GDC 2012's 'Indie Soapbox,' Halfbrick, Moriarty sessions debut for free on GDC Vault

GDC 2012 may have come and gone, but the GDC Vault service is working to keep the show's spirit alive by debuting new free videos of its most popular lectures. This week, the service has added a handful of free sessions that offer a glimpse at GDC 2012's notable Summits.

This new batch of free content includes the extremely popular 'Indie Soapbox' panel, a postmortem from Fruit Ninja developer Halfbrick, an education-focused talk from adventure game veteran Brian Moriarty, and an overview of online globalization from the CEO of social game developer Wooga.

As part of the GDC Summits, all of these videos provide a targeted look at some of the most pertinent and emerging sectors in the modern game business. Each session offers some important insight on game creation, and developers looking to stay on top of the latest industry trends might learn a thing or two from these various GDC 2012 Summit speakers.

Here are the newest free Summit videos to join the GDC Vault:

- The 'Indie Soapbox' session, part of GDC 2012's Independent Games Summit, gives 10 prominent independent developers a chance to tell the world about the things they care about most when it comes to making games. The session features developers like Polytron's Phil Fish (Fez), Team Colorblind's Ben Ruiz, and Lazy 8's Rob Jagnow (Cogs), and covers everything from the "egocentric" indie community to how games function as "3D media objects."

It's a wild, fast-paced session to be sure, but it offers the rare chance to peek into the minds of some of the industry's most eccentric, creative, and influential indie developers. If you've ever wondered what makes these successful indies tick, now's your chance to find out. [GDC Vault free video]

- Elsewhere, over in the Smartphone and Tablet Games Summit, Hafbrick's Luke Muscat looks back at the studio's popular Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride, and shares some important lessons about maintaining support for a mobile game after its initial launch. Along the way, he points to several occasions in which Halfbrick's game updates introduced some severe problems on the app market, and explains how other developers can avoid making these mistakes themselves. [GDC Vault free video]

- As part of GDC Education Summit, Infocom and LucasArts veteran Brian Moriarty (Beyond Zork, Loom) outlines the "sinister" approach he uses to teach game design to students at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Rather than teaching them about the development process step by step, Moriarty provides his students with a custom, simplified game engine, dubbed "Perlenspiel," and tasks them with making their own pixel-based game from scratch. This approach gives students direct hands-on experience with game creation, and the simplicity of the Perlenspiel engine encourages them to focus on design above all else. [GDC Vault free video]

- Finally, Wooga CEO Jens Begemann hosts a Social and Online Games Summit talk detailing how to make games for a global market. While it originally got it start in Europe, Wooga now distributes its Facebook-based social games all over the world, and in this session Begemann lists the seven key principles for finding widespread success in the growing social game market. [GDC Vault free video]

These free videos join a host of other free and notable lectures already available on GDC Vault, including the recently released classic game postmortems (Gauntlet, Harvest Moon and more) and track keynotes (from Blizzard, Plants Vs. Zombies creator George Fan, and more) from GDC 2012.

In addition to all of this free content, the GDC Vault also offers more than 300 additional lecture videos and hundreds of slide collections from GDC 2012 for GDC Vault subscribers. GDC 2012 All Access pass holders already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription Beta via a GDC Vault inquiry form.

Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company. More information on this option is available via an online demonstration, and interested parties can send an email to Gillian Crowley. In addition, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault admins.

Be sure to keep an eye on GDC Vault for more free content in the weeks ahead, as GDC organizers will also archive videos, audio, and slides from upcoming 2012 events like GDC Europe, GDC Online, and GDC China. To stay abreast of all the latest updates to GDC Vault, be sure to check out the news feed on the official GDC website, or subscribe to updates via Twitter, Facebook, or RSS. GDC and the GDC Vault are owned and operated by Gamasutra parent company UBM TechWeb.