Author: by David Jenkins, Simon Carless

The organizers of the 5th Annual Game Developers Conference Europe (GDC Europe) have announced details of the keynote and conference line-up for the event, due to take place between August 30th and September 1st at London's Le Meridien Hotel. The two keynotes will be given by SCEE's executive vice president of development Phil Harrison and Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi. Harrison will give his keynote session on Wednesday August 31st, where he will discuss next generation development and the state of the European interactive entertainment community in a Q&A format. Namco's Keita Takahashi will form the other keynote, previewing new gameplay innovations in the forthcoming sequel to his critically beloved (and still to be released in Europe) 'object aggregation simulator' Katamari Damacy - the sequel is named We Love Katamari outside Japan, and Takahashi will discuss his game design philosophy and approach to the sequel in an extension of his popular Game Developers Conference talk. "Through industry-defining keynotes to next-generation content, GDC Europe provides the European game development community an essential forum in which to learn and network," said conference director Jamil Moledina, director. "Visionary speakers such as Phil Harrison and Keita Takahashi form the nucleus of current game creation, and are ideally positioned to inform and influence." Other sessions within the conference will feature the developer of titles such as Killzone, Singstar, Project Gotham Racing 3, with five conference tracks including Production and Management, Tools and Tricks, Case Studies, Vision and Best of GDC. The main two days of lectures, panels and tutorials will be preceded by GDC Europe Mobile on Tuesday August 30th. This one day seminar is focused exclusively on mobile game creation, with topics including 3G games and developing in a fractured platform environment. Early rate pricing for GDC Europe expires Wednesday, August 3rd, with further information available via the official GDC Europe website. [GDC Europe is presented by the CMP Game Group, organizers of the Game Developers Conference and Serious Games Summit, and publishers of Game Developer Magazine and Gamasutra.com.]