Oculus Rift VR talk/demo, League of Legends community talks added to GDC Europe

GDC Europe 2013 organizers have announced the latest additions for August's show in Cologne, Germany, with Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey speaking on the challenges and opportunities virtual reality can pose for game devs, Riot Games devs on attracting and encouraging offline player evangelists, and Top Eleven studio Nordeus's tips on tutorials and player retention. These talks are part of the business, programming, and design tracks in GDC Europe 2013, which will take place Monday through Wednesday, August 19th-21st at the Cologne Congress-Centrum Ost in Cologne, Germany -- just ahead of (and co-located with) the massive 275,000 person Gamescom event. In the Oculus VR session 'Virtual Reality Gaming and Game Development', founder Palmer Luckey and VP of product Nate Mitchell will speak about the challenges virtual reality presents for game devs, why VR will change the way games are played, and what VR means for the industry. In addition, the company's product - the Oculus Rift VR headset - is currently planned to be playable in a booth on the GDC Europe show floor on Monday and Tuesday, August 19th and 20th, giving attendees the chance to check out the latest demonstrations on the unique hardware. Elsewhere, Riot Games's European Community Manager Matthew Elliott will speak about the process of building offline communities around their online game League of Legends in Building Real Life Communities in Online Gaming.' Elliott will explain how Riot finds and enables these offline brand ambassadors to produce "new and continued growth" for League of Legends. Finally, Nordeus's Game Designer Aleksandar Markovic will share their tricks for keeping players from skipping as few tutorials as possible in 'Staying in Top Eleven: Improving Retention Through the Tutorial.' He will analyze concrete examples of the hit online football manager game's effective tutorials, and discuss situations where tutorials might not be necessary. More talks will be revealed throughout the weeks leading up to GDC Europe in August. The schedule builder is live with a significant list of talks already available. Early bird registration for GDC Europe 2013 is also live, with discounts up to 20% off admission. Group admission discounts are also available. For all the latest news on GDC Europe, subscribe for updates via Facebook, Twitter, or RSS. Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech.