Game Makers Converge on World’s Largest Industry-Only Event at GDC 2008 in San Francisco

CMP’s 2008 Game Developers Conference(R) (GDC) has opened its doors at the Moscone Convention Center
in San Francisco, bringing the videogame industry together for a week of
networking, learning, and inspiration through this Friday, February 22. The
world’s largest industry-only event dedicated to the advancement of
interactive entertainment gathers thousands of game developers, publishers,
industry enthusiasts and members of the working press for five days of
lectures, panels, tutorials, roundtable discussions, summits, award
ceremonies, a robust expo featuring top tool and service providers, and
networking events.

Leading the conference content this year are keynote addresses by
Microsoft’s John Schappert, Corporate Vice President LIVE, Software and
Services for the Interactive Entertainment Business, and celebrated
inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil. Schappert’s talk “A Future Wide Open:
Unleashing the Creative Community” marks the first return to the GDC
keynote stage for Microsoft since 2005. Schappert’s keynote, taking place
today at 10:30am, is expected to explore the Xbox 360 platform’s next step
in democratizing game development, vastly opening up the industry for
developers of all sizes. The session will set the strategy for Xbox 360
this upcoming year, revealing top developers’ plans for the platform in
2008. In Kurzweil’s address, “The Next 20 Years of Gaming,” the inventor
who has been described as “the rightful heir to Thomas Edison” by Inc
magazine and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes, will speak to the
GDC audience about the next two decades of videogames and what the
landscape may well look like come GDC 2028, inspiring attendees to take a
dramatic look at the future of games and electronic entertainment.
Kurzweil’s keynote takes place tomorrow, Thursday, February 21, at 10:30am.

“In the past year, the game industry has seen a perfect storm of pop
culture taking games to heart while behind the scenes building for a more
participatory and connected game playing experience,” said Jamil Moledina,
executive director of the Game Developers Conference. “By focusing content
on these core development trends while dedicating summits to emerging areas
such as online worlds, the GDC continues to serve as the world’s central
forum for both the inspiration and business of all games.”

The conference features more than 400 lectures, panels, tutorials and
roundtable discussions covering all aspects of the game business. The week-
long event also features the GDC Expo and Career Pavilion, GDC Mobile, GDC
Tutorials, the Casual Games Summit, the Game Outsourcing Summit, the IGDA
Education Summit, the Independent Games Summit, the Serious Games Summit,
the Worlds in Motion Summit, the Game Career Seminar, the Independent Games
Festival (IGF), the Game Developers Choice Awards, Game Connection, Video
Games Live and more.

In response to industry shifts towards community and social platforms,
the GDC introduced its myGDC initiative this year. This new attendee tool
features enhanced social/professional networking capabilities on the GDC
site including the abilities to create and upload customized attendee
profiles and search a database of other profiles; to message designers,
programmers, publishers, GDC speakers, and game professionals; and to share
GDC schedules, projects and ideas. An advanced online scheduling tool was
also added to the site this year to better aid attendees’ planning and
networking in advance of the conference.

GDC 2009 will return to the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA. The
industry-leading event will take place March 23-27, 2009. For a complete
list of GDC 2008 event information, please visit http://www.gdconf.com/.

About the Game Developers Conference (http://www.gdconf.com)

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is the world’s largest
professionals- only game industry event. Presented every spring in San
Francisco, it is the essential forum for learning, inspiration, and
networking for the creators of computer, console, handheld, mobile, and
online games. The GDC attracts over 16,000 attendees, and is the primary
forum where programmers, artists, producers, game designers, audio
professionals, business decision-makers and others involved in the
development of interactive games gather to exchange ideas and shape the
future of the industry. The GDC is produced by the CMP Game Group, a
division of CMP.

About CMP (http://www.cmp.com)

CMP (http://www.cmp.com/) is a media and marketing solutions company
serving the technology industry. With the leading online, event and print
brands in all technology market categories, and with services and tools
that reach beyond traditional advertising, CMP shapes and influences the
technology industry worldwide. CMP publishes highly respected media brands
such as TechWeb, InformationWeek, ChannelWeb, CRN, EE Times and TechOnline;
produces major industry events such as Interop, Web 2.0 Expo, XChange, Game
Developers Conference and the Embedded Systems Conferences; and provides
business information and marketing services such as the International
Customer Management Institute, Semiconductor Insights and Second Life
consulting for technology marketers. CMP is a subsidiary of United Business
Media (http://www.unitedbusinessmedia.com/), a global provider of news
distribution and specialist information services with a market
capitalization of more than $3 billion. For more CMP news, go to
cmp.com/news.

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