GDC Europe Announces Attendance, Plans

Organizers of the 5th annual Game Developers Conference Europe (GDCE) have revealed that attendance figures doubled at the recent GDCE event, held at the Cafe Royal in London from August 30 to September 1, following a successful show which held keynotes from Sony and Microsoft and a multitude of other business and technical talks. According to the organizers, more than 700 participants attended, up greatly on last year's figures, and plans are already afoot to expand on this success in 2006, with organizers commenting: "GDC Europe is committed to delivering an equally compelling event to the European game development community in 2006." GDC itself began with a day dedicated to mobile games, with John Cahill of Yahoo! Games leading the summit with a speech addressing mobile strategy and ways to utilize online gamers to drive the adoption of mobile games. On the second day of the event, Phil Harrison from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) spoke about the next-generation of games in the first keynote speech, touching on the PSP and the advantages of the development environment of the PlayStation 3. The second keynote speech on the final day focused on next-generation games, with Chris Satchell of Microsoft discussing the place of games in modern pop culture. Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi was also on hand to discuss the development process of We Love Katamari and to share his philosophies on game design. "The GDC brought industry-leading speakers and timely topics, combined with global and local relevance, to our audience here in Europe," said Jamil Moledina, director, Game Developers Conference Europe. "We are committed to the European game development market, and are excited about receiving positive feedback from this year's conference." [GDCE is presented by the CMP Game Group, organizers of the Game Developers Conference and Serious Games Summit, and publishers of Game Developer Magazine and Gamasutra.com.]