Reminder: Less Than 24 Hours To Early Reg Deadline For GDC Online 2011

Author: by Staff

With less than 24 hours left until early registration for October's GDC Online show in Austin, Texas, ends at Midnight EST on September 1, event organizers have chosen to reveal a handful of new Main Conference talks, and detail the numerous other speakers, tutorials, and events present at the show. Adding to the show's Production track, Gazillion Entertainment's VP of publishing, Dan Fiden, will host "5 Things Core Designers Should Learn from Social Games," a lecture that will detail the growing influence of social online titles on the industry at large. In the Business & Marketing track, Daniel Block of EVE Online developer CCP will discuss the perils of interrupting marketing for an online game in "What Happens When You Stop Marketing Your MMO?" The final new session this week is a Design track lecture from industry veteran (Marvel Super Hero Squad) Nikolaus Davidson, who will explore the psychology of spending money in games in "Why We Buy: A Game Designer's Guide To Transactions." These lectures join a host of other notable talks within the show's main conference, which includes tracks spanning Business & Marketing, Customer Experience, Design, Production, and Programming, as well as a sponsored track on Monetization. These recently-announced sessions within the Main Conference include Design-focused talks from Riot Games, Loot Drop, and Playdom, CCP and Zynga on designing and managing online games, a look at EA2D/BioWare San Francisco's Dragon Age Legends and Rovio's mega-hit Angry Birds, and much more. In addition to these Main Conference sessions, PopCap co-founder John Vechey will host a keynote at the event titled, "Playing Well With Others - How PopCap Creates Compelling Social Game Experiences," a talk that will provide an inside look at how mobile and social games have influenced the design philosophy of the extremely successful casual game studio. Alongside the other numerous Main Conference sessions, Blizzard Entertainment will host a full-day series of lectures from the studio's writers and story developers, "the creative minds behind Diablo, StarCraft, and Warcraft," focusing on various elements of the company's hit franchises. Google and Unity Technologies will also host their own all-day sponsored events, offering tutorials, presentations, and workshops to help developers better understand their tools and services. Outside of the Main Conference, GDC Online will offer three specialized Summits, including the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit, the GDC Virtual Items Summit, and the ever-popular Game Narrative Summit. Now in its sixth year, the Game Narrative Summit - formerly the Game Writers Conference - will powerhouse suite of talks from some of the industry's most notable writers and professionals. Thus far, the Game Narrative Summit has revealed talks on the branching narrative in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, how to build a transmedia IP, the educational benefits of ARGs, as well as roundtables and sessions from notable studios including Valve, BioWare, and Telltale Games. For the full list of Main Conference and Summit talks announced so-far, with over 120 planned in total, please check out the GDC Online 2011 Schedule builder. Also taking place at GDC Online is the second annual Game Developers Choice Online Awards, which will honor the achievements of the creators and operators of online video games that launched within the last 12 months in North America, covering large-scale MMOs, free-to-play titles, growing social network games and more. Event organizers recently debuted the list of finalists for the upcoming awards show, in addition to honoring Kesmai Corporation founders John Taylor and Kelton Flinn with the Online Game Legend award and Sony Online Entertainment's classic MMO EverQuest with the Hall of Fame Award. For more information on GDC Online as the event takes shape, please visit the official GDC Online website, or subscribe to updates from the new GDC Online-specific news page via Twitter, Facebook, or RSS. GDC Online is owned and operated by UBM TechWeb, as is this website.