San Francisco, U.S.A. — The Game Developers Conference (GDC) has opened nominations for the 13th annual Game Developers Choice Awards through January 4, 2013. Produced by the UBM Tech Game Network, the Choice Awards are the most prestigious honors in the world of video game development.

The Game Developers Choice Awards recognize the artistry and technical genius of leading industry professionals across multiple game development disciplines. The 13th Annual Awards ceremony will take place the evening of March 27, during GDC 2013 in San Francisco, CA.

Awards in 10 categories are open for nominations for games that launched to retail or debuted online during the 2012 calendar year.  Nominations are also open for three special awards: the Pioneer Award which celebrates those individuals who developed a breakthrough technology, game concept, or gameplay design at a crucial juncture in video game history – paving the way for the myriads who followed them, the Ambassador Award, which honors an individual who helped the game industry advance to a better place, either through facilitating a better game community from within, or by reaching outside the industry to be an advocate for video games, and the Lifetime Achievement Award. All three special awards are open to anyone not previously recognized.

In addition, the Choice Awards will be adding the new Audience Award category for the first time. Fans will have the opportunity to vote on their favorite video game that was released in the previous calendar year. Voting for the audience award will open on February 4, 2013 and will be completely open to the public to cast votes.

Nominations can be submitted by any worldwide game professional, registered with a Gamasutra.com account, simply by voting via the Game Developers Choice Awards website.

Winners will be selected by the Game Developers Choice Awards’ International Choice Awards Network (ICAN), which is a handpicked group comprised of 500 leading game creators from across of the video game industry. Special Award winners are selected by the Game Developers Choice Awards Advisory Committee, which includes notable industry veterans from Blizzard Entertainment, Bungie, CCP, ngmoco, Valve, Zynga and more.

The Game Developers Choice Award categories open for nominations are:

Regular Awards:

• Best Audio
• Best Debut Game
• Best Downloadable Game
• Best Handheld/Mobile Game
• Best Game Design
• Best Narrative
• Best Technology
• Best Visual Arts
• Innovation Award
• Game of the Year
• Audience Award (Voting to open on February 4, 2013)

Special Awards:

• Lifetime Achievement
• Pioneer Award
• Ambassador Award

The ceremony, produced by the GDC and media sponsored by Gamasutra.com and Game Developer Magazine, will take place on Wednesday, March 27, 2013 at 6:30pm. The ceremony is held immediately following the Independent Games Festival Awards, and will take place at San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center.

For more information about the Game Developers Choice Awards or to submit a nomination ballot, visit www.gamechoiceawards.com

Image Courtesy : Lev radin / Shutterstock.com

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Berlin, Germany — The 2012 Game Developers Conference Europe (GDC Europe) concluded on Wednesday, August 15 with a successful showing and a final attendee count of more than 2100 game professionals. Professionals from all areas of the game industry gathered throughout the three day conference to learn and network.

The keynote roster included industry leaders from Ubisoft Montreal’s Creative Director Alex Hutchinson, to CEO of Wargaming.net Victor Kislyi, to Epic Games senior engine programmer Niklas Smedberg.

These speakers were part of the 100+ European and international speakers, 65+ exhibitors and sponsors, and more than 290 media representatives converging at the leading European conference focusing on game development on PC, social networking websites, consoles and mobile platforms. GDC Europe returns to Cologne, Germany on August 19-21, 2013.

Making its debut at GDC Europe this year was the popular Classic Game Postmortem series, first introduced at the 2011 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. GDC Europe attendees were treated to a rare postmortem for the Nintendo 64 classic GoldenEye 007 from the game’s director Martin Hollis.

Among the many key learning Hollis offered to attendees, he revealed that, although the game was in development for nearly three years, the popular multiplayer mode that made the game an instant classic was developed at the very last minute, and took only one month to build. The legendary first-person shooter proved to be a trailblazer for console shooters like Halo and numerous others.

Other popular sessions during the three day conference included a lecture given by Bigpoint’s Jan Richter, who heads design for free-to-play browser titles at the online game developer and publisher.

Richter advised those developing free-to-play games on making a strong first impression with gamers, how to retain them for months and months, and provided attendees with an equation that calculates the “magic line” designers have to cross for their free-to-play games to become huge.

Dan Pinchbeck of thechineseroom, creators of indie hit Dear Esther, talked about the power of imagination and noted that the key to the game’s success was how the abstract and ambiguous first-person exploration game barely gave players any real details about characters and plot, allowing the players’ imaginations to run wild.

The “Ask the Publishers” panel, featuring Matias Myllyrinne of Remedy Games, Careen Yapp of Konami, Zack Karlsson of Capcom, Noah Musler of Microsoft Studios and Dan Sherman of CFC Capital, provided the developer attendees with insights into how top publishers make their decisions.

During the discussion, Karlsson announced Capcom’s publishing deal with Paris-based developer DONTNOD for the upcoming new IP, Remember Me, set to release next May.

In his keynote for the conference’s Game Design track, Alexander Hutchinson, Creative Director of Ubisoft Montreal, took attendees through the process of how his team is maintaining the momentum of the Assassin’s Creed franchise by treating it like a new IP while ensuring it continues to exist within the same rich and consistent universe.

Hutchinson described the three main pillars of Assassin’s Creed III— the new historical setting of the American Revolution, the new, Native American assassin Connor, and the new player fantasies upon which the gameplay is based, such as being a man of the revolution and a naval master and commander.

“We’re very proud that GDC Europe once again exceeded expectations in delivering best-in-class learnings and insight for the European development community thanks to our excellent lineup of international speakers and our diligent advisory board members,” said Meggan Scavio, general manager of Game Developer Conference events.

“This industry is constantly evolving and growing, especially in the mobile and social games realm, and we look forward to returning next year to provide progressive opportunities for learning and networking for developers.”

VIP and All Access pass holders to GDC Europe will also gain access to the video, audio, and presentation recordings at GDC Europe shortly after the conference through the GDC Vault which will host more than 80 lectures, keynotes and panels across five Main Conference tracks (Business, Marketing & Management, Game Design, Production, Programming and Visual Arts) and three Summits (the Independent Games Summit, the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit and the Social & Online Games Summit).

In addition to the conference content, GDC Europe offered several opportunities for creative exchange and business development, with venues including the GDC Europe Expo Floor, VIP Lounge, and the GDC Europe Business Lounge at gamescom, plus a host of industry parties.

For more details on GDC Europe, please visit www.gdceurope.com.

Image Courtesy of   Official GDC

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Palmer Luckey, a young upstart software enthusiast who started out working out of his parent’s garage is launching a Virtual Reality head mount called the “Oculus Rift”; a mind boggling virtual reality head mount that has sent the gaming industry buzzing. When Palmer recently posted the project on the funding platform “Kickstarter,” he quickly broke his initial goal of collecting $250,000 in funding, raising over $1 million in less than four hours.

Michael Abrash, developer at Valve software, a giant in the industry responsible for games such as Half Life 1 and 2, said in a recent interview that he tried out the Oculus Rift and concluded that it “could be the beginning of a whole new industry.”

The project has even drawn the attention of software wiz and iconic game developer John Carmack, the brains behind classic game series such as Doom and Quake. Carmack has recently developed an impressive head tracking device for the Oculus and made the game Doom III available on the VR device. Carmack concluded in a recent demonstration that the Oculus Rift is the best VR device “the world has ever seen.”

Palmer himself explained: “The problem was, there was nothing that gave me the experience that I wanted — The Matrix — where I could plug in and actually be in the game. I set out to change that with the Oculus Rift.”

What sets the Oculus Rift apart from other head mounts, such as Sony’s HMZ-T1 headset, is the technical aspects such as the higher resolution and most notably the extended field of vision. The field of view has previously been the main issue for most consumer level head mounts, with a tiny, 30 – 45 degree field of view as the maximum. John Carmack explains: “that’s like looking at the world through toilet paper tubes; it’s really not good for the immersion.”

The Rift has been able to achieve a 90 degree horizontal field of view and a 110 degree vertical: you are no longer watching a screen. The Oculus Rift has achieved complete immersion. The result: a VR device that, for the first time, puts you “in” the virtual world, removing the sense of separation via the extended field of vision and the head tracking device adjusting the in-game camera after your head movements.

The Oculus has reawakened the old hype and promise of Virtual Reality. An early prototype is projected to begin shipping in December for around 275 $. The product is still crude and under development, but the early demos have been described as “mind blowing.”  For now it’s only compatible with computer games, but will be integrated with other consoles such as Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, in the near future.

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