to showcase GardenQuest, a 3D Facebook title about -- as the name implies -- gardening. The game itself will also include its own virtual economy in which real-world gardening brands and retailers can reach out to consumers with branded virtual goods, rewards, and more. The company is currently looking for potential partners to increase its social growth.

- Elsewhere, Australian developer Brawsome will demo the upcoming PC adventure game MacGuffin's Curse. Overall, the team focuses on capturing the spirit of classic point-and-click titles for a modern audience. The studio is also interested in looking to the mobile realm, and it hopes to meet some interesting partners at GDC Play.

- Perhaps best known for titles such as Pro Cycling Manager, Loki, and Dungeon Party, the French team at Cyanide Studio will discuss its upcoming titles based on existing popular IP, including George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones (pictured), Games Workshop's Blood Bowl, and Rackham's Confrontation. At GDC Play, Cyanide plans to pitch original IPs to some potential publishing partners.

Game Developers Conference 2012 organizers have debuted a series of notable sessions within the first-ever Game IT Summit, featuring talks from prominent game developers and researchers such as Jane McGonigal (pictured), Ian Bogost, and much more.

This new Summit, scheduled for Monday, March 5, will examine how video games can help accomplish organizational roles through enterprise-focused game development.

Across its numerous sessions, the Game IT Summit will cover new ways to boost productivity, increase user engagement, and encourage group interaction through games.

As Summit advisor Ian Bogost puts it, this Summit isn't about "gamification," but about something far greater.

"Rather than think of Game IT as a less odious nickname for 'gamification,' think of it instead as a more deliberate and long-term commitment to the process of making and using games in the service of different industries."

"This isn't about the next hype cycle or trend, but about figuring out how to make use of games as infrastructure in the context of organizations," he said.

Those interested in checking out the Game IT Summit can do so by registering for an All Access or Summits & Tutorials pass on the official GDC website passes page.

The following are some of the notable sessions to be held within this new Summit:

- The Game IT Summit will open with a series of mini-talks focusing on how games can solve problems by encouraging group interaction. The session, "Game Structured Hiveminds: Organizing People & Solving Problems with Fun," will cover a handful of new game-based projects that use crowdsourcing and collaboration to help researchers decode the human genome, coordinate civic logistics, and develop artificial intelligence. Speakers include Digitalmill's Ben Sawyer (Virtual U), McGill University's Jerome Waldispuhl, Entertainment Technology Center's Evan Brown, and Citizen Logistics' Joe Edelman.

- Elsewhere, a panel of speakers will present their responses to a challenge posed at GDC 2011 -- to create games that help players stay healthy or fight physical and mental illness. In "Health IT! Enterprising Approaches to Combining Health and Games," speakers such as Social Chocolate's Jane McGonigal, ShapeUp's Rajiv Kumar, and GreenGoose's Brian Krejcarek will showcase games and technologies that promote mental, physical and social resilience, boost physical well-being, and much more.

As part of a continuing series of updates for the 2012 Game Developers Conference, show organizers have revealed three new sessions within the Game Design track, featuring a panel with notable speakers such as David Edery (Spry Fox) and Ben Cousins (Ngmoco Sweden), and presentations on EA's The Sims Social and Naughty Dog's approach to psychologically-led design.

As part of the discipline-specific Game Design track, these talks will feature some of the industry's top designers, who will offer insight on using new technologies, designing gameplay systems, refining in-game mechanics, and much more.

The sessions will take place alongside the rest of GDC 2012's Main Conference, which will be held Wednesday, March 7th to Friday, March 9th at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Those interested in checking out any of the content within the Main Conference can do so by registering for an All Access or Main Conference pass on the official GDC website passes page.

The following are some of the newest lectures to be added to GDC 2012's Main Conference:

- In a major panel dubbed, "Designing for Free: How Free-to-Play Games Blur the Line Between Design and Business," four talented game designers will discuss how to blend fun game design with the business needs of this emerging free-to-play model.

The session will be moderated by Quarter to Three's Tom Chick, and will feature Spry Fox's David Edery (Triple Town), Ngmoco Sweden's Ben Cousins (Battlefield Play4Free), Dragon Age Legends and Civilization IV designer Soren Johnson, and LucasArts' Matthias Worch, all of whom will discuss the inherent design challenges that come with free to play games

- Elsewhere, Ray Mazza, creative director at EA's Playfish, will look back at the studio's recent Facebook hit, The Sims Social (pictured). During his talk, "Life is a Social Game: Lessons Learned Bringing The Sims to Facebook," Mazza will outline how the team adapted the popular big-budget franchise to social platforms, and he will discuss the game's emphasis on player-to-player interaction, an essential factor in its eventual success.

- Finally, noted Naughty Dog lead game designer Richard Lemarchand (Uncharted franchise) will discuss how to improve game design by focusing on the psychological forces that drive a player's attention. The talk, "Attention, Not Immersion: Making Your Games Better with Psychology and Playtesting, the Uncharted Way," will pick apart the overlapping phenomena of entrancement, compulsion and depth, offering insight on how to better hold a player's attention and, hopefully, make games that are more fun to play.

For today's update on the 2012 Game Developers Conference, show organizers have detailed this year's series of "Poster Sessions," which offer small-scale, intimate presentations from BioWare, Crystal Dynamics and others on new programming techniques, design strategies, production tips, and much more.

As the name implies, the GDC Poster Sessions are presented in front of a physical poster, and speakers will outline their thesis to a small group of attendees, often engaging in one-on-one discourse throughout the session.

These half-hour talks will be held three or four at a time in the second floor overlook of the West Hall of San Francisco's Moscone Center, where GDC is being held. They will repeat twice over the course of an hour, giving attendees a chance to check out multiple sessions, even if their time slots overlap.

All Poster Sessions will take place between during lunch hours on Wednesday to Friday, March 7th to 9th, as part of GDC's Main Conference. The following are some of the standout Poster Sessions for the upcoming show:

- BioWare software developer Dave Schaefer will offer some programming-focused tips to help streamline development and prevent unexpected errors. His talk, "No Broken Builds: Increasing Team Velocity with Preflight," will detail how BioWare revamped its pipeline for Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age 2 to implement automated preflight tests, allowing programmers to easily test their work and maintain momentum.

- Game jams can prove an excellent opportunity to flex your creative muscles and experiment with new ideas, and Tagged Inc. junior game designer Auston Montville argues they can be useful even to full-fledged game studios. In "Game Studios Can (and Should) Jam Too!," Montville will outline Tagged's internal game jams, noting how they can inspire employees and spark renewed creativity.

- Elsewhere, Seth Gibson, a senior technical artist at Crystal Dynamics, will host "You Got Art In My Test Suite!" Here, he will explain how to develop test suites for Python based tools interfaces, and how to incorporate unit test content into existing test suites using a series of useful Python features.

- Game designer Joshua DeBonis of Sortasoft will present an interesting design strategy to help spark new ideas with a talk dubbed "Game Design in Parallel." DeBonis will argue that by designing two games around a similar subject or idea, developers can more easily solve design problems by looking at two complementary concepts.

This week, Game Developers Conference 2012 show organizers have announced new talks, including Activision on the innovative Skylanders, this year's Game Design Challenge participants, and a Deus Ex: Human Revolution design postmortem, as well as a talk on IGF Grand Prize nominee Frozen Synapse.

All of these talks fall within the show's Game Design track, one of the seven main tracks at the jam-packed Main Conference taking place Wednesday, March 7th to Friday, March 9th. Here, the industry's top designers will share their techniques for getting the most out of modern technologies, defining new gameplay systems, refining in-game mechanics, and more.

Those interested in checking out all of the notable content within the Main Conference can do so by registering for an All Access or Main Conference pass on the official GDC website passes page.

The following are some of the newest lectures to be added to GDC 2012's Main Conference:

- Activision's Skylanders transmedia franchise has recently taken the toy and video game industries by storm, and senior design specialist Mike Stout will detail its development in "Reaching Into the Toy-Chest: A Look into Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure's Design."

This talk will outline the highs and lows of Skylanders' creation (pictured), detailing how Activision developed a game with 32 playable characters, integrated the experience with a full line of toys, and reacted to the game's overwhelming success.

- In addition, GDC's classic Game Design Challenge will return to give developers a chance to showcase their best designs based on a given theme. Last year, participants were asked to create a game that was also a religion, a stand-out talk that was so fascinating that it became a Wired magazine article.

This time, they will be asked to design a game that has a measurably positive impact on its players -- and can be played in 60 seconds or less. Last year's champion, indie developer Jason Rohrer (Passage, Between), will take on two new challengers - Uncharted franchise lead game designer Richard Lemarchand and Sinistar and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis co-creator Noah Falstein. GDC attendees will vote to determine which one comes out on top.