GDC 08 officially dated

Game Developers Conference organiser CMP has confirmed the show is to return to San Francisco for its 2008 show and will run from February 18th to 22nd.

Taking place the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco, GDC08 will as ever feature three days of game development focused content and an accopmanying expo. The Serious Games Summit, the Independent Games Summit and Casual Games Summit and GDC Mobile all return, too – but are also joined by the new Game Outsourcing Summit, and the Worlds In Motion Summit, which looks at games and virtual worlds.

Community is key for CMP this year – it is introducing the new myGDC initiative, which sees new social/professional networking capabilities added to the GDC site.

CMP is also overhauling the pass structure to the event, to allow for ‘more intuitive access’ to the show. Complete details are on the official site. The myGDC offer will be available at that site from November.

"Now that the Game Developers Conference is the world’s largest professionals-only game industry event, it’s more essential than ever for us to foster microcommunities that will enable clusters of attendees with similar interests to share with and challenge each other," said Jamil Moledina, executive director of the Game Developers Conference.

"We are taking a cue from our own content this year by broadening our trademark exploration of breakthrough game development with particular attention to the rise of casual and social online spaces. To embody these trends, we are increasing our support of focused communities through summits, and have enabled more individual profile development and professional networking on our website starting next month."

The organisers expect over 16,000 industry execs to convene at GDC this year.