game-developers-conference posts

While game industry members prepare for the mothership Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco next month, the show's organizers Think Services are already thinking ahead for the next event. Today they announced that GDC Austin, which has always concentrated on discussions of online gaming, has now been officially renamed GDC Online.

The event will still be held in Austin, Texas with the new version to be held on October 5-8. The newly renamed GDC Online will concentrate even more on online gaming, including MMO titles, social gaming and more. Submissions for the event will begin later this spring.

The 2010 edition of the Game Developers Conference is less than two months away but the events and keynote speeches are beginning to be announced. Today the GDC organizers announced that legendary game designer Sid Meier of Firaxis Games will present one of the event's main keynote speeches.

The keynote itself is titled "The Psychology of Game Design (Everything You Know Is Wrong)". Meier's speech will give his theory that the"driving force of a game's design should be the psychology of the player." Meier is of course beta known for the Civilization series of strategy games. He is currently working on an upcoming Facebook version of the franchise, the Civilization Network.

The Independent Games Festival has wasted no time in the new year. The annual indie games competition has announced the finalists for the various categories for the 2010 edition of its awards. The categories include the big one, the Seamus McNally Grand Prize, where the winning development team gets $20,000. This year's awards also includes the new Nuovo Award which, in the IGF's own words, is supposed to "honor abstract, shortform, and unconventional game development which advances the medium and the way we think about games."

A number of games were featured in more than one category this year including the puzzle platformer Closure which got three nominations. You can check out all the nominees after the jump. The winners will be named at the Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco on March 11.

If we were to judge a competition by simple the number of entries received, then the 2010 edition of the Independent Games Festival is already a huge hit. The 12th annual indie games competition had 306 entries for its Main Competition, which is its highest number in its history.

You can check out all of the entries at the IGF's official web site.All the games submitted will be reviewed by over 150 judges. The finalists will be named in several categories in January and the winners will be named in a ceremony to be held at the Game Developers Conference in March 2010 in San Fransisco.

While Big Download has been busy covering lots of big events this summer like QuakeCon. BlizzCon and the just completed PAX 2009, we will not be making it down to Austin, Texas for next week's GDC Austin. The conference, organized by the same company that also handles the main GDC event held in San Fransisco every March, covers all aspects of game development but tends to lean on the MMO genre.

That's why two of the event's keynotes will be all about massively multiplayer games. Sony Online founder John Smedley is scheduled to speak about their recent success with the free-to-play MMO Free Realms. Also Blizzard's Frank Pearce and J. Allen Brack will be making their own keynote address on the universe of their hit MMO World of Warcraft. If you happen to be in the Austin area there is still time to register before the event which runs from Sept 15-18.

It's the biggest outlet for independent game developers to get their titles notice and today applications opened up for the 2010 version of the annual Independent Games Festival. Developers have until November 1 to submit their games to the festival for the main contest. November 15 is the deadline for entry for the student portion of the festival. Finalists for the main competition will be revealed on January 4 with the student competition finalists revealed on Jan. 11. As usual the winners in both divisions will be announced at a ceremony during the Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco on March 11.

Winning one or more categories in previous IGFs has been a stepping stone for the games and their development teams to get noticed including titles like Audiosurf, World of Goo and Darwinia; This year the games and their dev teams will be competing for nearly $50,000 in prizes in several categories including the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize.

As expected, the Game Developers Conference has a slight downturn in the number of attendees for the annual gathering of game industry professionals. According to GDC's parent company Think Services, the 2009 edition had over 17,000 people show up. That's down from an estimated 18,000 attendees from 2008.

Some might blame the economy for the small drop in attendance but it's also possible that the smaller amount was due to GDC's decision to make the event invite only for journalists who attended the event. The dates for the 2010 GDC have already been announced. It will be held on Tuesday, March 9 to Saturday, March 13 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

The 2009 edition of the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco may be over but articles from the event are still coming in. While we had our own correspondent there out sister sites Joystiq and Massively were also at the annual event that brings game creators together to talk shop.

Naturally Massively's GDC 2009 coverage was all about the MMO genre. They have posted up hands-on coverage for games like Aion, an interview with the Fallen Earth team and more. Joystiq's GDC 2009 coverage did include a lot of console specific news and previews but they did catch up with some PC games including some time with our new favorite game title Stalin Vs Martians. Look for even more GDC coverage from us and from our sisters sites in the days ahead.

Wednesday night was also the night that the Game Developers Conference hosted the awards ceremony for the 11th annual Independent Games Festival, The largest festival/competition devoted to indie game development. The big winner of the night was the unusual 2D title Blueberry Garden which won the Seumas McNally Grand Prize of $30,000 .

Other winners included Cortex Command which won both for Technical Excellence and the Audience Award. The Excellence in Visual Art category went to Machinarium which the Excellent In Design award was given to Musaic Box. BrainPipe scored the Excellence in Audio award and the Innovation Award went to Between. Tag: the Power of Paint was the winner of the Best Student Game Award and the Direct2Drive Vision Award went to Osmos. Make sure to check out our recent multi-part feature on all the nominees for the 2008 IGF awards.

On Wednesday night the annual Game Developers Choice Awards were given out during the Game Developers Conference. While quite a few of the catagories this year had a number of console only winners, Bethesda Softworks RPG' Fallout 3 managed to win Game of the Year honors. The same game also won for Best Writing.

Other PC games that won awards this year included 2D Boy's puzzle World of Goo for Best Downloadable Game, EA's survival horror game Dead Space for Best Audio and Ubisoft's action/adventure title Prince of Persia for Best Visual Art. You can check out all of the winners and nominees at the award's official web site.