Events for Gamers

BERLIN – August 11, 2014 – The 2014 Game Developers Conference™ Europe (GDC Europe) kicks off today at the Congress-Centrum Ost of the Koelnmesse in Cologne, Germany. Produced by UBM Tech Game Network, organizers of the distinguished Game Developers Conference® series, GDC Europe is the continent’s leading game development event. GDC Europe will run from August 11-13. For additional information on GDC Europe, please visit www.gdceurope.com.

Returning for the sixth year to Cologne, GDC Europe continues to be the pinnacle event in educating and inspiring developers across the continent. The conference will feature more than 80 sessions on game development across five Main Conference tracks (Business, Marketing & Management, Design, Production, Programming, and Visual Arts) and the Independent Games Summit, with each one providing well-rounded content about the business and art of making video games.

GDC Europe opens Cologne’s Games Week, which also features gamescom, the leading European interactive entertainment consumer trade show, taking place from August 13-17, also at the Koelnmesse. GDC Europe welcomes nearly 130 national and international speakers, over 225 members of the press and industry leading exhibitors and sponsors from across the globe to the 2014 conference.

The robust roster of speakers at the 2014 conference will address topics that showcase the significance of business logic, forward thinking, and technical knowledge when creating and marketing successful video games. The Main Conference tracks will feature talks from leading industry voices, including Jed Ashforth, Senior Game Designer at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe and one of the developers who is charting the frontiers of VR for Sony’s Project Morpheus; Oculus VR’s Software Architect, Tom Forsyth; and Quentin De Beukelaer, Game and Economic Designer at Ubisoft and one of minds behind Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag and Assassin’s Creed Unity.

The popular and well-received “#1ReasonToBe” panel will debut at GDC Europe on Tuesday.  The panel, which was originally introduced at GDC 2013 and returned to GDC 2014, features women from a variety of disciplines across the industry who will share their experiences, both high and low, exploring a vision for a positive future. Hosted by Brenda Romero and Leigh Alexander, panelists include Auriea Harvey (Tale of Tales), Zuraida Buter (zo-ii), Henrike “Riker” Lode (Machineers), Siobhan Reddy (Media Molecule) and Annakaisa Kultima (University of Tampere).

In addition to a day of lectures for the indie developer in the Independent Games Summit, the Summit will also host the first-ever European Innovative Games Showcase.  The showcase used a panel of judges to pick the most intriguing and different independent games from nearly 150 submitted for the inaugural event. Each selected game will present what’s unique and special about their in-development or already released game in a series of fascinating mini-talks. In this showcase, the speakers will explore the future of games through their innovative concepts, prototypes or nearly finished games. The session is meant to give a voice to possibly unknown developers who are working on innovative games, big and small.

GDC Europe is also bringing back the Classic Game Postmortem this year, the popular series across many of the GDC events that aims to deconstruct and note the lessons learned during the development process of some of the industry’s most iconic titles. This year, the conference welcomes Charles Cecil, the influential game designer best known for his work creating seminal adventure games like the Broken Sword franchise and Beneath A Steel Sky. Cecil will be delivering a Classic Game Postmortem about the groundbreaking Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars, the award-winning 1996 adventure game that developers at studios like Telltale Games and the now-defunct LucasArts cite as a meaningful influence on their work.

“Once again, we hope that GDC Europe will provide new inspirations and insights to the continent’s development community and give attendees the edge on advancing the European business of making games,” said Meggan Scavio, General Manager of the Game Developers Conference events. “We’re especially excited to debut the popular #1ReasonToBe panel and introduce the Innovative Game Showcase as a launch pad for indie developers.”

This year, GDC Europe partnered with Aruba Events to offer Respawn ( www.respawngathering.com) attendees free access to the GDC Europe Expo Floor and a discount on the full conference pass, which grants access to lectures and panels with significant, applicable takeaways for today’s development community. On August 12, GDC Europe and the organizers of Respawn, Aruba Events, will team up for the ‘GDC Europe and Respawn Developer Night’ party, which will be the first jointly hosted evening event.

In addition, GDC Europe provides several opportunities for networking, creative exchange and business development, with venues including the GDC Europe Expo Floor, VIP Lounge, and the GDC Europe Business Lounge at gamescom, plus a host of industry parties and events.

For up to the moment details on GDC Europe, including a schedule of all conference events and parties, plus a complete exhibitor list, please visit http://www.gdceurope.com/.

Main Competition Entries for the 17^th Annual IGF Due October 22, Student Showcase Entries Due October 31

SAN FRANCISCO – August 6, 2014 – The call for submissions are now open for the 17^th annual Independent Games Festival (IGF), the longest running festival, summit, and showcase for indie games.  The 2015 IGF will be held at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco March 2-6. Entries for the Main Competition are now being accepted through October 22, 2014; entries for the Student Showcase categories are due October 31, 2014. Finalists will be announced in January 2015.

All IGF finalists will be playable at the IGF Pavilion March 4-6 at the 2015 Game Developers Conference Expo Floor, and will compete for over $50,000 in prizes. The Independent Games Summit, which is a series of lectures, postmortems, and roundtable sessions centered on the dialogue and best practices for indie developers, will take place at GDC March 2-3.

Winners will be announced live onstage at the IGF Awards ceremony on Wednesday, March 4, 2015 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. The categories for the IGF Awards include Excellence in Visual Art, Audio, Design, and Narrative, with the winning developer or team in each category receiving a $3,000 prize. The winner of the Seumas McNally Grand Prize is set to receive a prize of $30,000. There will be six finalists for each of these categories.

Two special categories will feature eight finalists, those being for Best Student Game ($3,000 prize) and the Nuovo Award ($5,000 prize), which honors abstract, shortform, and unconventional games. Additionally, a public vote by the Main Competition finalists will determine the winner of the IGF Audience Award ($3,000 prize).

Since being launched in 1998, the IGF Awards have served as the largest and longest-running annual event for independent video game developers, celebrating the finest in indie game development. In that time, the IGF Awards have become an avenue to propel indie games into major commercial and critical success, with notable past winners that include Minecraft, Limbo, Castle Crashers, Braid, Everyday Shooter, Oasis, and 2014’s Seumas McNally grand prize winner Papers, Please.

“The IGF continues to be one of the most exciting events of the year for showcasing the range and scope of what videogames can be,” said IGF Chairman Brandon Boyer. “All of us here look forward to celebrating the work of some of the artform’s best-known talent, as well as discovering bold new voices that will continue to evolve the way we think about games in the years to come. Best of luck to all entrants — we can’t wait to see what you create!”

Submissions to the competition are now open to all independent game developers; important dates for IGF 2015 are as follows:

• August 6, 2014 – Submissions are Open
• October 22, 2014 – Submission Deadline, Main Competition
• October 31, 2014 – Submission Deadline, Student Competition
• January 6, 2015 – Finalists Announced, Main Competition
• January 20, 2015 – Finalists Announced, Student Competition
• March 2 – March 6, 2015 – Game Developers Conference 2015
• March 2 – March 3, 2015 – Independent Games Summit @ GDC 2015
• March 4 – March 6, 2015– IGF Pavilion @ GDC 2015
• March 4, 2015 – IGF Awards Ceremony (Winners Announced!)

For more information on the 2015 Independent Games Festival, including submission specifics and frequently asked questions, please visit the official Independent Games Festival website: http://www.igf.com. IGF Main Competition entries can be submitted at the following website: http://submit.igf.com. IGF Student submissions can be entered here: http://students.igf.com.

Two Inspirational Industry Leaders Join the Advisory Board to Program the Event: Designer and Scholar Brenda Romero and Composer Penka Kouneva

SAN FRANCISCO – July 31, 2014 – UBM Tech Game Network, the organizers of the Game Developers Conference® (GDC) 2015, are now accepting submissions to present lectures, roundtables, panels, posters and tutorials through Thursday, August 28^th.

GDC 2015 is the game industry’s most comprehensive and longest running professionals-only conference, where game developers meet for a week of learning, networking and inspiration. GDC 2015, the event’s 28^th edition, will take place March 2^nd-6^th at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California.

The GDC advisory board is considering session submissions for seven Main Conference tracks—five on the various disciplines of making games: Audio, Design, Production, Programming and Visual Arts–as well as a track on Advocacy, which covers social issues from diversity to quality of life, and, finally, a track covering Business, Marketing & Management. Proposals can be submitted via the official GDC website at: http://www.gdconf.com/conference/c4p/. The call for submissions to present talks at the GDC Summits specific to a variety of sectors within the industry will open in September 2014.

The GDC Main Conference advisory board, which includes game industry leaders such as Microsoft’s Chris Charla, Konami’s Julien Merceron, Media Molecule’s Siobhan Reddy, Oculus VR’s Laura Fryer, and Double Fine’s Lee Petty, is also thrilled to welcome two new members to contribute in planning content for the conference.

Brenda Romero is an award-winning game designer, Fulbright scholar, entrepreneur, artist, writer and creative director who entered the video game industry in 1981. Brenda has worked with a variety of digital game companies as a game designer, creative director or consultant, including Atari, Sir-tech Software, Electronic Arts and numerous companies in the social and mobile space. She is presently the Program Director of UC Santa Cruz’s Master’s in Games & Playable Media Program, Co-founder / Chief Executive Officer of Loot Drop, a casual game company, and an independent game developer at Romero Games, LLC. Brenda has more than 30 years of experience in PC, console and casual gaming.

With more than 15 years of professional composing experience, Penka Kouneva has a diverse background of classical training and media scoring.  To highlight some of Penka’s credits, she is a lead orchestrator and composer on game & film titles grossing $10 billion worldwide: Matrix, Transformers, Pirates (films), World of Warcraft, Starcraft II, Gears of War 2, 3, Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands, Sims 3, Diablo III, Need for Speed, Dragon Age II (games).  Last year she became the first woman since Shirley Walker to be the Lead Orchestrator on two studio films with budgets over $100M — Elysium and Ender’s Game.  She is extremely excited to contribute to the community she feels most energized by – game makers and game composers.

“In this ever-evolving industry, the best lessons come from each other, so we encourage developers to submit proposals that demonstrate best practices learned, as well as those that cover recent challenges and how they overcame them,” said Meggan Scavio, General Manager of GDC Events. “Our advisory board members are a dedicated group of industry leaders that truly have a passion for the craft, and an eye to the future.  We look forward to working closely with them in creating the best GDC content to date.”

For more details on the submission process and to view the complete list of GDC 2015 Main Conference advisory board members, please visit http://www.gdconf.com/.