GDC Online 2012 debuts full lineup for the Game Dev Start-Up Summit

Starting your own game company can be an exciting, liberating, yet extremely complicated process. It takes a lot to get a new game studio off the ground, but luckily, GDC Online's inaugural Game Dev Start-Up Summit will offer plenty of content to help developers accomplish that goal. This one-day Summit, put together by GDC Online organizers and veteran game industry lawyer Jim Charne, will include a host of sessions that provide a step-by-step look at the issues, challenges, and realities of striking out on your own with a new video game start-up. The Summit will take place the first day of GDC Online -- which will run October 9 to October 11 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas. The full-day event will be open to all Summits & Tutorials and All-Access Pass holders. Earlier this month, GDC Online organizers revealed the Summit's first three sessions, which cover everything from preparing a start-up to securing funding. Now, here is the rest of the lineup for the upcoming event: - In "Operating a Company - The Day to Day Routine," the Summit's speakers will address the minutiae of making sure a start-up functions as intended. This session will address the essentials of hiring and firing employees, managing staff concerns, drafting an employee handbook, and much more. - Of course, every start-up needs to have a solid plan for the next stage of its business; after all, the company won't be a start-up forever. In "Exiting / Cashing Out - Strategies to be Acquired, Merge, Go Public," the speakers will outline the various business strategies to consider when a company has made it big, or when the founders are ready to move on. - In addition, the Game Dev Start-Up Summit will give speakers and attendees the chance to share their own anecdotes in "War Stories: Worst Mistakes / Best Moves." Here, panelists and audience members can learn from each other by discussing their greatest accomplishments, their most colossal failures, and everything in-between. As mentioned above, these sessions will join three other notable talks covering the inception, formation, and funding of a brand new game studio. Confirmed speakers for the Game Dev Start-Up Summit thus far include notable game developers, businesspeople and legal counsel including Don Daglow (Daglow Entertainment), James Niesewand (Illyriad Games), Rob Shillingsburg (Jetbolt Games), Dan Offner (Loeb & Loeb), David Rosenbaum (Law Offices of David S Rosenbaum), David Baszucki (Roblox), Bill Graner (Crater House), and Gary Gattis (Spacetime Studios). For more information on the Game Dev Start-Up Summit or any other sessions already announced for GDC Online, check out the show's official Schedule Builder. To learn more about the other events and opportunities at GDC Online, be sure to check out the show's official website, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS.