Last night the Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA) ceremony took place at GDC, with Monolith's Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor scoring Game of the Year. Blizzard (Hearthstone) and Bungie (Destiny) both received awards, as well as a smattering of other developers.

VR is kicking up a lot of chatter at this year's Game Developers Conference (GDC). SCE has joined in the action by revealing their latest prototype for Project Morpheus, as well as announcing that the VR headset is slated to launch in the first half of 2016.

Last week in Los Angeles, indies had a chance to show off their assets at Indie Games Live, and the results were anything but small. The Nokia Club Lounge in LA (fourth floor, VIP, park the car please) had both familiars and newcomers to the indie scene. A whirlwind of fun, VR experimentation and finger food festivities crescendoed into one fantastic night.

The Game Developer's Conference is inching ever closer, and even as it does we're still learning about great new content being added.

The annual Game Developer's Conference fast approaches,and one of the coolest things about it is the chance for indie developers to mingle with their peers and get exposure for their work. This year, that work will be more formally recognized with the introduction of the 'Best In Play' awards program.

"For the new 'Best in Play' award program, all GDC Play exhibitors will be judged on their in-development or complete games by a panel of veteran GDC organizers and Gamasutra editors. The top 8 will be named 'Best in Play' winners, and all 8 winners will receive 2 All Access Passes to Game Developers Conference 2014."

The fine folks at GDC Vault have released another great free video session for those of us who like to take a peek behind the curtain of the games industry.

This time, it's a piece from the GDC Conference, held in San Francisco in March of 2012. And it's not just any post-mortem -- it tells the tale of one of last year's most popular games, The Walking Dead.

"In this lecture, Telltale Games CEO and co-founder Dan Connors explains how his company went from a small start-up of LucasArts veterans who still believed in adventure games to the digital publishing powerhouse that published last year's hit The Walking Dead, detailing how and why the episodic model can still work for games."

Well worth a watch. And if that was your kind of thing, you just might be interested in another video session released earlier this week chronicling the development of Ultima Online.

The Game Developer's Conference is a collection of annual events that bring together the best and brightest minds in the game development community to share ideas with their peers. Every once in a while, GDC Vault releases some of those presentations for free to the general public, and this is one of those awesome times!

This time around, it's a video lecture from GDC Online, held in Austin last October. But it wasn't just any lecture, no sir. It's a post-mortem of sorts for the grand-daddy of our genre -- Ultima Online.

[Note: To access chapter selection, click the fullscreen button or check out the video on the GDC Vault website]

If you can't get enough Guild Wars 2 and like taking a peek behind the curtain to see how your favorite game is made, this one's for you.

Next month sees the return of GDC Online, the Games Developers Conference focused on online, social and cloud gaming. One of the most popular parts of this annual gathering is the Game Narrative Summit — a series of lectures and workshops about how to share storytelling in all its forms, from flagship MMOs to small smartphone games.

Helping shape this year’s Summit are Tom Abernathy, Narrative Designer and Writer at Microsoft Studios, and Richard Dansky, Central Clancy Writer for Red Storm Entertainment. Abernathy has previously worked on Halo: Reach, Destroy All Humans and Crimson Alliance, while Dansky’s credits include Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon and Far Cry. Both were listed in Gamasutra’s Top 20 Game Writers, and together they form half of the Game Narrative Summit Advisory Committee. 

With the conference itself just a few weeks away, I was fortunate enough to get the chance to talk about game narrative with these legends of storytelling.  In an enlightening dialogue, we discussed the diverse nature of this year’s Summit, before moving on to the evolving nature of narrative in a changing industry. I also discovered the techniques used in building narrative for online games, and how new technology is being used to perform storytelling.

This October sees the arrival of the third annual conference aimed at those in the MMO, social and online gaming industry. Hosted in the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas, the Game Developers  Conference Online (GDC Online) will see some 3500 industry professionals share ideas and join summits that shape the future of our favorite gaming genre.

The three day event also includes the Game Developers Choice Online Awards, celebrating the best in online gaming. This is where you come in: voting has opened for the Audience Award, with players worldwide encouraged to support their favorite persistent online game! Previous winners have included KingsIsle's Wizard101 and Riot Games' League of Legends.

Voting is open through to September 14th, so get to the Audience Award page pronto! If you’re looking for inspiration on who to vote for, cast your eyes over the nominations in other categories for this year’s awards. The winners will be announced as part of an award ceremony on October 10th, and we’ll be sure to bring you all the results.

Gareth “Gazimoff” Harmer, Staff Writer

Photo: Jesse Knish/GDC Online