GDC Online 2011 Announces Call For Papers, Summit Line-Up

Author: by Staff

UBM TechWeb Game Network, organizer of Game Developers Conference Online 2011 and Gamasutra parent company, has announced its Main Conference track line-up and new Summits for the October show, the leading worldwide event discussing the business and art of online games. Following a successful call for August's GDC Europe, with more than 200 submissions, organizers are now accepting submissions through midnight PT on Thursday, May 5th to present lectures, roundtables, and panel sessions at GDC Online 2011. The Austin, Texas-based show to be held this Fall focuses on social network titles, free-to-play web games, kid-friendly online titles, large-scale MMOs, and all types of connected games. Main Conference submissions should address the most pressing development challenges for online and connected games, targeting the following tracks: Business and Marketing, Design, Production, Programming, and the new Customer Experience track. Evolving from last year’s Live track, GDC Online’s notable new Customer Experience track will feature successful strategies to attract, retain and effectively monetize players. Industry experts are encouraged to submit a proposal in areas such as increasing player satisfaction and engagement through metrics-driven post-launch development, design patterns for expansion content, building and managing communities and more. GDC Online 2011 show management is also requesting submissions for its standalone summits, which this year include the Game Narrative Summit, the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit and the GDC Virtual Items Summit. Returning alongside the ever-popular Game Narrative Summit (formerly the Game Writing Summit), is the Smartphone & Tablet Gaming Summit which will focus on the increasing number of diverse successful platforms available today. The program will include best practices and the future of gaming on established and emerging platforms, including the iPhone, iPad, Android OS phones, tablets and an abundance of new handheld devices. The brand new GDC Virtual Items Summit will offer a deep-dive exploration on the best design and monetization techniques for virtual goods in leading online games. The single day program is designed to evaluate economic and demand-based models of what players are buying in the top online games - and how developers can design a game's economy to both make players happy and bring in more money. In addition, industry veterans interested in educating prospective game developers should submit their session ideas for the annual Game Career Seminar. "The social and online games space is still growing at an extremely rapid rate, and the time has never been more ripe for the learning, inspiration and networking opportunities we provide at GDC Online," says event director, Izora de Lillard. "We look forward to hearing from our community of established developers and vibrant newcomers , as GDC continues to help grow the connected gaming space." GDC Online will take place October 10-13, 2011 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas. To learn more about the submissions guidelines and conference topics for GDC Online, visit the official GDC Online website.