GDC Online 2012 Speaker Roster Features Thought Leaders In Online, Social, Mobile Game Development

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 22, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The 2012 Game Developers Conference® Online (GDC Online), organized by UBM TechWeb Game Network, will host a robust schedule of 100+ lectures, panels, keynotes and roundtable discussions led by notables in the connected, mobile and social game development sectors. The annual event returns to Austin, October 9-11.  Early Bird registration for GDC Online is still open through Friday, August 24; visit www.gdconline.com for more information on ways to register.

Mobile and social games will have an increased prominence this year, reflecting developments across the games landscape. Vijay Thakkar, Zynga technical director, will lecture on the importance of searching for and developing new IP while Kabam general manager Justin Lambros and art lead Josh Viers give a joint session to offer attendees a behind-the-scenes review of the design development decisions they made while creating the studio's hardcore social-strategy game, Trojan War. Gary Gattis, CEO of Austin-based mobile, social MMO developer Spacetime Studios, will also be on hand to detail his applied "engagement and respect" philosophy at Spacetime, which has retained more than 90% of its employees for several years.

GDC Online will also continue to adhere to its core focus on online games. Damien Schubert, principal lead systems designer at BioWare Austin, and one of the minds behind Star Wars: The Old Republic, and John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment, will both offer lessons from their experiences developing and launching big-budget, large-scale MMO titles.

As a special treat, attendees will have the opportunity to learn about the challenges of developing, launching and maintaining a landmark MMORPG title during the Ultima Online Classic Game Postmortem. Rich Vogel, Raph Koster and Starr M. Long, three chief members of the original Ultima Online team, will be on-hand to discuss the challenges they faced during the creation of the seminal game. Introduced at the 2011 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Classic Game Postmortems provide a forum for the game creators behind legacy titles to deconstruct what they learned during the process of development.

Key 2012 GDC Online speakers and sessions include:

• Electronic Arts' EVP of digital, Kristian Segerstrale, discussing the best approach to creating fully immersive game ecosystems that create an emotional connection with consumers
• Zynga CTOs Jason Pearlman (mobile) and Allan Leinwand (infrastructure engineering) offering game developers and engineers tips on how to cope with the infrastructure demands of popular hit games – or any game!
• Riot Games senior producer Travis George, who leads production on League of Legends, sharing tangible examples of how producers can grow their teams successfully, with lessons from growth at Riot Games over the last four years and the speaker's experience in the shaping of the team.
• CCP Games senior designer Matthew Woodward presenting a design theory for online sandbox games, starting with the foundation concepts and going on to explain the core structural gameplay components and the hidden plumbing that ties them together.

GDC Online, which celebrates its 10^th anniversary this year, focuses on the development of connected games including social networking titles, large-scale MMOs, cloud games and beyond. The conference, which attracted more than 3,350 attendees in 2011, affords game industry professionals countless learning opportunities across five main conference tracks – Business & Marketing, Design, Customer Experience, Production and Programming – and summit sessions, which this year include the Game Narrative Summit and the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit, both returning alongside two new summits, the Game Dev Start-Up Summit and the Gamification Day.

Information about all of the announced sessions can be found at www.gdconline.com.

Early Bird registration for GDC Online 2012 ends on Friday, August 24; those who wish to save up to 40% on registration passes should visit www.gdconline.com to explore pass options before the deadline.

About the UBM TechWeb Game Network 
A core provider of essential information to the professional game industry, the UBM TechWeb Game Network offers market-defining content, and drives community through its award winning lineup of print, online, event and research products and services. These include the Game Developers Conference®, the Webby Award-winning Gamasutra.com and network of sites, the Game Advertising Online ad network, the Game Developers Conference® Online, the Game Developers Conference™ Europe, the Game Developers Conference™ China, Game Developer Magazine, the Game Career Seminars and GameCareerGuide.com, the Independent Games Festival and Summit, and the Game Developers Choice Awards. Visit www.jointhegamenetwork.com

About UBM TechWeb
UBM TechWeb, the global leader in technology media and professional information, enables people and organizations to harness the transformative power of technology. Through its three core businesses – media solutions, marketing services and paid content – UBM TechWeb produces the most respected and consumed brands and media applications in the technology market. More than 14.5 million business and technology professionals (CIOs and IT managers, Web & Digital professionals, Software Developers, Government decision makers, and Telecom providers) actively engage in UBM TechWeb's communities and information resources monthly. UBM TechWeb brands includes: global face-to-face events such as Interop, Web 2.0, Black Hat and Enterprise Connect; award-winning online resources such as InformationWeek, Light Reading, and Network Computing; and market-leading magazines InformationWeek, Wall Street & Technology, and Advanced Trading. UBM TechWeb is a UBM plc company, a global provider of news distribution and specialist information services with a market capitalization of more than $2.5 billion.  Visit: www.ubmtechweb.com

SOURCE UBM TechWeb Game Network