The big GDC Europe 2016 conference is kicking off next week in Cologne, Germany, and today organizers would like to quickly highlight some of the great expert sessions that will be taking place at the show. That means you have until this Wednesday, August 10th at 11:59 PM Pacific to register online to attend the show. After that deadline, you’ll have to register on-site at an increased price!

There’s too many to run down in a single blog post, so today we’re going to focus on two big tracks of talks at GDC Europe: The Production track and the Business, Marketing and Management track. While they each have a distinct focus, both offer a wealth of practical insight for both freshly-minted and veteran game makers.

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GDC Europe 2016 is happening very soon, and before it kicks off organizers want to quickly highlight a smart, technical talk taking place at the event in Cologne, Germany that will help you better understand what it takes to make 4K-ready games.

The talk, “4K Rendering Breakthrough: The Filtered and Culled Visibility Buffer“, will be delivered by Wolfgang Engel, the CEO of Confetti, who will present a new rendering system: a filtered and culled visibility buffer that will perform much better than the traditional systems with higher resolutions, and at least as good as traditional rendering systems with the most common resolutions.

Confetti is a think-tank for advanced real-time graphics research and a service provider for the video game and movie industry. In his talk, Engel will afford attendees insight into modern rendering design and will share a complete working solution (replete with performance numbers and implementation details) to integrate it into their game engine.

Most 3D games are expected to benefit from the visibility buffer system Engel will describe in his lecture, so if this is at all something you’re interested in, don’t skip it!

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We’re less than two weeks away from GDC Europe, and conference officials want to quickly let you know about some of the great VR-focused expert sessions that will be taking place at the event in Cologne, Germany.

For example, game designer and Exozet Berlin VR consultant Thomas Bedenk will deliver a talk on “Psychology of Virtual Reality: Presence, Agency, Social” that aims to explain, from Bedenk’s perspective, the key outstanding elements of VR: its social possibilities and its capacity to foster feelings presence and agency among players.

During his talk, he’ll share ideas for how to improve your VR productions by catering to players’ perceptions and psychology, and offer concrete examples of how such improvements can be made.

For hard data on where the VR game market is at right now — and where it’s headed — check out EEDAR exec Patrick Walker’s GDC Europe talk on “Data and Insights in the VR Market.”

Walker aims to present a prediction on the future of VR by examining consumer gaming motivations and engagement in early VR adopters in the context of other platforms and business models. What factors currently influence where VR fits into the ecosystem, and what factors are more innate to the experience?

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GDC Europe 2016 is coming up fast, and as the August conference draws nigh we’d like to quickly highlight some notable sponsored sessions that you’ll want to check out.

Today we’re highlighting a pair of informative sponsored sessions from game industry heavyweights Microsoft and Google that developers who work on mobile, console and/or PC games may find helpful.

What does the future hold for game developers who want to release games on Windows, Xbox, or both? That’s exactly what Microsoft’s Alex Teodorescu-Badia intends to make clear in his sponsored session “Envisioning the Future of Game Development on Windows & Xbox.”

Check it out and you’ll get an early look at Microsoft’s roadmap and plans to build a platform for indie game developers on Windows devices, including OS-level updates coming this year in Windows. Teodorescu-Badia will also dive deep into platform-agnostic development approaches, partner tools and engines, and how to maximize your game’s revenue.

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GDC Europe 2016 is right around the corner, and today organizers are proud to highlight a talk about how the creators of the popular massively multiplayer game EVE Online integrated citizen-driven scientific research work into their game.

CCP Games’ Bergur Finnbogason and MMOS chief Attila Szantner will do just that in a talk entitled “‘Project Discovery': How Citizen Science Got Into ‘EVE Online.‘”

The pair will explain how this project is just the first implementation of the “Massively Multiplayer Online Science” concept, and how it was realized in February of this year through collaboration between CCP, MMOS and the Human Protein Atlas.

They’ll explain what they learned from the process, dig into the various challenges they faced and highlight the work that EVE Online players have done (through Project Discovery) to advance the state of science.

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GDC Europe is just two weeks away, and today organizers want to quickly remind attendees not to miss out on the second annual Women in Tech Day, which will take place immediately following GDC Europe.

You can now register to attend the limited-capacity event (put on by GDC Europe in partnership with gamescom) which will take place immediately after the close of GDC Europe, on Wednesday, August 17th — the first day of gamescom.

The Women in Tech Day serves as a forum for women working in all areas of technology, including the game industry, IT, digital and other fields. Prominent leaders from the video game industry and other areas of tech will come together to speak, network and share their unique experiences.

This year, goals include inspiring women to collaborate on innovative solutions by providing opportunities for learning and networking, promoting diversity in technology industries, advocating technology and celebrating women role models who have chosen a career in tech and who inspire others to do the same. The Women in Tech Day offers a unique combination of deep-dive talks, workshops and a networking reception.

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It’s the first day of August, and that means we’re just weeks away from the big GDC Europe 2016 conference in Germany. For attendees looking to sharpen their design skills, conference organizers are pleased to announce an expert roundtable on big-budget game combat design.

In “Creating Conflict: Combat Design for AAA Action Games, Michael Barclay (Lead Level Designer, Cloud Imperium Games), Sam Howels (Principal Designer, Deep Silver Dambuster Studios) and Pete Ellis (Level Designer, Guerrilla Cambridge) will discuss what it takes to create combat scenarios for AAA action games.

The panelists, each of whom has some experience with the challenge, will take audience members through the various steps and considerations when creating action-packed scenarios for first- and third-person action games.

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Virtual reality, at it’s best, can make you feel like you’re somewhere else — and that means VR developers can benefit greatly from even a moderate understanding of how people think and feel.

At GDC Europe 2016 next month, game designer and Exozet Berlin VR consultant Thomas Bedenk will deliver a talk on “Psychology of Virtual Reality: Presence, Agency, Social” that aims to provide just that.

From Bedenk’s perspective, the key outstanding elements of VR are its social possibilities and its capacity to foster presence and agency among players.

During his talk, he’ll share ideas for how to improve your VR productions by catering to players’ perceptions and psychology, and offer concrete examples of how such improvements can be made. Don’t skip it!

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With GDC Europe 2016 right around the corner, organizers want to quickly remind all current and potential attendees not to miss a great talk from CD Projekt Red about the design and development of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt‘s remarkable world.

In “The Living World of ‘The Witcher‘”, CDPR lead technical designer Matthew Steinke will take the stage to discuss the trials and triumphs he encountered while designing and developing an open-world experience with sandbox gameplay elements like alchemy, crafting and the economy.

It was a significant challenge, and in his talk Steinke will discuss lessons learned about creating a role-playing game that offers an immersive, rewarding experience for players who choose not to engage in its primary quest lines. He’ll also showcase how the Wild Hunt team integrated feedback from players into their work on the game, and outline some key decisions made to create one of the standout games of last year.

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With GDC Europe 2016 just weeks away, know that conference organizers have lined up a great session from Playfab’s Mark Val about all the ways you can creatively improve your games’ backend ecosystems.

In his talk, “Expanding Your Creativity Within the Backend Services Ecosystem,” Val will take you on a tour of the leaders of the backend services ecosystem and how they can help you make better games.

From multiplayer, game design, monetization, analytics, support tools and more, attendees of his talk will learn new ways to expand their backend services and use them to be more creative when making games.

It promises to be a useful talk for anyone who helps make games, from indie devs to big-time publishers. Don’t miss it!

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